BOOK REVIEW: THE HIT BY DAVID BALDACCI

Title: The Hit

Author: David Baldacci

Genre: Thriller

Published on: April 23, 2013 by Grand Central Publishing

Master assassin Will Robie must track down a deadly rogue agent, but the attacks conceal a larger threat that could send shockwaves through the U.S. government and around the world in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller. 

 

Will Robie is a master of killing.

A highly skilled assassin, Robie is the man the U.S. government calls on to eliminate the worst of the worst—enemies of the state, monsters committed to harming untold numbers of innocent victims.

No one else can match Robie’s talents as a hitman…no one, except Jessica Reel. A fellow assassin, equally professional and dangerous, Reel is every bit as lethal as Robie. And now, she’s gone rogue, turning her gun sights on other members of their agency.

To stop one of their own, the government looks again to Will Robie. His mission: bring in Reel, dead or alive. Only a killer can catch another killer, they tell him.

But as Robie pursues Reel, he quickly finds that there is more to her betrayal than meets the eye. Her attacks on the agency conceal a larger threat, a threat that could send shockwaves through the U.S. government and around the world.

Most of the time, I'm not the kind of reader who judges books by their cover. The one for The Hit really caught my eye, as it's so good. The main characters posing like that looks rather impressive. This is the second novel in a thriller series featuring Will Robie. He's a forty-year-old hitman who works for a clandestine agency under the DOD. Their focus is to take out targets who are close to becoming great danger for the world. Robie in particular has only ever killed bad people. It's been a few months since the ending of the previous book. The Hit finds Robie embarking on his newest and most dangerous mission yet.

One of the agency's higher-ups, referred to as Blue Man, is the guy who assigns Robie the mission. He learns that one of their own people has turned against them. While people within the agency normally don't know each other (for security reasons), Robie knows his latest target really well. She's Jessica Reel, the only female assassin in the agency. Reel is reputed to be as good at what she does as Robie is. That's why he was picked to eliminate her. Reel murdered her handler while she was supposed to be taking out someone on the other side of the world.

BOOK REVIEW: THE INNOCENT BY DAVID BALDACCI

Title: The Innocent

Author: David Baldacci

Genre: Thriller, mystery

Published on: April 17, 2012 by Grand Central Publishing

America has enemies - ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can't stop. That's when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target. But Will Robie may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career... 

It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway -- her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can't walk away. He needs to help her.

Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he's convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents' deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.

Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl's life... and perhaps his own.

This is a book I’ve had on my sights for a while. When I saw it at the public library, I took the plunge. The Innocent is the first novel in a thriller series. Its protagonist is Will Robie, an assassin for the U.S. government. He owns several dwellings, but his main home is Washington, D.C. Robie makes a living by taking out dangerous people that not even the army can get to. When the story begins, he has just turned forty. It’s an age that makes Robie realize he’s closer to retirement than he would like. Although he’s still fast and strong, Robie eventually will have to take a desk job. That time’s still some way off, at least.

The first few chapters are slightly tedious, but still important. In them, Robie carries out a few missions. There’s no dialogue until a little while later. I wouldn’t skip these chapters, though, because they have some important clues. It’s not until the inciting incident that characters say anything. Robie faces a conundrum after refusing to kill his latest target. By this point, the book has provided plenty of insight into Robie’s personality even though he hasn’t said much yet. You get the impression that Robie only kills bad people. Because of this moral code, he ends up running for his life.