The Collectors by David Baldacci Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Collectors
Book Review: Excellent read - couldn't put it down!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book for my husband many months ago, and just picked it up from his shelf to look at as a summer read. After two chapters, I couldn't put it down! Very well written, interesting, entertaining, and I love the cliff-hanger end. My next read will be The Camel Club.
Book Review: Excellent thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first Baldacci novel. I like spies, conspiracies, gov't employees, and unlikely heroes. There are murders, gambling, kidnapping and espionage in this thriller. This book satisfied all of that and I recommmend it as a good and fast read.Book Review: Fairly good
Summary: 4 Stars
The book has two schemes: The scam plot is excellent
and the Camel Club plot is is good enough. The problem
is the book's end, it's disappointing and of course
the beginning of another book.
Book Review: Fast Read, Entertaining, Totally Unbelievable
Summary: 3 Stars
BOOK CLUB REVIEW
The Collectors
by David Baldacci
Our book club's book for May was THE COLLECTORS, by David Baldacci. We chose this book because we occasionally like to read books about books - the type of book in which books play a role. For example, we'd read THE THIRTEENTH TALE a couple of years ago, which is about a bookish young girl. A lot of us had read BOOKED TO DIE (by John Dunning), and liked it, so we thought we'd like a sort of thriller about books. We came up with THE COLLECTORS, which features the Bay Psalm Book, the first book ever printed in America. And one of the characters works in the rare book room at the Library of Congress, so we figured this had all the elements of a good read.
For the most part, we liked the book, even though it's pretty easy to pick holes in it. There is a cast of 4 who call themselves "the Camel Club." They live in the Washington, DC area and seek out truth. They're mostly misfits - former military types, conspiracy theorists, a geek or two. They actively seek what they call "the truth." Here they're trying to figure out who assassinated the U.S. Speaker of the House, and whether the death of an employee of the rare book room was natural or not. The plot also gets tied in with a "long con" run by a scam artist named Annabelle Conroy, who's seeking to take a homicidal casino owner for millions, as revenge for something he did in the past. Part of the fun of the book is trying to figure out how the plots are going to get tied together; and when it does happen, it's a pleasant and fun surprise that none of us had seen coming.
The pacing is fast. The book's good, entertaining reading, if a bit on the long side (not that you really notice, because the pages fly by so quickly). Our criticisms are really the result of the lack of characterization--some of the Camel Club members seem like overgrown teenagers. There are some action sequences that push all bounds of reality. And (this isn't a spoiler) the casino scam that makes up so much of the book isn't the least believable. Everything always goes exactly according to plan; "perils of Penelope" type situations are gotten out of with no harm to any hero or heroine; the bad guys chew a lot of scenery and make a lot of threats.
Still, the race to get to the bottom of the mysterious Bay Psalm Book, as well as some clever twists toward the end, kept us engaged and turning the pages. We don't necessarily think Baldacci is a master stylist, but we did think he's a better writer than Iris and Roy Johansen, whose book STORM CYCLE we'd read several months ago. I personally can see myself picking up a Baldacci for a long airplane or train ride, or as a beach book. You just have to sit back and go along for the ride, and not expect John Le Carre.
Book Review: Fun way to kill a few hours on a plane over the Pacific...
Summary: 4 Stars
While on our recent cruise, I had to pick up some additional reading material. I actually finished The Collectors by David Baldacci almost a month ago, but I've been a bit too busy to get around to posting the review. Bottom line, it was a good conspiracy story with some major con job action going on.
A self-styled group called the Camel Club is out to expose lies and conspiracies in the government. They get sucked into a major one when the Speaker of the House is murdered by a sniper. This is followed by the death of the head of the Library of Congress. Seemingly unrelated deaths, and in fact the second one doesn't even appear to be a murder. But one member of the club, a librarian at the LoC, isn't quite sure of that. With a little digging, threads (and threats) are revealed that point to a major security leak of national secrets. An outsider, a female con artist of incredible talent, joins up with the group in order to pay back a casino owner for an earlier loss in her life, as well as to lend her talents to a greater good. Although she's not quite sure why she cares about them, and isn't just taking the money and leaving the country...
I've read Baldacci stuff in the past and enjoyed it. But for whatever reason, he's not on my "oh, he's got a new one out!" list of authors. I saw this one in paperback at a bookstore on the cruise, and it looked like it had the right tone for mind candy escapism. I probably would have enjoyed the story a bit more had I already known the characters. I got the feeling that more development had been done in earlier Camel Club stories, so I wasn't as "in tune" with them as I could have been. But to kill off a few hours on a plane over the Pacific, it was perfect. And the ending is such that there's plenty of room to continue the storyline with the con artist and the casino boss who wants her to die a slow and painful death...