Absolute Power
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4.4 • 23 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Set in Washington DC, this fascinating thriller of unparalleled suspense dares to explore an unthinkable abuse of power and criminal conspiracy: a vicious murder involving the US President and a cover-up orchestrated by his zealously loyal Chief of Staff and the Secret Service.
But, unknown to the President and his lackeys, one unlikely witness saw everything. Trapped behind a two-way mirror in a country house in Maryland, Luther Whitney, a professional burglar, witnesses an event that destroys his faith in justice.
By the time he escapes, pursued by two Secret Service agents, a young woman has been sexually assaulted, then shot dead. And a breathtaking cover-up has been set in motion.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Baldacci’s Inside Story: “This book represented a huge crossroads for me. I spent three years of my life writing Absolute Power. Before, I had been writing screenplays for four or five years when I was an attorney in Washington, DC. There was one I wrote in about 1991 called Reverse Order that was basically Die Hard in the White House. My agent called and said, ‘Everybody’s so excited about this script and it’s really hot. This is going to send you on your way as a screenwriter, you’re going to be able to write full time.’
“I was in New York with a client when my agent rang me at about midnight to tell me that Warner Bros had passed on it. Studios often have a herd mentality, so if they hear one has passed then there must be something wrong with it. So everyone passed. I remember staring out of the window in my hotel New York thinking, ‘Maybe this just isn’t going to happen for me.’ You start to think that perhaps it’s not all about working hard and being creative and talented, but also about simply being in the right place at the right time. But I went home and decided that I just couldn’t stop writing. It had become too important a part of my life. I really then delved deep to try and figure out what I was interested in writing.
“My attorney’s office was close to the White House back then and I would occasionally see the President’s motorcade come through. One time, I had parked on the street and didn’t realise the motorcade was coming through so my car got towed. The tow truck driver agreed to give me a ride to the office to pay my fine. As we were driving, the truck was caught up by the motorcade and the President’s limousine momentarily stopped alongside us. The light came on in the limo and we could see George Bush in the back with Barbara, reading papers. The tow truck driver and I exchanged a look and said at the same time, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool.’
“All of a sudden, a light bulb popped off for me. I remembered all the stories about JFK and his mistresses and all the tunnels connecting the treasury department next to the White House and the old executive office building. I thought, ‘What if I wrote about a President of the United States who was not a nice person, who was an egomaniac that has an affair with a woman and during one of those trysts something really bad happens—and the Secret Service has to do their job and kill the woman. And then I have a burglar present who saw everything.’
“So I flipped the stereotypes. I made the men people normally look up to the bad guys. And I made the burglar the good guy. That’s where Absolute Power. came from, and it really was the book that changed my life.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Casting the president of the United States as a crazed villain isn't a new idea--Fletcher Knebel worked it 30 years ago, in Night of Camp David--but in this sizzler of a first novel, Baldacci, a D.C. attorney, proves that the premise still has long legs. The action begins when a grizzled professional cat burglar gets trapped inside the bedroom closet of one of the world's richest men, only to witness, through a one-way mirror, two Secret Service agents kill the billionaire's trampy young wife as she tries to fight off the drunken sexual advances of the nation's chief executive. Running for his life, but not before he picks up a bloodstained letter opener that puts the president at the scene of the crime, the burglar becomes the target of a clandestine manhunt orchestrated by leading members of the executive branch. Meanwhile, Jack Graham, once a public defender and now a high-powered corporate attorney, gets drawn into the case because the on-the-lam burglar just happens to be the father of his former financee, a crusading Virginia prosecutor. Embroidering the narrative through assorted plot whorls are the hero's broken romance; his conflict over selling out for financial success; the prosecutor's confused love-hate for her burglar father; the relentless investigation by a northern Virginia career cop; the dilemma of government agents trapped in a moral catch-22; the amoral ambitions of a sexy White House Chief of Staff; and the old burglar's determination to bring down the ruthless president. Meanwhile, lurking at the novel's center like a venomous spider is the sociopathic president. Baldacci doesn't peer too deeply into his characters' souls, and his prose is merely functional--in both respects, he's much closer to Grisham than to, say, Forsyth; but he's also a first-rate storyteller who grabs readers by their lapels right away and won't let go until they've finished his enthralling yarn. Major ad/promo; BOMC alternate; film rights sold to Castle Rock; simultaneous Time Warner AudioBook.
