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The new stand-alone thriller by David Baldacci arose out of a recent interview Baldacci conducted for Parade magazine, the Sunday supplement to many newspapers around the country. In it, Baldacci interviewed the Chief of Police for Washington, DC, Cathy Lanier, a woman with a unique job. Not only must she deal with one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country, she also has the federal government in her backyard. When the president decides to go out for lunch, for example, hundreds of DC's finest must leave their posts to provide security as he travels through the city. All this is great background material for Baldacci's latest New York Times best seller, TRUE BLUE, the story of two sisters in pursuit of a life fighting crime. The elder is Beth, the chief of police, and the younger is Mace, a cop who just got out of prison after two years. Set up for the crime, Mace seeks to regain her good name, as she wants nothing more than to be a cop. Beth wants that for her sister, too, but as the city's leading law enforcement officer, she must play by the rules, something Mace isn't used to doing. Mace believes she can redeem herself by solving an important case, even as Beth seeks to reel her in, or at least keep a tail on her to make sure she keeps out of trouble. But trouble seems to follow Mace…and soon, Roy as well, a lawyer at the firm where a woman attorney was found dead, stuffed in the firm's refrigerator. Together Mace and Roy seek to ferret out the details of the crime, while concealing their actions from Mace's sister. The storyline gets much bigger as they soon discover this is no random act of violence. Politics, too, come into play as Beth must jockey between different intelligence agencies, all while trying to fight crime in the nation's capital. While some elements of the book (including the ending) are not wholly satisfying, there is much to like about these characters, particularly the dynamic between the two sisters. The problems with credibility (for example, Mace invariably gets into trouble and someone ends up on the scene with a vehicle to rescue her or Mace's new job just out of prison is working for a wealthy man who provides her with every economic advantage she never had as a cop) are largely overshadowed by the elements that are real. Indeed, Baldacci does best when he brings the level of the story down to the beat cops patrolling areas of DC no tourist will ever see vs. the machinations at the upper echelons of the intelligence sector. Most of all, readers will be sustained by the personalities of and relationship between the two sisters. These are strong characters that readers want to see succeed. It's likely that these sisters will return to make TRUE BLUE the beginning of a new series for Baldacci. At the end of the novel, readers are left wanting to know more about what will happen to them now that this case is completed. That speaks volumes about these characters and their potential for many books to come.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, November 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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