Long Road to Mercy

I don't usually review books that I think aren't that good, but I figure Baldacci is a big enough name that
A) If he sees this, it won't hurt his feelings, and
B) He won't see this.

I'd never read a Baldacci book before, but I got the audiobook for this one a few days ago and played it in the car while on my long days at work. The prose doesn't sizzle, but it's competently written. There are a lot more adverbs than I'd care to hear, and he uses a lot of hamhanded dialogue attribution he didn't need. (He's probably big enough that his editors cut a lot less than they would with a new author because it pads page counts and makes for a more expensive book...) It really bothered me that there is no cursing in this book, too. In scenes where military dudes with guns are in a standoff with each other, you better goddamn believe there's going to be cursing.

(In a scene where a military dude pours himself a bowl of cereal, there should be cursing to make it realistic. My friends who are in/were in the military seem to be completely incapable of forming a sentence without cursing.)

This is the sort of book that makes me really question why I can't get an agent and publishing deal if they're producing tripe like this. I might be biased, but I'd rather read one of my books than this thing.

Baldacci basically created another ultra-Mary Sue main character along the never-do-wrong, always-wins mold of Jack Reacher, Mitch Rapp, and Peter Ash, complete with tragic backstory. Atlee Pine hits all the high notes of a cookie-cutter action hero. The murder of her twin sister sent her on a path to the FBI because she wants to make sure all families have the closure she never got. She's an Olympic-level weightlifter, expert MMA practitioner, and all-around better-than-you athlete. She's tall and well-built, but like all good female main characters, she doesn't think of herself as beautiful, but yet she attracts the attention of the ex-Special Forces Green Beret stud (who is old-fashioned and humble before her). In the course of this book, Atlee fights Russian army guys, a North Korean assassin, and a couple of would-be rapist rubes, handling them all with relative ease.

She's everything that's wrong with this genre of fiction.

In spite of that, I didn't bail on this book because she was compelling enough that I was interested to see where the story went.

Baldacci wrote one of those twisty-turny thrillers that gets so caught up in the twists and turns that it forgets to be realistic. It's a big-screen action movie that would get lambasted for its silly plot and cardboard characters. It goes from a mystery about a dead mule and a missing hiker at the Grand Canyon to a bizarrely thought-out plot to start a war with North Korea, with a bunch of crazy stops in between.

Yet, this is a best-selling series.

Why?

I don't get it.

My Abe & Duff Mystery Series was written specifically to be the antithesis of books like this. Abe and Duff aren't going to win any fights, they're ugly and they know it (and everyone else knows it), and they're not going to be the envy of others. They are grounded in reality. They might make some quips and banter a bit, but that's about it. They joke–because I don't think I've ever had a conversation with anyone for more than a few minutes without making some sort of attempt at levity. No one wants to be friends with a person who is always serious. Life is serious enough. Make a joke already.

I honestly don't get jealous of other authors. I always say a high tide raises all boats, and clearly people must like this series because it seems to be quite popular...but, when I see a book like this get a lot of success, I really start to wonder, “Why not me?” because I don't think this book was all that good.

I think I'm going to put this book into the same realm as I put things like Reality TV Singing Shows and Taylor Swift–they're popular, sure, but popular doesn't mean “good.”

There are far better books out there and more deserving authors.