Absolute Power

2.5 stars.
Disappointing at the end.
The book contains zero suspense (I don't mean this as a bad thing). The crime happens in the first chapter. We as readers know everything (who, why, and how) and we will be seeing how the good guys try to figure it out and how they bring the culprits to justice. It is interesting partially( bcoz we already know what happened). The thing that annoyed me at the end was that the author keeps making things tougher for the good guys, and I was very intrigued by how the lead character gets out of it and brings justice. But, the author took an easy way out, and it was done in a very lame way.

This book was Baldacci's debut novel and I loved it! I'm so glad I finally read it because it was so much better than the movie. In the movie they changed some of the details and leave out a big character. I did like some of the changes since Clint Eastwood played Luther and it made sense with him. It didn't have that thriller aspect like the book did though.

Jack, who was a public defender but recently got a new job in a big law firm with a chance at becoming a partner. He is engaged to the daughter of a billionaire and his life seems to be going really well. He can't stop thinking about Kate though. He and Kate were engaged to be married but she couldn't accept that he liked her dad, who was a thief. She also couldn't deal with the fact that he defended criminals when he was a public defender. Kate became a prosecutor and came down hard on people like her father. She wouldn't have anything to do with him anymore since he ruined their family and she also cancelled her engagement with Jack.

When Luther breaks into a mansion everything is going great until someone else comes in. He has to hide in the vault hidden behind a mirror and wait until they were gone. That's when he realizes the mirror is a one way mirror and he can see everything in the room. He watches as the lady of the house is brutalized and murdered and then the scene is cleaned up to remove all traces of who had been there. One thing was missed though and Luther saw it fall. As soon as they left he came out and grabbed it and escaped through a window. They soon realized what was missing and went back to find it but instead found it gone and a rope hanging out the window. Luther knew he had to run for his life. He got out of there and quickly left the country. He knew no one would believe him if he went to the police with what he knew. No one would believe who killed her. He finally decided he had to go back and try to get justice but he knew it could mean losing his life.

I would have given this book a five star review but almost didn't finish it. At one point, I was going to get rid of it because of the extremely violent and cruel sexual content. This was Baldacci's maiden literary voyage, and I suppose he wanted to be heard. In some of his later works, like True Blue and The Simple Truth, he is able to convey conflict and depict the bad guys without making the reader feel as though they are in a horrible situation personally. I'm not advocating for a neutered approach, just to avoid having my attitude towards life be influenced too much by art when art depicts something this bad. This book did not make me want to do bad things, but it made me feel at times like a wretch. I identified with Jack and Luther, who were more or less good guys, but the bad guys were hideous and a lot of the good guys got sucked in to their vortex.