A Minute to Midnight
David Baldacci
An Atlee Pine thriller
Grand Central Publishing 2019
415 pages
A Minute to Midnight is the second David Baldacci thriller featuring FBI agent Atlee Pine. You do not have to be familiar with the previous novel or the work of David Baldacci to enjoy this solid mystery.
Atlee Pine is a thirty-something FBI agent in Arizona. She answers an Amber Alert and is too rough with the kidnapper. This leads her boss to suggest she take some time off and solve her problems.
Pine’s problem is the unresolved kidnapping of her twin sister Mercy when they were six. The kidnapper left Atlee with a concussion and she barely made it through. Pine returns to the town she was growing up in, Andersonville, Georgia. She is accompanied by her assistant Carol Blum.
Finding answers to any simple question about what happened the night Mercy was kidnapped proves difficult. Pine herself starts to doubt her memories.
One night a the body of a woman dressed in a wedding veil is found in an Andersonville alley. Later, the body of a man dressed as a groom is found in the Andersonville Civil War jail cemetery. Pine gets involved in trying to solve these murders while still trying to figure out what happened to her sister.
A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci features a lot of characters with something to hide. Pine even has to question what she knew about her parents who were not who they seemed to be. This makes for a somewhat complicated thriller. Baldacci manages not to lose the reader or his / her interest in the main story.
The resolution to this thriller is a bit of a letdown but not enough of one to spoil your enjoyment.
A Minute to Midnight will, however, make you want to read more David Baldacci if you are not already familiar with him. I recommend beginning with The Camel Club series.