The Innocent
David Baldacci
A Will Robie mystery
Grand Central Publishing
448 pages

The Innocent is David Baldacci’s best thriller to date. The author of the Camel Club series and the Sean Maxwell / Michelle King series does not usually do as well out of those two parameters; The Innocent is the glaring exception to the rule. This is an original, captivating, easy to read mytery. The Innocent (Will Robie Book 1) on Kindle

Will Robie is a U.S. government hit man. He is ordered to take out a Washington mother of two. Something goes wrong and Robie becomes the target. His get out of town plan includes taking the bus to NYC. There he prevents a man from killing a teenaged girl named Julie. They get off the bus, the bus blows up, and another killer goes after Robie and Julie. Killer and teenaged girl are on the lam together.

Robie starts thinking maybe everything is a clever master plan for something with him at the pawn. He ends up assisting an FBI agent investigating the murder of the mother of two and the bus explosion. This while protecting Julie, hiding his role and presence in the murder and explosion, and trying to figure out who is playing him and why.

This may sound a bit convoluted but it is not. David Baldacci has a very tight handle on everything and never loses reader or believability. Things do drag on a bit near the three quarter mark but not enough to irritate and by then the reader is committed anyways.

The reveal is a bit much but what the hell.

One thing is this reader is never that interested in figuring out whodunit ahead of time and would rather read for enjoyment. That I figured out a small part of it very early on is perhaps not a good sign for more investigatively minded readers.