Zero Day

John Puller is a modern day action hero with a keen sense of observation born of a life in the military. The story places him in a coal mining town where nothing much happens except poverty and desperation. He is sent there to investigate the murders of a family headed up by another military intelligence officer. He finds himself paired with a local law enforcement officer who happens to be a woman with close personal connections in the community. The team is presented with a puzzling crime scene and even more murders. The story progresses at a steady rate, presenting a few surprises and allowing the hero to show off his intelligence and physical prowess. It is a pretty good page turner for a summer read. It is strangely timely in subject matter, speaking to the economic gap and the rape of the environment. It is not a fine piece of literature, but a passable who done it.

I came late to this book, so obviously, with over 1,000 reviews already written, I’m hardly going to discuss the plot or the fact that no matter how much I think I can project the ending, Baldacci ALWAYS surprises me. No. What I am going to discuss in this review is John Puller, the “new” hero (I know he’s in another book now, which I have just ordered!) from this author.

What I love most about Baldacci is that his heroes/heroines are honorable, good people. They are flawed, sometimes heavily flawed. They make mistakes. They second-guess themselves. They aren’t always right, which makes them so believable. I fell in love with John Puller almost immediately. He has a strong set of morals, he has integrity, he has skills that make one’s heart stop–but above all, he is still human. He can hurt. He can love fiercely and loyally. He has nightmares. He has doubts. And yet through it all, he is the kind of superhero that we all wish we knew.

I wasn’t sure until the last page that Puller would survive this adventure, and I certainly did not expect the emotional twists and turns that came my way. Baldacci is so subtly skilled at weaving a plot that even people like me, who do not usually gravitate to “army superhero” types, become riveted.

I LOVED this book, and hope that Puller remains in Baldacci’s lexicon.

I’ve never read a bad book by David Baldacci. Never. But this one I’ve read three times and each time I can’t put it down. John Puller is probably my favorite good guy on the action, thriller, suspense field right now. A man of honor, courage and integrity, the word quit doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. This story pulls you in from the first and will not let you go until our hero rides off into the sunset. Literally. You’ll laugh, cry, grind your teeth and stay awake until the wee hours of the morning. And when you have finished you’ll know that you’ve read a really good book. And while there are a few light curse words scattered throughout, it’s a book that you wouldn’t mind loaning to your mom, grandma or kid. Thank you, Mr Baldacci.

Tough, tall and deadly in hand-to-hand combat, this U.S. Army cop doing solo investigation into strange happenings in isolated rural community starts to fall for the tough but attractive local police woman. With a brother and father in the services, and an internal clock that tells him exactly what time it is, this coffee loving soldier likes to be known by his surname only.

Sound familiar?

The first half of this book was okay – despite or perhaps because – its almost a carbon copy of Lee Childs works. But it starts to go downhill pretty quick. I wont spoil the JJ Abrams ending for you, if you havent yet read this and youre reading reviews before you do so, well you know exactly what youre getting into. Good luck.

This book is a hypothetical look at what can or could have gone wrong with the nuclear bomb hysteria that gripped the US in the 1950s and 60s. What happens to sites, full of nuclear materials, when shutdown after sanity returns? Are they carefully dismantled or simply covered up? When John Puller, the Armys best Criminal Investigative Agent is sent to remote WV to investigate the death of an Army colonel, little could he have known that he was literally sitting on a ticking time bomb.

What Puller finds is the colonel and his family brutally murdered execution style. In an area of the country that is literally dying, with only environmental destroying surface coal mining keeping it afloat, nothing beyond petty crime ever occurs. Nonetheless, he finds a willing ally in Samantha Cole, local police sergeant, in trying to solve these perplexing murders. Hes not getting much cooperation from the towns elites who own and operate the coal mining company and control the local community.

More surprising is that Puller is not getting a whole lot help from the higher ups in CID. But he and Cole, meticulously digging through threads of evidence, begin to unwind a nefarious plot that extends well beyond the brutal murder of a family. Sadly, there are casualties that are regrettable.

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