The Whole Truth by David Baldacci Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Whole Truth
Book Review: Far fetched and silly - but not terrible
Summary: 3 Stars
The Whole Truth is middling effort from David Baldacci. It's nowhere near as bad The Camel Club, not nearly as good as Stone Cold, slightly better than Simple Genius, and a far cry from Absolute Power.
The premise of the novel is extremely farfetched. Certainly, perception management is practiced all the time, but the magnitude of the deception in this novel is so huge and dependent upon so many variables that it's hard to accept. The story hinges on the notion that citizens of the Western world become obsessed with the plight of a Russian dissident who was allegedly murdered by the state. This struck me as highly improbable. Human rights violations occur all over the world all the time, and frankly we try not to think about it too much, particularly if that Country's economy is important to our interests.
As improbable as the whole plot seemed, it didn't really bother me. Elaborate conspiracies are to be expected in novels of this type. What really brings the novel down is the clich?d and silly characters. The villain in this novel is as cartoonish as any Bond villain and the heroes are one dimensional (and apparently invincible).
Frequent attempts to kill our heroes are predictably unsuccessful. As is often the case in these types of novels, our heroes are left for dead, only to survive by some miracle. The villain, of course, ultimately decides that he wants to personally kill our heroes, which enables them to find out who is responsible for everything that has happened when they otherwise never would have.
Don't these villains ever watch action movies? Apparently not, otherwise they wouldn't keep making the same silly mistakes that every other villain makes.
All in all, this novel isn't terrible. It moves along briskly enough and is marginally entertaining. I can't recommend it with much enthusiasm, but I suppose you could do worse. I hear the new Lee Child novel is a real stinker.
Book Review: Perception vs. Reality- A Post-Modern Story
Summary: 5 Stars
"Every country in the world today faces the danger of being terrorized by technology..." Albert Speer Inside the Third Reich (1970)
Hitler's architect and Minister of Armaments could not have foreseen in 1970 how quickly the technology of mass communications would evolve from radio, television and telephone into instant world wide personal and mass communications. The "Perception Manager," a postmodern craftsman whose tools are cutting edge information technologies, keeps his true identity lurking deeply behind strings of code. The mission of this manipulator is clear-make make perception reality and earn erroneous sums in the process.
If the created perceptions get instilled deep enough into the consciousness of the intended audience, it will make little difference if they represent a partial truth or a whole lie. What matters are the results.
Even Albert Speer would have recoiled from the megalomaniacal technological ambitions that David Baldacci reveals in The Whole Truth. To drum up profits, an arms merchant commissions a virtual gambit, an Internet scam whose ambition is to rekindle the Cold War.
Against this evil array we have Shaw. We don't know much about Shaw except he is a stone cold killer and his work for the good guys is mostly involuntary, at least until it becomes personal. Shaw is as much a man of mystery as Baldacci's other great protagonist Oliver Stone. Yet he is younger, and thus more physical and less cerebral than the Camel Club leader.
This is an incredible and chilling tale. It is one you will not easily put down or forget. With any luck, you may never look at information the same way again.
Book Review: One of his best!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was great from beginning to end! When you finish, you'll wish you didn't read it so fast.Book Review: REad During the Summer
Summary: 4 Stars
Baldacci writes great page turners. On some occasions he produces interesting characters such as Simple Genius or the Camel Club. He does half of this in Whole Truth. Shaw and Katie James were just not believable Creel was a real cartoon figure. Also the coincidences in this book are not believable. Having said all of this I still stayed up late finishing it. Book Review: Great story; mediocre writing
Summary: 3 Stars
Based upon the truly superb job he did on Absolute Power, David Baldacci is a better writer than he shows in The Whole Truth. He does tell a really original tale, but his characters are thinly drawn and not very interesting.
Also some of the sentence construction is truly awful; a good editor would have caught and corrected this. In addition, there are several errors (typos and the like) in the hardcover edition.
Hey, it's an okay summer read, but don't expect too much.