Book Review

True Blue– a David Baldacci “action-packed thriller” (at least, what the New York Times says) that takes on a completely different style than his other books. To that, I say, “Action-packed thriller my butt”. This book is truly the most disappointing David Baldacci thriller I have ever read due to the lack of character and plot development.

True Blue is about a cop called Mace, who was framed and wrongfully imprisoned. She and a nice guy lawyer embark on a mission to look for the people who were responsible for this mess. 

The character development is one of the biggest flaws in this book. The reader receives little to no information about the past of Mace in this book, leaving me in the dark as to why she behaves as she does. She simply meets violence with even more violence. I found her to be rude, masculine, and generally unlikable. The other character (Roy) had the same level of development if not even less. After reading half of the book, all I found out about the assisting main character, is that he is a lawyer. The last 2 side characters that didn’t really do anything was a dirty lawyer and Mace’s sister. 

The plot development was not that great. The beginning was perfect, with a murder, But then it jumps to focus the plot on Mace, leaving that idea untouched until much later in the book. In fact, after reading half the book, my knowledge of the murder was the same as the beginning. The beginning to the halfway point bored me to bits.  There was investigations and a bit of violence, but it was just boring and getting nowhere. So then I just stopped. I didn’t want to waste my time anymore.

The setting of the book is in the shady areas of  Washington DC, and that’s about it. The author left some details about the streets and the layout of the city, but that’s all. But because the setting didn’t really affect anything in the book to the point where I put it down. So I’ll let it slide. 

The one thing I do like that David Baldacci includes in his book are the details (imagery). David is very capable of really putting the fine details in his books to bring it to life even more. But one detail that could have been left out was the thirsty comments about the main character Mace. I got a bit uncomfortable when every other character was checking her out. However, the words he used were nice and easy to understand. And the flow was smooth, and things made sense in the order that they were in. 

I love the theme of the rogue cop uncovering some criminal organisation all on their own. But this book failed to execute this task, leaving me quite disappointed. A better book written by David would be the Camel club.

Link to Writing process:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1roRTS_1oBtVIsxLB3SND-ILonqbIyus9_a9XCxWVleA/edit