Customer Reviews

True Blue

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(40)
1 star:		(74)

 

 

I've never felt inclined to write a review before but this book was so bad that I had to. The plot is bad, the characters are poorly written and the ending is unbelievably bad. Too many situations make you almost laugh out loud at how ridiculous they are. The tough gang leader Psycho deciding to play one on one basketball to decide the heroes fates. The Russian assassin who rather than simply finishing her job and killing them decides it would be more interesting to have a knife fight with Mace. The police chief is a joke, not to mention the entire police department.

However the worst part is the dialogue. It is unbelievably bad, you cannot believe real people would talk like this at all. Baldacci learned some new lingo and is so proud of it that he bashes you over the head with it. I get it, police in D.C. are called "blues" and bad guys are "bandits" that doesn't meant that every single character must nonstop say blues and bandits. That annoyed me even more than the unbelievable plot.

David Baldacci quickly became one of my favorite authors. I'm not the biggest fan of his Camel Club series but all of his novels are typically good reads. He definitely took a step backwards with this one. It's not a bad story but you have to suspend all sense of reality to enjoy it. You have to believe that a police chief would invite her disgraced ex-con, ex-cop sister to a crime scene investigation. You have to believe that an ex-cop and a corporate lawyer with no investigative experience can out maneuver the police. And you have to believe that the just out of prison ex-cop would willingly break the law - while on parole - in the belief that an ex-cop just out of prison could get her job back through such tactics. This plot is more suited for a short-lived TV series than for a Baldacci book. That being said it's not badly written but also definitely not worthy of the praise that Baldacci fans will give it just because it's a Baldacci book. This is the juncture where Baldacci can buckle down and bring back riveting stories or he can go the way of other massively successful authors (Grisham and Patterson are good examples) who realize anything they write, regardless of quality, will be an instant best-seller and they seem to put in the effort lately to prove that point.

As a fan of David Baldacci, I was terribly disappointed in his latest work. The characters are unbelievable and the plot even more so. And then what seemed to be a main plot line (who framed Mace Perry) is never resolved. Frankly, I think Baldacci should should slow down the pace of his publishing.

What a disappointment! I felt as though I'd been dropped into book three of a Mace Perry series and missed the first two. Poor character development, mundane dialog, reality suspension needed. I'll stick to the Camel Club books.

I have enjoyed all of Baldacci's books and eagerly wait for each new one. What a disappointment this was. This was not an all night read as his others have been These characters had so much potential, but it was never fulfilled. The plot was mediocre and poorly developed. A writer of this quality may have to meet contractual obligations, but this just seemed to be just that. A contract fulfilled. When so much talent is wasted, it makes me wonder if he's decided to just go the way so many other fine writers have when they decided to just turn out books after finding success. Boring, insubstantial, waste of potentially good ideas. Very disappointing.

If you are a Baldacci lover, like I am, you will be sorely disappointed with this book. I keep looking to see if it was written by David Baldacci with someone else because it's not like any of his other books. The writing is corny, cheesy and I keep cringing at the prose...It's just bad...If it wasn't David Baldacci, I don't even think I would have finished it.

In David Baldacci's thriller "True Blue," former cop Mace Perry teams up with lawyer Roy Kingman to solve a captivating double murder involving Diane Tolliver, Roy's colleague at a private law firm and Jamie Malden, a powerful U.S. attorney known for previously defending mobsters. The action is set in the dark underworld of Washington D.C., full of criminals and politicians holding their own sets of agendas with danger lurking at every corner in the streets.

Mace Perry has just gotten out of jail after serving two years for a crime she never committed and being stripped of her police credentials in the process. She accepts a lucrative offer to serve as wealthy Professor Altman's research assistant, but will do anything to be given a chance to become a cop again--even risk her own life to solve the case that has formally been assigned to her sister, police Chief Beth Perry.

In the meantime, Roy Kingman, who worked closely with the murdered Tolliver, decides to help Mace with the investigation--risking losing his own job. As Perry and Kingman try to discover what really happened and attempt to follow clues left behind by Diane, such as an odd e-mail sent to Roy and a key mysteriously hidden in an old law manual, they become hot targets for the killers and come face-to-face with an impostor posing as Diane's escort. Circumstances get further complicated, when a homeless vet is detained as the lead suspect in the murder but Kingman, confident in his innocence and suspecting the evidence was planted, decides to act as his defense lawyer in court despite a new clue confirming his guilt and Kingman on the verge of being fired.

This is the first Baldacci book I read, but was left impressed by the plot. The action throughout this book is non-stopping and leaves the reader constantly on the edge. There were a lot of unpredictable turns in the plot, such as when the police are told they're not authorized to investigate Malden's murder despite his high status as a prosecutor, and several plot sequences happening behind-the-scenes where Baldacci actually shows the bad guys spying and planning to kill Mace with Roy, which eventually help piece together the mystery. Baldacci also questions whether, in some cases, the doings of criminals or politicians are above the law. Overall, this was a quick and riveting read.

Wow!! What a horrible book.

I have been disappointed in the last few of David Baldacci books but he finally hits bottom with this garbage. Did he write this or was it ghost written by a sixth grader? The story is so ridiculous that I hated buying the book after thirty pages. It seems that that he has followed the example of other "Best Selling" authors and just started turning out trash for bucks.

Everything about this book is terrible. It is so bad, that in spots you actually bust out laughing it is so ridiculous. Mace Perry gets out of jail and gets a job paying six figures and races around D.C. on a motorcycle solving crime by night. All the while her sister, the D.C. Police Chief covers for her so she can get her job back. GEEEEEEEZZZZZZZ!!!

This will be my last Baldacci book

David Baldacci has always been a winner. I have purchased and read ALL his books but True Blue had so many unbelievable situations, I found myself saying, "yeah, right" with each one. Playing basketball with a killer in order to escape was just one example, but there were others. If this had been advertised as a fairytale, it might have worked but not for an adult reader. The two sisters were likeable characters and the young lawyer was o.k. but the feats of stupidity boggled the mind. C'mon David, I know you can do better than this.

I purchased this audio book, hoping for a good story to listen too while doing chores and working out. Welp, I soon decided I'd much rather turn off my ipod than hear about Mace and her antics and I realized I was not finishing it, because it was boring.

What is odd, is normally I like female cops. But Mace (hate the name), is too much of a smarty-pants to be likeable. I felt sorry for her of course, no one should've endured what she did.. But she goes around with a chip on her shoulder the size of Nantucket, and then constantly does exactly what she's told not to do.

Her boyfriend just didn't interest me either. He's sort of a cipher- a rich attorney, who apparently has nothing better to do than tag around Mace while she goes into the ghetto to handle charity.

I can't say I liked this one. Its not as strong as his usual work and Mace was just like her name... An irritant.