Total Control

I think I've just read my first American blockbuster thriller, and I very much enjoyed all six hundred and eleven pages of it. It was top quality hokum, entertaining and strangely old, with its talk of modems and floppy disks, and yet technologically challenging. David Baldacci definitely did his homework, as he goes into great detail about the inner workings of the Federal Reserve Board, Internet fraud, terror plots to down airliners, corporate takeovers and the FBI.

His highly attractive and intelligent heroine, is Sidney Archer, an attorney at Tyler, Stone, who finds herself caught up in the murderous intrigue of a billion pound takeover battle for CyberCom, between two rival firms: Triton Global and RTG. When her husband, Jason is implicated in a fraudulent deal to sell one firm's secrets to the other, and then is presumed dead on a sabotaged passenger plane, Sidney's life and the lives of her parents, and young daughter Amy, are in grave danger.

Sidney sets out to discover the secrets that Jason was hiding from her, and in the process to clear his name; but with the FBI following close behind in the shape of experienced agent, Lee Sawyer, she has to stay one step ahead, and find out who she can trust.

Baldacci ramps up the pace and tension, as Jason's enemies close in on the beleaguered Sidney, and the Feds try to keep a tail on her. It was hard not to see the novel as one of those intelligent legal thrillers, like John Grisham writes, with Lee Sawyer's character played by Gene Hackman. It would be a big name, big budget affair, with one of those deep, raspy voiceovers on the trailer: "Total Control. Once you have it, you'll kill to keep it!"

So yes, a bit Hollywood in places, from the intelligent and beautiful, gun-toting widow, to the seasoned Federal agent, who falls under her spell, and the cold-eyed assassin stalking dark corridors, dispatching people in gruesome ways. We get a big gun battle, and a cliff top show down, and it's a rip-roaring read, full of suspense and dirty dealing from start to finish.