“The Last Mile” by David Baldacci – Lies and Confessions

Sitting on death row may very well be one of the most unnerving experiences available to the human being... especially when it can take years upon years, if not even decades to finally make the execution happen.

The experience is all the more excruciating when the one facing the gallows could very well be innocent... something that has happened more than once. In The Last Mile, David Baldacci confronts with a similar scenario, one soaked in uncertainty.

We are once again presented with Amos Decker, detective extraordinaire who forgets nothing in his life, failures and embarrassing moments included. He once had a promising career in football that was cut short by a tragedy, his family was brutally murdered years after which a man suspiciously stepped forth to claim responsibility for the crime.

And now, Decker gets wind of the curious case of Melvin Mars, a man convicted of murdering his parents in cold blood twenty years ago. Shockingly enough, mere hours before his execution, Melvin is reprieved as a man confesses to the murder... and whether or not he is telling the truth is highly doubtful. And as coincidence would have it, Melvin too was a promising football star until tragedy struck.

Needless to say, Decker can't even try to resist the allure of such a case, so many parallels between himself and Mars being drawn. There are many questions he needs to find the answers to, such as who would want Mars to be a free man, and why specifically now? What's the story behind the man who confessed to the murders? Who is the actual guilty party?

As his search goes on, a member of Decker's team goes missing, everything pointing to there being some kind of large-scale cover-up, a sinister conspiracy in the higher echelons of society, one that could cost the life of an ultimately innocent person.

David Baldacci always bring the excitement in spades with his Amos Decker murder mysteries, and I have to say that this novel in the series certainly conforms itself to the rule. As you'd expect, there is a limited amount of character development, mostly focused on Decker himself.

We do get to learn a bit more about his past and his inner world, but if there are conclusions to be drawn about his personality, most of them are to be taken directly from his actions and dialogue, rather than long expositions.

The brunt of the focus is certainly placed on the mystery, and it's definitely one that keeps you sitting on pins and needles, making you guess at every turn who is who and what's what. It moves onwards relentlessly, perhaps even too quickly for its own good at times as certain plotlines of a more secondary nature get left in the dust longer than they should.

Though veterans of the thriller genre may find a few of the twists somewhat predictable, on the whole the plot makes for a very engaging case that will surprise you time and time again, something it owes to its complexity.

I will admit that there are a few moments where the incompetence of Decker's team will raise your eyebrows as they overlook rather obvious elements. They do detract from the quality of the book, but not enough deign it unworthy.

All elements taken into account, while The Last Mile does have some flaws, they aren't nearly prominent enough to take away from the enjoyment of unravelling the mystery and experiencing the tense action scenes seemingly first-hand.

It's a solid action thriller that most fans of the genre, and especially the author, ought to give a shot.

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David Baldacci Personal site Certainly one of the more famous authors of the 21st century, David Baldacci was always gearing himself to become a prominent writer, beginning his work at a very young age as a child. He gifted the readers with countless classics and bestsellers such as The Innocent and Absolute Power.