What do You think about Total Control (1997)?
Un-put-downable , absolutely riveting etc.etc. The cliches keep-a-coming . Baldacci's tale of corporate plotting , betrayal , greed and it's effect on a family is a belter .The roller coaster story begins with the disappearance of Jason Archer , a high-achiever in the business world who apparently is completing his part in a deal which will make his family ( wife and daughter )financially stable for life .When he never returns , his wife - a high achieving lawyer - has to do everything within her power to protect herself , her daughter and parents .The FBI are also chasing her but as the story unravels come onside when they realise it's Big Business vs the little guy .Some of the computer stuff described is slightly dated now , but the attitude of the corporate money-makers is still familiar .Not to give too much away , it is quite satisfying when some of the bad guys meet their timely end .I'd previously read Absolute Power and enjoyed the style of this author , and Total Control does not disappoint .
—Jeremy Owen
Long wait til suspenseful ending, rather preposterous plot...Maybe our expectations were set a little high after reading the author's great thriller "Absolute Power" and his almost as good "Simple Truth". Unlike those stories where at least we cared about the protagonists and the plot had some cohesion, "Control" takes a awful long time to plod toward a thrilling finale. Unfortunately the events that unfold to get us there are extremely far-fetched, with the allegedly intelligent leading lady super-lawyer, Sidney Archer, little more than a gun-totin' housewife with hardly a clue throughout the whole tale. The plot sounds like movie pabulum: a zillionaire tycoon has merged with a techno-geek's dream-works, and now they're in a competition to take over another firm of great internet marvel. Sidney, and hubby Jason, a technocrat putting together a lot of details to support the deal, get caught up in the struggle, and soon a plane crash leads the players (but not us readers, who know he's up to something seemingly sinister) to believe Jason was among the fatalities. What follows is an almost endless "chase" between all variety of petty thugs, hired killers, ex-FBI and FBI type hotdogs, with a wealth of dead bodies strewn about by book's end. Flying planes and driving cars in snowstorms too severe to shut the airports and roads pose no problem for our stars, typical of the silly suspensions of reality we must endure to get through this. We know Baldacci can do better from his other novels. This book looks like something written on contract: it had to get out; it had to be 700 chilling pages; it had to have non-stop action no matter how preposterous. Oh, and don't waste time fleshing out the characters to make them seem real - after all, this is a fantasy. When it takes us two weeks to get through a "thriller", we know something's wrong.
—Jerry
This is a really long book at over 700 pages in paperback. I really liked the pace of the story, and the multiple twists that were taken. Infact, I thought I might know who the "bad guy" was, but kept changing my mind, and in the end, I was not totally correct anyway. I like books that surprise like this.The FBI agent investigating a plane crash has to decide why the plane really went down, who was at fault, why, and who the target was. Also, the reader gets to know a bit more than the agent for a while since another story is also going on involving a computer genius who was employed by a company that was planning to merge with another, while his wife was an attorney representing the company in the merge. When the computer genius goes missing, many questions arise, and then . . . .the plane falls out of the sky.It is quite a race to save the innocent, find the real culprit and put all the pieces together. I really enjoyed the book, although it did take me a while to read given the length. Usually I can skim much of a book, but not this one with so much going on, so somewhat time consuming.
—Mandy
