The Collectors by David Baldacci

Hardcover 436 pages

Thriller

2006

Synopsis:

In Washington DC, where power is everything and the few have too much of it, four eccentric men with mysterious pasts call themselves the Camel Club. Their mission is to find out what is really going on behind the Capitol's closed doors.

The assassination of the US Speaker of the House has shaken the nation. And the Camel Club have found a chilling connection with the death of the Library of Congress's rare books room, whose body was found in a locked vault where seemingly no one could have harmed him.

Oliver Stone, the unofficial leader of the Camel Club, drawing on his experience while working undercover for the government under a different name and his acute deductive powers, discovers that someone is selling highly classified secrets to America's enemies.

My Take:

The prose is something you'd expect to find in a high school creative writing class. It is good enough not to immediately put down, but not so great you rush to the phone to tell everybody to buy the book.

The story saves the day. Actually, there are two stories. One is a very interesting, though somewhat unbelievable con perpetrated against a New Jersey casino owner, the other involves the Speaker's death and the selling of top secret information. The two story lines never connect directly. The con artist becomes involved with the Camel Club after meeting them at the funeral of the Library of Congress librarian. Only one of the story lines is resolved, the other is left as a cliffhanger for what I'm sure will be the next novel in The Camel Club series. Or so I hope it will be.

I rate it a 5.0.