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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:The world's greatest assassins are on a high-risk mission for the Presidentâ??but a powerful mastermind wants them dead in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller. The President knows it's a perilous, high-risk assignment. If he gives the order, he has the opportunity to take down a global menace, once and for all. If the mission fails, he would face certain impeachment, and the threats against the nation would multiply. So the president turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel. Together, Robie and Reel's talents as assassins are unmatched. But there are some in power who don't trust the pair. They doubt their willingness to follow orders. And they will do anything to see that the two assassins succeed, but that they do not survive. As they prepare for their mission, Reel faces a personal crisis that could well lead old enemies right to her doorstep, resurrecting the ghosts of her earlier life and bringing stark danger to all those close to her. And all the while, Robie and Reel are stalked by a new adversary: an unknown and unlikely assassin, a woman who has trained her entire life to kill, and who has her own list of targetsâ??a list that includes Will Robie and Jessica… (more)
User reviews
That said, the reason I gave it even three stars was the young, female, North Korean
The character of Chung Cha and her part of the narrative were wonderfully both fascinating and sympathetic. Her story plots us into the world of North Korea, the
It novel's flaw is the patchwork nature of the subplots, in particular a side plot story about Reel's father and childhood coming up to catch her. That entire subplot should have been stand alone short story, but instead its awkwardly inserted into the novel.
David Baldacci the American King of the Thriller is back with style and panache with The Target, making this the third book in the Will Robie series. The Target hits home in the way that it is written you feel you are failing Will Robie if you do not continue reading. Baldacci
We learn that Will Robie and his partner Jessica Reel have returned from a near suicide mission in Syria and are not the current flavour of the month with the Director of the CIA when he puts them up for a need to know mission. They are put through it at the CIA’s Burner in the middle of nowhere, when they find out they are being sent in to North Korea on another suicide mission.
At the same time Robie’s partner Jessica Reel is conflicted when her convict father reaches out for her. Little does she know that this will bring her in to a dangerous world of American Nazis and could cost her life if she goes along with their plans, but she is never one to play to the rules.
Somewhere in North Korea their very special agent Chung-cha is defending the Supreme Leader at home and abroad. She has had a tough life living in one of North Korea’s concentration camps but she survives and is the regimes celebrated killer. She too has a mission he final one to America, who know an attack is coming but not knowing how or where.
Robie and Reel have come to the attention of the American Presidents and are invited out to Nantucket and it will be there that the two worlds of America and North Korea collide and who is left standing will cause an international diplomatic crisis. Out of the attack will Robie and Reel be once again be the heroes or will this be their final dance with death. Will some good come out of the attack? Well you will have to read to find out.
Once again David Baldacci ticks all the boxes for the reader delivering a high quality spy thriller full of thrills and spills and a good dollop of American cheesiness. The great thing about The Thriller it takes you to a world where you dream of being a hero and Robie is you by proxy and you like to kick ass! This is pure escapism spy thriller at its best, by the best American thriller writer at the moment and David Baldacci never fails to hit The Target!
The narration and characterization in multiple settings around the world could have not worked well. The small amount of time given for the reader to bond with or hate this or that character might not have been effective. But the author went ahead and took risks. The book works on all levels. It makes us realize the fragility of life, something many works of art try and fail to achieve. I'm glad I read this book. It was a fast paced page turner with a lot of heart. I haven't come so close to losing it since a long time. I just wish it had made a bigger splash than it has done.
Meanwhile, one of the key people working on setting up the task is killed causing the rogue nation to prepare to retaliate.
And a unrepentant killer, dying of cancer in a US prison, tells his doctor he desperately wants to see his daughter, who he hasn’t seen for decades, one last time.
These are the main threads of THE TARGET. (There are a few others.) They all are woven together almost flawlessly to produce a basically well-written, page-turning adventure. As is true for most of David Baldacci’s books, there is a lot of killing without gruesome details.
At one point, Reel explains the difference between what she does and a serial killer. “Serial killers love it. They’re obsessed with the opportunity for domination of another human being. The ritual, the details, the hunt. The strike...For me it’s the means to an end. I build a wall around it, do it, then move on....It’s not a human to me. It is a mission.”
The book could have been shortened without losing much of the story. There was some repetition: We were told several times that the building was in the back. Secret Service personnel would not be discussing important details in public where other people could eavesdrop on their conversation. And I resent authors thinking all their readers suffer from a short attention span and write short chapters because of that. I always lower my review rating when that happens
Baldacci does not do subtle when he goes after a country that is an enemy to his characters. And if in the first two books we almost did not see the countries outside of what the agents were doing, we get a good look at North Korea - the camps, an assassin, the way of thinking. I am not sure how exaggerated some of the details are but even if half of it is true, it is a scary country. And when USA tries to stage a coup and they realize it, things go side wise fast. Especially when the president decides that he needs to keep a promise - and that entails sending our pair of assassins to North Korea on a rescue mission.
And in addition to all that, Baldacci manages to get Jessica a closing in her private history (and one very bad band of neo-Nazies is finally disbanded), a North Korean assasin (and her team) that crashes a family vacation. I stopped counting how many times our heroes were about to be killed and something somehow saved them.
Another good entry in the series and I cannot wait to read the next one.
While they are struggling to pass the ever-increasing brutal tests they are being subjected to, we get an introduction to two backstories that make this such a fabulous book. In the first, a man in another part of the country awaits his fate on death row. Dying from lung cancer, he persuades his doctor to look up his daughter, who was placed in witness protection years earlier, so he can tell her goodbye.
The second backstory takes us to North Korea where an assassin is sent on a dangerous mission with world-changing ramifications. In Comrade Yie, Mr. Baldacci has created one of his most memorable characters, a many-sided woman unlike anyone most of us will ever have encountered. If she’s not quite believable, she is totally compelling in her fictional reality.
I think this is a series that keeps getting better. I listened to the audio narrated by Ron McLarty and Orlagh Cassidy. I probably give the book a rating of 4.5 but the audio appealed to me so much I'm giving it an extra half point and making it a favorite. The fourth book in this series will be released on November 14, 2015.
Will Robie and his partner Jessica Reel are given a new assignment but they have to go through requalification first. This presents many obstacles they have to overcome including being
Jessica's father is in a prison on death's row. He contacts Jessica supposedly to say goodbye but it is really something more. This includes kidnapping Julie Getty, the young girl who Will and Jessica are protecting after she had been a target.
In North Korea, there is an influential politician who the US is backing, secretly. They want him to become the head of state but the coup d'tat isn't successful and the man suffers the consequences and his family is put into a penal colony.
Will and Jessica have to sneak into North Korea and rescue the family.
Later, they are assigned to the first lady who is taking a short vacation.
Chung-cha is given the assignment to pay back the US for their audacity of helping people escape from a North Korean prison/colony.”
To see the way that the details play out in each of these exciting episodes, the reader will have to learn it for themselves.
What I especially like about this novel are the characters. Being the third novel in the series, readers will already have background information on both protagonists, which strengthens the connection to the story. As for the plot, it seems that there are three plot strands in the novel that, while being connected, are resolved separately. This makes the novel seem much shorter than it actually is at its 500+ pages. I found the novel to be a page-turner that kept me reading. Definitely a recommendation for anyone who loves thrilling and fast-paced fiction, and especially for those who have already read the first two novels in the series. 4.5 stars.
Things don't go quiet as
Completely rips off other authors in most of his books (Lee Child, Vince Flynn, etc). Tin ear for dialog (the anti-Elmore Leonard). Plot ridiculous, cardboard characters.
Other than that, excellent.
4.5 stars.
Amazon Description.
Government operatives Will Robie and Jessica Reel are faced with a lethal mission in The Target, from best-selling author David Baldacci. An attack from North Korea looks likely as US involvement in an attempted
Chung-Cha is a young woman who was raised in the infamous Yodok concentration camp. It's a place where honour, emotion and compassion don't exist. Cold, calculating and highly skilled, Chung-Cha has been trained to kill. And the task she has been given is to destroy the enemy at all costs.
A dangerous and deadly operation of cat and mouse plays out between East and West. But who will be the hunter and who will be the hunted when the true target is finally revealed . . ?
Review.
Will Robie and Jessica Reel are teamed up again, this time to deal with problems relating to North Korea. There are, however, some complicating factors as we are introduced to a prisoner on Death Row, Earl Fontaine, whose dying wishes cause him to do his best to get revenge for what has happened to him, and also the difficulties caused by Evan Tucker, ostensibly Robie and Reel’s superior, in having them pushed to the limit before allowing them to be involved in any further missions. These side issues do contribute a little to the overall story, but that story has a pretty strong plot line on its own, one that leads to a very taut and overall very satisfying climax on Nantucket Island. Not only is the human side of Robie and Reel shown to a certain extent, but also Chung-Cha, whom they both admit to have been more highly skilled than either of them, shows real compassion despite her tremendous ability to kill.
The standard has been maintained.
POTUS enters into a clandestine agreement to take down a sitting national leader (from North Korea) then breaks his word when the main North Korean contact is discovered. Feeling remorse at breaking his word, he sends Robie and Reel into North Korea to rescue the contact's family who are now destined for a life in the labor camps. In retaliation, North Korea sends one of its best assassins, a woman easily as skilled as Robie and Reel, to kill POTUS's family. By chance, Robie and Reel happen to be with them when the attack happens--but will the assassin follow through or are her second thoughts enough to overcome the brainwashing she's had from her country?