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Total Control (1997)

Total Control (1997)

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Rating
4.03 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0446604844 (ISBN13: 9780446604840)
Language
English
Publisher
vision

About book Total Control (1997)

Interesting story, wonder why I took so long to read it? Normally I can get through a Baldacci in 2 to 3 days at most. This story reminds me of Grisham's thrillers; The Pelican Brief and The Firm I think... This review is under construction...thank you for your patience! A plane crash in the very first chapter and technology talk like iris scan security...Jason's plane has crashed...the question is whether the man lives or not?Sidney gets the call that Jason's flight has crashed....but the man wasn't on that plane...but Sidney doesn't know that yet...So Jason is not dead....at least not yet...He's entered an abandoned warehouse though and meeting men with guns...We leave Jason in a car with the goon holding a gun to his head.....and so the suspense continues.....meanwhile, Sidney has already started mourning her loss...So Jason survived the gunman in the car, but he's still trapped and his life is still in danger...back home he's dead to the rest of the world including Sidney, but he has sent out an SOS email to sum1, but we do not know to whom...Sidney's been to the site and is now determined to find out what was the actual reason for Jason's busy days for the last few weeks before his death...So Jason has made contact made with Sidney and the FBI is now suspecting him of bringing down the plane...So Jason mailed those floppies to himself and the package lies in his garage. However, the confusion over his death continues...Also a stranger warns Sidney on a plane flight and is killed soon after...Lee Sawyer, the FBI agent advises Sidney to remain vautious and safe....while she reflects that the last man who gave her that advice died after 5 minutes...!!Now Sidney has tracked down a tech wiz, called Jeff, to help her see the data on the disk....because she thinks her computer has been tampered with...she finds encrypted files, the key to which was apparently in the email that vanished just after a few seconds, earlier in the story...Jeff Fisher is now trying to de-encrypt the disks for Sidney...Lee Sawyer has sort of banded up with Sidney, they visit the office and home of the man who died shortly after warning Sidney to be careful in the plane....but Sidney hasn't told him yet about the 2 disks!Hmmm....a lot has happened, Sidney went to her office to access her email. She found the password and has also given it to Lee over the phone. But she was ambushed by Goldman and Paul (the RTG attorneys). But the mysterious killer killed them with her gun and also left behind the tape Paul made of Sidney talking with Jason over the phone. She phone's Lee to say goodbye and is now on the run...Sidney has reached her parent's home borrowing her brother's car from New York. What we don't know is whether her parents have reached Maine yet...

Listened to this as a book on tape as Greg and I were driving cross county. It made for a good time-passer as we drove along. There were plenty of red herrings for us to pick from in the bad guy department. The protagonist, Sidney Archer, learns that her husband has been killed in a large airliner crash, but we know that's not the truth. It would appear that he is selling some secrets from Triton, the technology company he works for, although maybe he's being a good guy and helping the feds? We don't know, although we know he is uncomfortable lying to his wife. Baldacci does a good job keeping everything up in the air. Sidney spends a lot of time running from some paid assassins, although we don't know who paid them or quite what the motivation is. It probably has something to do with her legal office representing Triton in their determined purchase of another tech company. Or maybe it has to do with reshuffling who's on top of the power structure? Or maybe blackmail and greed and revenge or the main motivators? There are lots of possibilities keeping the crusty detective and the desperate Sidney hopping.

Do You like book Total Control (1997)?

Un-put-downable , absolutely riveting etc.etc. The cliches keep-a-coming . Baldacci's tale of corporate plotting , betrayal , greed and it's effect on a family is a belter .The roller coaster story begins with the disappearance of Jason Archer , a high-achiever in the business world who apparently is completing his part in a deal which will make his family ( wife and daughter )financially stable for life .When he never returns , his wife - a high achieving lawyer - has to do everything within her power to protect herself , her daughter and parents .The FBI are also chasing her but as the story unravels come onside when they realise it's Big Business vs the little guy .Some of the computer stuff described is slightly dated now , but the attitude of the corporate money-makers is still familiar .Not to give too much away , it is quite satisfying when some of the bad guys meet their timely end .I'd previously read Absolute Power and enjoyed the style of this author , and Total Control does not disappoint .
—Jeremy Owen

Long wait til suspenseful ending, rather preposterous plot...Maybe our expectations were set a little high after reading the author's great thriller "Absolute Power" and his almost as good "Simple Truth". Unlike those stories where at least we cared about the protagonists and the plot had some cohesion, "Control" takes a awful long time to plod toward a thrilling finale. Unfortunately the events that unfold to get us there are extremely far-fetched, with the allegedly intelligent leading lady super-lawyer, Sidney Archer, little more than a gun-totin' housewife with hardly a clue throughout the whole tale. The plot sounds like movie pabulum: a zillionaire tycoon has merged with a techno-geek's dream-works, and now they're in a competition to take over another firm of great internet marvel. Sidney, and hubby Jason, a technocrat putting together a lot of details to support the deal, get caught up in the struggle, and soon a plane crash leads the players (but not us readers, who know he's up to something seemingly sinister) to believe Jason was among the fatalities. What follows is an almost endless "chase" between all variety of petty thugs, hired killers, ex-FBI and FBI type hotdogs, with a wealth of dead bodies strewn about by book's end. Flying planes and driving cars in snowstorms too severe to shut the airports and roads pose no problem for our stars, typical of the silly suspensions of reality we must endure to get through this. We know Baldacci can do better from his other novels. This book looks like something written on contract: it had to get out; it had to be 700 chilling pages; it had to have non-stop action no matter how preposterous. Oh, and don't waste time fleshing out the characters to make them seem real - after all, this is a fantasy. When it takes us two weeks to get through a "thriller", we know something's wrong.
—Jerry

This is a really long book at over 700 pages in paperback. I really liked the pace of the story, and the multiple twists that were taken. Infact, I thought I might know who the "bad guy" was, but kept changing my mind, and in the end, I was not totally correct anyway. I like books that surprise like this.The FBI agent investigating a plane crash has to decide why the plane really went down, who was at fault, why, and who the target was. Also, the reader gets to know a bit more than the agent for a while since another story is also going on involving a computer genius who was employed by a company that was planning to merge with another, while his wife was an attorney representing the company in the merge. When the computer genius goes missing, many questions arise, and then . . . .the plane falls out of the sky.It is quite a race to save the innocent, find the real culprit and put all the pieces together. I really enjoyed the book, although it did take me a while to read given the length. Usually I can skim much of a book, but not this one with so much going on, so somewhat time consuming.
—Mandy

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