Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love Baldacci’s work, but this book is dreadful—implausible, stereotyped characters, ridiculous actions. It’s another conspiracy book, this time with—brace yourself—a nuke hidden in the grand canyon with Russians framing North Koreans who undermine the Americans who don’t trust the Russians—the plot is beyond stupid, it’s insulting. And three people get the nuke out of the canyon on almost impassable trails despite a chopper with heavily armed men searching for them. And this is clearly the beginning of a series, with FBI Agent Pine in search of he long ago kidnapped sister Mercy (hence, the title). I cannot believe that someone with these writing chops would pen such a superficial, unrealistic, trite dialogue book as this. Save your money. More importantly, don’t encourage him. Maybe he’ll return to the harder-to-write but more impressive works. This isn’t just poor writing for Baldacci, it’s poor writing for a college freshman in a creative writing program. The grade here is F.