Stone Cold

by: David Baldacci

Published by: Grand Central Publishing

Reviewed by Jeff Foster

David Baldacci’s Camel Club crew is back in his latest novel Stone Cold. The story picks up where the previous novel, The Collectors, left off.

An assassin is methodically killing the last remaining members of Oliver Stone’s former Triple-Six organization. Stone is called by his old boss and nemesis Carter Gray to a meeting at a secluded mansion for a sit down of sorts. At the meeting, Gray informs Stone of the murders of his former compatriots and advises him to watch his own back. Shortly after the meeting, the mansion is destroyed by an explosion attributed to a gas leak. Carter Gray is killed. Stone is the prime suspect.

Annabelle Conroy, the con artist introduced in The Collectors, is still on the run from Jerry Bagger, the Atlantic City casino boss she fleeced out of $40 million dollars in the previous novel. She learns that one of her co-conspirators has been tracked down in Europe and brutally beaten. Annabelle knows his attackers now have her name and assumes correctly that the culprits are minions of Jerry Bagger.

All this takes place in the first few chapters of the book, which I must say is one of the best Baldacci novels in recent years. The disparate plots intermingle well and send both Stone and Conroy on collision course to fates they have constructed for themselves by actions taken long ago.

As could have been done in the Camel Club, we find out much more about the main protagonists of these stories in this book than we have known before. Character back-stories are filled in and reasons for the actions they have taken are now understandable.

This book is fast paced, a refreshing change to the previous two novels that plodded along and dragged us to inevitable climaxes, that were laid out too early in the story line. Stone Cold grips you and holds you, and springs many more surprises on you and tosses you an ending that will drop you to your knees.

Armchair Interviews says: Snuggle up in your favorite armchair with this one, but make sure you have plenty of wood for the fire. You will need it.

Author’s Web site: http://www.DavidBaldacci.com