Total Control

Total Control was written in the 1990s by author David Baldacci. It is a fast paced thriller. Sidney Archer is a well paid and respected attorney and her husband Jason is a tech whiz at a famous technological company. He is thought to have been killed in a plane crash from Washington DC to Los Angeles. Why did he tell his wife he was leaving on the flight when actually he was on the way to Seattle? Why was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board among the victims of the plane crash on the DC to LA flight? How deeply is Sidney Archer involved in all the mystery? The FBI becomes involved and the pages fly by. The book deals with technological and financial matters which were hard to follow for this old English major!The book is just OK and not one of the author's best.

I expected this to be one of the best books I ever read, and I was disappointed until half of the book. I was feeling so negative with Baldacci’s book with so many threads and individuals involved in his drama, that I lost count of their names and job positions. The professional burglar witnessed sex and murder involving the President of United States, that no one could imagine where theses events could lead to. Initially, I was planning to drop the book with this political involvement, and confusion since I am used to Vince Flynn’s thrillers and Michael Connell's police thrillers that keep you wanting more on those actions. But then it started to make sense and I said Baldacci has something for me. Things started to being put together leading to an end I could never thought. I believed her husband would be found alive and who would go to prison for his crimes, but still I was guessing.Great book for fans of political thrillers knowing that Baldacci has always some tricks in his pocket, like the Winner I am presently reading.

David Baldacci is a gifted author who has written some wonderful thrillers. Total Control is not one of them. For reasons unknown he decided to write a tale so complex with characters so shallow and duplicitous that the reader's interest is sacrificed early on. Add to that his seemingly endless descriptions of every mundane event in the book from the descriptions of books in a room, the cups in a kitchen and the makeup routine of the heroine that the reader is left mired in useless and uninteresting detail as the story plods on. Finally the plot devolves into a fantastic and unbelievable ending where every literary twist and turn of events is crammed into a ridiculous unfulfilling finale. I wont give up on Baldacci. He is too talented. But I have already forgotten Total Control.

This was my second time to read the book but this time it was for my book group. As a group we were not disappointed either.Interesting, believable characters with multiple plot twists. He also used technology, the Federal Reserve, and the FOMC in a way that added to the story without leaving the uniformed lost in the details.I especially enjoyed how all of it tied together to an ending that made sense and with perfect timing in the great Baldacci way which is always perfect.This is the author's second book and I am so glad that over time he has not lost what still makes him one of my favored authors.

It had been a few years since I last read anything by Baldacci, but after fiishing TOTAL CONTROL, I immediately went shopping for some of his other books. The complexity of the plot was brought together masterfully as we follow the wife of a criminal (or a good guy, we won't find out until the end) who often knows more than she tells...and often doesn't know the details others think she does. Constantly hounded by private concerns, her bosses and co-workers and an FBI agent who can't let the case go, Sidney Archer is thrown into the center of a story that starts with a downed airliner on which her husband was -- and then wasn't -- aboard. The plot thickens as both Sidney and her husband were players in a mega-billion-dollar corporate transaction, their roles separate to the point that neither knew what the other knew in terms of details. And that leads to intrigue so thick the reader has difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys much of the time. Well worth the read, hard to put down.

I have read many of Baldacci's books and liked all of them, so far. This, however, is crap. The characters feel flat and two dimensional and the dialog is stilted and cringeworthy. I half-expected the villain to be twirling a waxed mustache. Of course, Amy has inherited her mother's thick blond hair, her father's piercing blue eyes and his athletic grace. Athletic grace at two?! Just mom's hair? Baldacci hastens to inform us that the stunning Sidney was a whip thin star college basketball star with...large breasts. Sadly, staying super fit (could we hear more about his abs?), incredibly smart, career-driven and a dad didn't leave Jason time to learn about the real world and that crooks don't play fair. The transitions between the predictable plot sequences are awkward. The book reads like it was written by a first time novelist. I now see whay it has been reduced in price.

I'm a fan of David Balducci but if it weren't for the fact that I knew my Kindle would suffer severely, I really wanted to throw it against the wall. The worst part, I didn't have this feeling at the end of the book, it came at 20% the way in. Never in my life reading books have I encountered a character that %uck up so bad and cried about it so much. I mean the girl cried throughout the entire book. Second to the constantly crying woman, David inserted too many characters, I counted 27. They're meaning and importance was way too difficult to maintain. Thirdly, when the story appeared to run into a dead end, the author just so happen to either come up with a clue or an answer to move the story. I would say there were only four chapters worst reading the rest was repeat narrative mumbo jumbo.

Look, this book was published 20 years ago so, OK, some tech stuff will bemiles out of date; and yes, some of the nice guy characters aren't particularlyattractive; and yes, this is probably not one of Baldacci's top notch stories; andyes, you can throw all your toys out of your pram because it took you 611 pagesto find this all out!But what I say to you all right now is.......Tie all those criticisms up in a nice little bag and throw them out of the nearest window!For goodness sake just sit back and enjoy this neatly paced little thriller, with its air crash,identity swap, corporate double dealings,indistinguishable lies and truths, our hero upto his neck in dire trouble, his wife entangled even further, and an FBI agent in a desperatesearch for the truth.Don't over-analyse this sturdy package of chase and double chase - relax and do what you'resupposed to do - enjoy the passing of several hours with a good book.Even when I'd put the book down I was wondering what our heroes and villains would be up tonext, and often retrieved the book to soak up one more chapter.You can't ask for more than that.

As ever David Baldacci’s book rockets along at a breath taking pace for marvellous entertainment with twists and turns aplenty. 5 stars for that, especially since, like Robert Harris’ “The Fear Index” it brings up some issues with the all pervasive influence on our lives of technology, computers and the internet. My only moan would be that there are a great many typos (“the” constantly being replaced by “tike” and Porsche spelled without the “s” for example) that suggest quite possibly a computer has been used to transcribe the book to digital text. Or else the copy-writer(s) had an off day....A shame given Mr Baldacci is co-founder of a society to reduce illiteracy. However, I am sure his books, with their sheer excitement help get/keep people in the habit of reading, of greater importance than any nit-picking about spelling; many electronic books have this issue. Highly recommended.

The author tries to keep you guessing to the end by inter-weaving complex plot threads and action sequences showing off technical knowledge of weapons and modes of transport. Meanwhile the hero is incredibly frustrating in the contrast between on one hand her own assessment and opinion of others of her capabilities, and then the woeful performance she actually delivers including some incredibly bad decisions and frankly imbecilic oversights which are shoe-horned in to keep the plot as arcane and full of suspense as possible. But this is at the cost of character and plot credibility and leaves you overall feeling frustrated by an annoying protagonist blundering through an awkwardly convoluted story. Don’t bother with this one, Baldacci has written far better or there are other authors

The story was excellent and it kept my attention right through. Every chapter I though the Secret Service is going to crack the case, but the person to be questioned got killed and it seems as if it a dead end again.I will definitely recommend the book to my friends.

Had to give up the book/audiobook at 37% mark. Life is much too short for this, there are so many other books more worthy of the time including some by the same author. The principal plot point of this story is: the plane a man was supposed to be on crashed due to sabotage. The main character mysteriously was on another flight entirely but even his wife has no idea why. Over 200 pages and the story has hardly progressed from this.