BOOK REVIEW: The Target

To be honest, I picked up THE TARGET by mistake. David Baldacci is one of my favorite authors and I have been waiting to get my hands his third John Puller book. Instead I found one featuring Will Robie. I was more than satisfied.

Will Robie and his partner Jessica Reed have ticked off some powerful people in the department responsible for handling the trickiest national security problems. Now the President is involved in a very delicate situation, the need to assassinate the head of a foreign nation. It is a job made for Will and Jess, if they can live through the extra training, training that goes from intense to life threatening. The following action takes us from Washington, D.C. to North Korea to Nantucket.  

A Baldacci plot is so full of twists and hold- on- to -your seat action that I would never ruin the fun for you, but here are some reasons why you may want to check out THE TARGET.

If you have read earlier books with Robie and Reed as central characters, you know very little about their personal backgrounds. We know that they are very good at their jobs, have seen them face death and develope some interesting relationships. In THE TARGET we find out about Jess, her family and how she became one of the top assassins in defense of our country. This alone made for an interesting read.

We also meet her counterpart, Chung-Cha, a trained agent from North Korea. Her story was particularly intriguing. We sometimes do not give authors who are best known for action novels credit for good character development. Chung-Cha becomes very human to the reader.

As with any book that revolves around characters who have been introduced in earlier works, THE TARGET assumes that the reader is aware of past adventures. The reason for the animosity of the head of the department happened in a previous book, but enough was explained to make the tension believable. The thing is, now I have to find the book that tells the details of that adventure!

David Baldacci is a very prolific author and I have found some of his works to be less worthwhile than others. I became a fan of his with Absolute Power and it remains a favorite. THE TARGET was as good. It has great action and well developed characters. In the hands of a good author, what more could a reader want!