Divine Justice (Camel Club)
by David Baldacci
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Book Reviews of Divine Justice (Camel Club)
Book Review: Last of the Camel Club thrillers?
Summary: 4 Stars
DIVINE JUSTICE, the fourth in Baldacci's wildly popular Camel Club series, picks up where the quite literal cliff hanger at the conclusion of STONE COLD left us. Oliver Stone, having just assassinated Carter Gray, head of the CIA, and Roger Simpson, who had raised Stone's daughter after his wife's murder, had just made his tenuous escape by leaping headlong off of a cliff into the frigid, storm-tossed waters of Chesepeake Bay. When he breaks the surface and swims to shore, he knows that in order to stay alive and to protect his friends, he's going to have to go into deep hiding without letting anybody know where he's gone, most especially his dear friends in the Camel Club.
As he did with the other entries in the series, Baldacci uses DIVINE JUSTICE to deftly juggle a double intertwined plot. The first, and most obvious plot, is the government's efforts to hunt down Oliver Stone, almost certainly with the intent to forever silence him and ensure that the lid on past CIA black operations is forever slammed shut.
The second plot involves the rather creepy, clearly underhanded goings on in Divine, the sleepy coal-mining town buried so deep in the Virginia backwoods that he couldn't even get a bus ride into town. Stone imagined it to be the perfect shelter below everybody's radar! But the mysterious deaths and suicides, the federal supermax prison and the coal miners' constant trips to the local methadone clinic raised every hair on the back of Oliver Stone's neck. Something was very, very wrong in Divine, Virginia and he just couldn't leave well enough alone and stay hidden for long!
DIVINE JUSTICE, which may well be the closer, continues a fabulous series that thriller fans will eat up with gluttonous gusto. Annabelle Conroy, Alex Ford and the two surviving members of the Camel Club, Reuben Rhodes and Caleb Shaw, are fully developed as characters and fully brought to life as believable heroes. Readers will cheer their little hearts out as Stone's friends work double-time to find him before the government assassins do.
Highly recommended. No loose ends or cliff hangers in this one, I'm afraid. While the characters still have room to grow, Baldacci hasn't left himself with an obvious plot direction for a fifth novel in the series. I'm crossing my fingers. We'll have to wait and see.
Paul Weiss
Book Review: Smoke 'em if you got 'em in the Camel Club!
Summary: 4 Stars
The Camel Club is a group of fringe law enforcement types, with a lot of common history and admiration, and ability to tell whoever they meet a compelling fib. Much like the 1960's Mod Squad, we have a motley crew including a smart jilted woman with an attitude, a black guy with a cool Indian motorcyle, a middle aged librarian who wants to be a NASCAR hero, and some actual crimefighters. Here they are re-united to find and rescue one of their own, the usually self-sufficient Oliver Stone. Stone has murdered some top government officials because they did something bad to his family 3 or 4 books ago. I did not read the early books and the back-story does not get well explained until the standard last chapter meeting with the President.
Stone has deep cover hidden behind more fake id's buried in cigar boxes in cementeries. Unfortunately he gets tripped up by being a good Samaritan on a late train to New Orleans. Then Baldacci gets a bit formulaic. Stone helps a young man out in a fight, goes to his home town and gets cozy with his rich single mom. The small town in southwest Virginia's coal mining country turns out to be the epicenter of narco-crime including several murders in one week. Fortunately Stone happens to get there in time to at least slow down the murder rate.
Then things get really complicated. Stone's former military intelligence boss sends Knox, a Stone-type character to find Stone, but only gives him 2% of the real story. The Camel Club follows Knox. The small-town sheriff and his prison warden brother turn out to be the forces of good and evil. Like the evil characters in James Bond movies, the bad guys here like to play with their prey. They never take the opportunity to kill someone competently when they can (hopefully) get rid of him by putting him in a cave with snakes, throw him out of a mvoing car, or add illegal drugs to their narcotics.
David Baldacci lives in Virginia like me and John Grisham. Baldacci knows character development and dialogue, and understands small town loyalties and how people dont always see the federal government as their ally. Grisham is the better writer; he has avoided the trap of working to get 4 books out of one story.
Book Review: Tight-plotting, energetic, with a touch of Victor Hugo
Summary: 4 Stars
This energetic thriller reads easily with a page-turning style that is difficult to put aside. Oliver Stone once again appears but this time as a solitary justice initiator. Not unlike Jean Valjean in the Hugo's masterpiece Les Miserables, Stone seems almost too good in his physical abilities, intellect, and emotional compassion for the weak. He is tough, quick, wise, caring, and haunted by a past that keeps following him regardless of his attempts to escape.
In this exciting novel, Stone assassinates two prominent figures and quickly gets away only to find himself immersed in yet another drama in a small, mining town. As authorities and friends converge to find Stone, either to help him escape or bring him to justice, they become entwined in a complicated drug-running conspiracy involving a maximum-security prison. Several violent deaths, torture in the prison, and a budding love affair keep Oliver Stone busy as he seeks to solve the mysteries and challenges of the mining town. The reader identifies with the goodness of Stone and champions his desire to escape, knowing that the assassinations were justified.
The plot moves quickly with an excellent balance of human interest, violence, and complicated intrigue. David Baldacci knows how to write a thriller and how to keep a reader enthralled to the very end. His descriptions of the land and the people are accurate and his ability to portray varying personalities admirable. Sometimes Stone seemed super-human in his tendency to be in the right place and the right time and his ability to withstand punishment. In addition, Baldacci tends to be a little superficial in his descriptions of the characters involved. We never know who these people really are and what they really think. A little more Thomas Hardy might be a refreshing change to the genre.
Aside from those minor flaws, it is an energetic story that could be enjoyed by all. The bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. The satisfying conclusion leaves no surprises and although a little predictable at times, the book is obviously another fine product by a successful author.
Book Review: Poor on every level
Summary: 1 Stars
This is the first (and likely the last) book I've ever read by Baldacci. That being the case, it is obvious that I came in late in the ongoing story of the Camel Club. Despite this, I picked up on the history and the characters involved. Early on, the book surprisingly involved me in the ongoing story of Oliver Stone. It looked as though this could be a good tale. However, as the story progressed everything fell completely apart. The last 50 pages or so of the book was so bad I quickly scanned it to get this painful ordeal over with. It started to fall apart about the time Stone wandered into Divine. At that point, the book became a poor copy of something by Lee Child and Stone became a poor copy of an already unbelievable Jack Reacher character.
I have a theory on writers. There are good writers and there are good storytellers but the best books come from good stories told by good writers. "Divine Justice" is neither a good story nor is it done by a good writer. Maybe Baldacci is capable of better work but I doubt I will make any effort to read him again because this book is simply pathetic. I'm amazed I even finished reading it. At least I didn't have anything important to do so it wasn't a total loss of my time.
Where do I begin? How about a storyline that is so implausible and juvenile it would embarrass an college freshman to turn it into his Literature 101 professor? Every step of the way, Baldacci builds drama that leads to one giant thud of a conclusion. I will not give away the plot in case someone actually decides to read the book after seeing this review, but I will tell you I felt embarrassment for Baldacci over creating such drivel. Then there are the characters. Other than Stone and Joe Knox, they are cardboard cutouts. And even Stone and Knox join the other stilted characters in clumsy and wooden dialog.
Amateurish best describes the writing, the characterizations and the story. Don't waste your time.
Book Review: Divine Justice... but not for the reader?
Summary: 2 Stars
Having read a couple of David Baldacci's books previously, I was expecting quite a lot more with Divine Justice. I guess I'm prepared to overlook the surfeit of minor characters who were all too briefly sketched, and the sometimes clumsy, stilted dialogue, and Stone's contrived and unnecessary love interest with Abby, but.....
The whole "raison d'etre" for Stone arriving in Divine was far, far too left field to swallow! And which kind of wrecked the plot line very early in the piece. Stone is a guy who's been successfully on the run for thirty years from all sorts of desperadoes trying to nail him, including the CIA and FBI, and numerous other government and military agencies. And yet, and yet... after his fight with the three thugs his false ID won't even stand up to scrutiny by a train conductor! This just doesn't ring true at all. In fact it's laughably inept by both the writer and his protagonist. And later -- to make matters worse plot-wise -- this same train conductor is known personally to the randomly-picked ticketing clerk questioned by Joe Knox, and (unbelievably) also happens to be coming in to write up his paperwork.
Oh, puhleeze!
Way too many similar holes in this plot I'm afraid.