THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702010566
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, staff writer
LENGTH: 73 lines
TOTAL CONTROL
DAVID BALDACCI
Warner Books. 520 pp. $25.
David Baldacci has done it again.
His new novel, Total Control, is every bit as fast-paced and captivating as his last. No lying, you can picture the movie version playing across a big screen as you read the words.
By page five, flight 3223 carrying 174 passengers and a seven-member crew has exploded and plummeted into the Virginia countryside, killing everyone on board. That's when the life of successful lawyer Sidney Archer changes forever. Nothing is as it seems.
Visiting the crash site, Archer is overcome with the magnitude of what she sees.
``Here there was death; it was everywhere. It seemed to cling to her clothes, much like the snowfall. . . . Like an omnipotent magnet, the crash site seemed inexorably to demand everyone's attention. The price to be paid for the innumerable joys of life, it seemed, was the constant threat of swift, inexplicable death.''
Baldacci burst onto the literary scene about a year ago with his first novel, Absolute Power. The thriller spent more than four months on The New York Times best-seller list.
The author is a University of Virginia law school grad who lives in Alexandria, having left his legal job in Washington to write full time.
Total Control is a wild ride through a world of powerful people with dangerous secrets. It is layer upon layer of intrigue. Here ruthless businessmen with one thing on their minds are willing to pay any price. Through the Internet, multi-million-dollar deals and sex scandals come together. Terrorism in the '90s.
Archer had it all until that plane went down. She had the career, the child, and of course, a successful husband named Jason Archer. He was a star at Triton Global, the world's largest technology conglomerate. But there was something he wasn't telling her, and after his disappearance - tied to the plane crash - she would be left to figure out his secret life.
Whatever his secret was, it was leaving a trail of dead bodies.
With the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI involved, Archer gets some help. But the lines between friend and foe blur before her eyes. She can't be sure of anything.
In the end, Archer must trust someone and chooses veteran FBI agent Lee Sawyer. Together, they uncover the truth.
Archer and Sawyer are the strongest forces in the novel. In them, Baldacci achieves comfortable, believable characters who hold up through the breakneck pace.
``Sawyer had spent the last twenty-five years of his life constantly probing beneath the surface. He looked forward to the day when he would not have to do that. To the time when delving into the motives and circumstances that turned human beings into monsters would be someone else's job.''
If the book has a weakness, it is that a couple of places demand leaps of faith. Archer or Sawyer realize something that seems out of either's reach to know.
And then there's that little problem with the disappearing computer disk and password. Through Archer, even Baldacci admits it's a stretch: ``God, I can't believe it. First I have the disk and no password. Then I get the password and I lose the disk. Now I have the disk back and I've lost the password again. I'm losing my mind.''
It's movie perfect. And it's still good storytelling.
In his latest novel, Baldacci is in total control, every second, every page, until the very last one. MEMO: June Arney is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Book Cover