Agent Pine features all of the key characteristics of a leading detective: sad back-story with significant emotional distress? Tick. Loner with no real friends? Tick. Works outside the law when necessary to get the right result? Tick. Severe commitment issues? Tick. Inability to play nice with others? Tick, tick, tick.
Ok, so there are a number of formulaic tropes being reused in this book. And, perhaps, not unexpected, given Baldacci’s prolific writing career. However, don’t get me wrong – it’s not a bad thing, especially if you just want to lose yourself in a good book for a week or so.
Pine is an interesting character. Firstly, she’s tall. Really tall. And strong. Unusual, given most female detectives are usually described as ‘petite’ or ‘buxom’ or the particularly yawn-inducing ‘cute as a button with bright, intelligent eyes’. Pine ‘was hardly lithe or willowy…. she was solid and muscular…’ Pine lifted weights during her college years, narrowly missing out on making the US Olympic Weightlifting squad – something that still haunts her.
Pine is physical. She strides off the page with a determined focus and no-holds-barred attitude. Pine makes no apologies for her introverted nature or intolerance of others. I like her.
The novel opens with the emotionally-charged backstory. Pine is travelling to ADX Florence, the only supermax prison in the federal system. She’s there to question an inmate. It doesn’t go well. While little titbits of the backstory are scattered throughout the novel, the real reason for Pine’s visit is not revisited throughout the rest of the story.
In fact, quite a shift in plot happens. It’s almost like the opening chapters are parked, forgotten about – and will be picked up another time, or in another novel.
And so to the main plot of this novel. It’s fast, it’s gripping, it’s thrilling – a race against time and unknown, unseen enemies. Believable? Not particularly. It all starts in the Grand Canyon, with a dead and mutilated mule. It travels across the country, across the globe, before coming back to where it all started. In the Grand Canyon.
Trying to unlock this mystery, Agent Pine is thwarted at every turn by her superiors, by secret agents, and a North Korean spy with ninja-like killing skills. There is one particularly dreadful scene where Pine is involved in a deathly battle with the North Korean ninja. I suspect even Baldacci had trouble with it, as he gives Pine this rather interesting mental image while she is fighting for her life: ‘the horrific image of a constrictor working its victim down its gullet popped into her head, and it was not far off the mark. Except Pine wanted to cast off Chung, not swallow him.’
Yes, exactly the mental image to be thinking of whilst in the middle of a death battle.
Along the way, Pine has a number of near misses, some dumb luck and a network of friends that she can crash land with. Also, her rather unassuming secretary, Carol Blum, turns out to be a trusty sidekick; filling up the space that normally a detective’s partner would hold. The duo refers to themselves as ‘Thelma and Louise’, and it’s probably quite an apt description.
Does Agent Pine solve the case? Well, yes. Not of course, without some dangerous, black-ops style missions, a potential love interest and a night-time trek out of the Grand Canyon, carrying an item that requires all of her formidable weightlifting strength and ability.
There is a subtle nod to current issues in American politics, Trump and the unreliability of today’s media. Although the plot races towards an almost comical climax, you are left with a slightly queasy feeling, that in today’s current political climate, this scenario could easily become reality.
Baldacci’s foreword introduces FBI Special Agent Atlee Pine as ‘one of the most unique characters I’ve ever created’. And he’s right. Pine is formidable. She’s talented, tough and independent. A modern-day hero for today’s troubled times. I’m looking forward to Pine’s next adventure.
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