This is the 3rd of 5 books by Baldacci featuring the “Camel Club”, a ragtag group of men in Washington DC who perform nearly superhuman feats of derring-do, mostly in service of the national security of the USA. The group is headed by a cemetery caretaker, Oliver Stone, who is actually a former CIA assassin, John Carr. He reportedly died years earlier but obviously the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. Very few people knew that Carr survived, but two of those people are Alex Ford, an active duty Secret Service agent and friend, and Carter Gray, a former head of the CIA and mortal enemy. In this book Carter learns of Carr’s survival and is bent on finishing the job.
Much of the story involves the unresolved conflict between Gray and Carr/Stone, with the catalyst being Harry Finn and Finn’s mother, a former Soviet spy. They are on a vendetta to eliminate the remaining members of the Carr-led team that killed her husband and Finn’s father – an assassination ordered by Gray. One of the targets is Roger Simpson, a Senator and potential candidate for President.
In addition to the assassinations there is also a second plotline involving Annabelle Conroy, a beautiful con artist, and Jerry Bagger, a ruthless Atlantic City casino owner that Conroy takes for $40 million. He is on a vendetta of his own, to find and kill Conroy and her father, also a con artist who also ripped him off, but only for a piddling $10K.
This all gets very complicated and the plotlines stretched my credulity. It bordered on the ridiculous.
5 out of 10.