Customer Reviews

DIVINE JUSTICE

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

The fourth installment of the Camel Club series is a fast paced thriller that shows Baldacci's winning style. If you are a Baldacci fan, I can recommend this novel. If you are not a fan, you will be one after finishing Divine Justice. It is not the best novel of the series, but it is a high quality mystery nonetheless.

The heroes of The Camel Club return their latest adventure, one which may be their last. The action puts all of them into jeopardy, and they find themselves in a series of desperate situations. There is a nation wide manhunt for Oliver Stone, who flees to a small town, only to find himself immersed in anther dangerous mystery there.

The main characters, Oliver Stone and Joe Knox, are flawed but understandable characters, men who don't always do the right thing, but try to act according to their principles. You get to hear their thoughts as one hunts the other, and I found myself caring about both of them, even though they were headed for an inevitable show-down. This element heightens the tension in the story, and made it hard to put the book down. Making Stone seem sympathetic to new readers was a considerable feat for Baldacci, after his main character executes a US senator and the "Head of Intelligence" in the first chapter. Both men admit to themselves that they have broken laws along the way, and they are troubled individuals. The fact that they are often more threatened by their own people than by the bad guys makes the story difficult to put down.

In a rare moment of agreement with Publisher's Weekly, I must admit that this is not Balducci's best effort. Nevertheless, his characters are believable and sympathetic, the action never slows, and the book will hold your interest to the last page. Balducci's lesser novels are better than many author's best.

If you haven't already read a David Baldacci book, can't imagine how you missed him. He's penned fifteen bestsellers four of which feature affecting protagonist John Carr also known as Oliver Stone. Once a CIA assassin Stone now battles mightily to right wrongs. Through this character Baldacci has taken readers to Washington, more often than not shocking them with scenarios that may be too close to the truth.

Stone is back in this the fourth installment in the Camel Club series, and he's once again on the run. "With two early morning pulls of the trigger he'd become the most wanted man in America."

He's too smart to try to board a plane knowing the major airports are alive with those looking for him but instead buys a ticket on the Amtrack Crescent, headed for New Orleans. Once settled in his seat, ever alert, he takes note of his fellow passengers - a mother with a baby, a thin man eating a cheeseburger, and a kid a few years out of high school but still wearing his varsity jacket. "To Stone's eye the young man also had the look of someone who was certain that the world owed him everything and had never bothered paying its bill"

The young man is Danny Riker who is soon assaulted by a trio who accuse him of cheating at cards. Stone rescues Danny and the two leave the train at the next stop. When Stone finds out that Danny is from an Appalachian coal mining town, Divine, Virginia, he decides that might be the perfect place for him to hide out.

Divine might be a good place to take cover but it's also a place where corruption is rampant and most of the coal miners are methadone addicts due to the daily injections they take to pass inspections. Couple this with a suicide that in truth might have been murder, and you have an idea what Stone is up against.

In addition to being a masterful storyteller, an expert at creating riveting suspense, Baldacci is a native of Virginia and lives there today. Thus, he brings an added realism to his descriptions of this area and its people.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

The fourth (and probably the last) in the Camel Club series.
The Camel Club was an interesting diversion for Baldacci, the books started off very light and then got darker as the series progressed. I would not recommend Divine Justice unless you have read the previous novels in the series.
This starts off with our hero John Carr (aka Oliver Stone) on the run having taken out two senior US officials (who were bad guys). A manhunt is underway and Carr is looking for somewhere to disappear when he gets involved in a fracas and ends up in Divine, a small town which is hiding a lot of secrets. Does he keep his head down or does he get involved?
Meanwhile tenacious CIA tracker Joe Knox is on his trail and getting closer, as are Carr's friends from the Camel Club who want to help their friend....
As other reviewers have mentioned much of this did remind me of Lee Child's latest (Nothing To Lose) where his hero Reacher ends up in a small town called Despair which also has many secrets.
This ends up as a hit and miss book, the Joe Knox and Camel Club elements are the most interesting but the stuff in Divine was so similar to Lee Child's latest that it really did jar and the scenario around the bad guys felt too contrived.

I am a huge fan of David Baldacci and have read virtually all of his books, including the Camel Club series in which an unlikely group of friends band together to help one another and then solve some problem that affects the public at large.

In this book, one of the friends (Oliver Stone a/k/a John Carr) kills two prominent public figures for whom the reader loses all sympathy as the story unfolds as to what they did to Stone.

Stone does not have much of a plan for evading pursuit by an arch enemy who now wields considerable power and wants to make Stone "disappear" in retribution for the murders. Stone winds up in a rural Virginia town named Divine by a happenstance rescue of a young man who is traveling on the same train as Stone. It turns out that Divine is teeming with intrigue, murder, and drug runners.

Most of the other reviews discuss further details of the story line as to how Stone's friends find and help rescue him from an assortment of evil doers, and also how Joe Knox, a CIA agent who has been assigned by Stone's arch enemy to find Stone, instead winds up befriending him.

I totally disagree that this book is not as interesting or well written as other Camel Club books, or as other Baldacci novels. To the contrary, not only is the action fast paced, but there are interesting insights provided into Stone's character.

Not only did I find this a page turner, but I thought it deftly brought together multiple plot lines, with an ending that was realistic given how politics and top secrets work.

If you are a fan of David Baldacci, or want to read him for the first time, you will not be disappointed with this book.

Joe Knox scans two homicide scenes in which he concludes a professional sniper took out DC super VIPs, Intel Chief Carter Gray and US Senator from Alabama Roger Simpson. At the same time Joe concludes the same sniper did both murders and that the Intel community was hiding something, former CIA assassin Oliver Stone takes the Amtrak train from Union Station heading to New Orleans after killing the two government superheavyweights who murdered his wife and for all intent and purposes buried his real identity John Carr with her.

Unable to mind his business, Stone intercedes in a fight on the train, but when the Amtrak conductor asks for a picture identification, he knows he must disembark ASAP because he will be exposed as a fake with minimal examination. He ends up in the mining town of Divine, Virginia where once again his tendency to get involved in a David vs. Goliath good cause gets him in trouble with high level corruption and a widow in peril.

The latest Camel Club thriller (see THE COLLECTORS , STONE COLD and THE CAMEL CLUB) is an exciting tale that fans of the series will relish as Stone's code of justice makes him act when he should remain passively in the background. He cannot help himself when he took out the VIPS, on the train or in Divine. Although somewhat formulaic in the mining town reminiscent of Spencer Tracey in Bad Day At Black Rock and Steven Seagal in Fire Down Below, readers will enjoy Stone's latest escapades.

Harriet Klausner

Give it a 3 star cause it's more comic book than novel with a older hero (60 something) acting like a young Clark Kent/Superman(20 something)).

The book opens with the hero jumping off a cliff (after whacking a high profile target) into very cold water and swimming to safety. He's now on the run from a evil military General who has "abused" him since he was a young soldier (war hero with no medals)in Vietnam.

Oliver ends up in Divine a small coal mining town with a drug "problem" where we get another evil character who loves to torture people in his hell hole crib.

The ending's beyond belief for an adult, but kids may buy it.

Like too many best selling author's their newer novels ain't in the same league with their older (career building) stuff. Just make more money off your NAME, not the quality of your words pen'd on paper!

Baldacci pulls out all the stops in fictional Oliver Stone's continuing contretemps with his nemesis Macklin Hayes, a powerful man who balances between military and civilian intelligence. Stone (aka John Carr), a former member of the Vietnam-era secret killing arm of the Triple Sixes, an elite force, has been on the run for thirty years. Only Stone's closest friends and comrades-in-arms, the Camel Club are aware of his activities. Stone has finally avenged a great injustice, but in so doing has become a marked man. After removing two critical targets in his own government, Stone is on the run, the CIA not far behind. Deftly maneuvering behind the scenes, the ubiquitous Hayes calls on uber-agent Joe Knox to track his quarry, leaving Hayes to deliver the final blow once Stone is brought to ground.

Meanwhile, Stone goes into overdrive, adapting to his environment as he flees the government agents, seeking a place to disappear for a while. His original plan short-circuited by random violence, Stone makes the acquaintance of a young man, Danny Riker, whom he impulsively accompanies into the heart of a small Appalachian mining town, Divine, Virginia. It is in Divine that Stone is confronted by a whole new set of problems, drug-addicted miners, a series of suspicious murders, a high-security prison with a sadistic warden, brother to the town's sheriff and an elaborate criminal operation that will resort to any means to protect its profit.

The plot moves back and forth geographically, from the clandestine operations of the intricate WA spy network to the increasing violence of an insular town whose men are enslaved to the coal mines. The Camel Club's latest adventure to rescue Oliver Stone from certain death requires considerable suspension of belief. But Baldacci writes with his usual brisk pace, bullies and heroes in a never-ending competition for the soul of the free world. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

If you haven't read the earlier books in this series (The Camel Club, The Collectors, and Stone Cold), stop right here. You will like all of those books much more than this one . . . and you will like this one less than you otherwise would if you start with The Camel Club.

So what's it all about? Oliver Stone (John Carr) has just finished assassinating intelligence chieftain Carter Gray and Senator Roger Simpson as repayment for old and recent wrongs (including the death of Milton Farb, Camel Club member). He knows that he must escape quickly and completely . . . and that the Camel Club will be at risk while he runs. Stone's trail is soon picked up by Joe Knox, with more than a little help (and some stonewalling from shadowy Gray protégé Macklin Hayes).

Stone has paid more attention to getting revenge than he has to his escape. There's a vague plan to head towards New Orleans and to fade into the post-Katrina construction industry. All those plans are changed when Stone interrupts a beating on a train and is threatened with arrest. Quickly leaving the train with the beating victim, Stone decides to follow the man home to Divine, Virginia. Once there, more violence flares and Stone finds himself drawn into the middle of someone else's fight. Much of the rest of the story alternates between the manhunt and Stone's investigation into what's going on in Divine, Virginia. A lot of the suspense in the book involves decisions that the Camel Club members need to make.

Unlike the earlier books in the series, the story line and the characters aren't nearly as compelling. If you plan to stay with the Camel Club series, you'll need to read this book . . . but I doubt if you will like it nearly as much as the others in the series.

I've read most of the series, and I was always hoping that there would be more substance in each subsequent novel. Unfortunately, while I like Baldacci's writing, it usually leaves me feeling a bit too breezy or maybe shallow would be a better word. But there is indeed enough to keep me coming back for more with each installment looking to see what happens.

Divine Justice on the other hand, was the meatiest and most multi faceted book so far. I could feel this way because I know the characters well enough now that he pushed their personalities farther this time that they finally clicked... so that part could be me.

But what I really liked was that this was a book about more than just government conspiracy and goofy power plays in Washington DC. The addition of the new characters in southern virginia's mining country really grabbed me, and made for a substantial contrast with the often shallow DC/govt characters Baldacci has tended to favor in the previous Camel Club incarnations. This time, there is a richer American context, with all sorts of eccentric personalities, from trailer park country bumpkins, to ego maniacal Washington Brahmans...

Personally, I always read Baldacci when I was in between other authors releases, more as a fill in, rather than a devoted reader. Divine Justice may have just turned me into a devoted reader!!

Did Baldacci have some pressing debts to pay? Is he angry with his publisher and trying to get out of his contract? There must be some solid reason for a skilled writer like Baldacci to turn out a grotesquerie like "Divine Justice".

In a word (and, of course, in my own humble opinion, "Divine Justice" stinks.

Baldacci has ridden his "Oliver Stone" (a/k/a Vietnam war hero and CIA assassin John Carr) character more or less sucessfully through three prior installments.

Oliver Stone has a past shrouded in mystery, more or less, as he camped out in Lafayette Park across from the White House for years demanding "truth". He assembled a band of, more or less, misfits around him who call themselves "The Camel Club" who, more or less, solve major mysteries or prevent this and that, like the kidnapping of the President or the takeover of the nation by a kook who wants to start a new world war. Barely believable, but Baldacci has, more or less, pulled it off successfully in the past.

This time, however, Baldacci falls on his face.

Oliver Stone needs to get out of Washington. He has, after all, just shot and killed a US Senator and a former CIA Director. (Not a spoiler: that was the ending of the last book.)

So Stone nee Carr, the master Special Forces guy takes an Amtrak train from Washington to New Orleans. His use of Amtrak becomes important later in the story at a point where Baldacci has long lost any ability to convince the reader. Here's this super hotshot guy getting away from a crime scene by riding Amtrak. No, it doesn't make any sense - and soon makes even less.

Stone steps in to rescue a young man who is being beaten on the train by three toughs. Sure, Stone is twice, almost three times the age of the three roughnecks, but he takes them out one, two, three. Sure, every former CIA assassin knowing he is fleeing the scene of two spectacular murders is going to take an Amtrak train - and then make a public spectacle of himself on said train.

Anyway, Stone and the young man leave the train in a desolate part of Virginia and make their way to the young man's home town, Divine.

At this point, I got the impression that Baldacci was channeling Lee Child, the author of the very successful Jack Reacher series; Upton Sinclair, a muckraker from decades ago and the vaucous noisemakers on the left-wing. Baldacci has played out the Vietnam vet thing as far as it could go and then some. His views on imaginary current government policies are yawners.

In a nutshell, Divine is a coal mining town where the men are condemned to livesa of virtual servitude in the mines, where they all eventually die or contract terminal illnesses, or the supermax prison conveniently built on top of a collapsed mine. Oh by the way, lots of the miners are drug addicts too. Hint, hint.

There has been a rash of untimely deaths in the town, but the one man police force consisting of strong, handsome Lincoln Tyree - whose brother is the warden of the supermax hasn't found out much them.

Back in Washington, the evil Macklin Hayes, who is missing only the twirled mustache of the cartoon like silent film villains, sics superstar CIA tracker Joe Knox on the trail of super assassin Stone/Carr.

The story quickly becomes unbeleivable. The misfits of The Camel Club become involved and start tracking Knox who is tracking Stone and is, in turn, being tracked by Macklin. Stone, meanwhile, is saving one person after another from gruesome deaths, except when the people are killed. Quite a show for a murderer on the run, but Stone/Carr is really a good guy.

The plot quickly turns ludicrous. The writing isn't bad: just the plot and characters are unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. Events soon become preposterous.

Like I said, Baldacci must have some pressing debts or wants to get out of his contract with his publisher or something. Maybe he has just let his previously justified fame go to his head. Who knows?

In any event, fans of the prior Camel Club novels are likely to be disappointed. I certainly was.

Jerry