"The Innocent" by David Baldacci

Many people carry on with their daily lives in the great United States of America without even realizing the kinds of games which are played at the top.

As it turns out, America happens to have a lot of enemies targeting it, and sometimes official channels, such as the police, the FBI, the CIA, and even the military aren’t capable of getting the job done.

Fortunately, the Americans have a trump card by the name of Will Robie, a cold-blooded hitman with a strict way of doing business; he never asks questions, nor does he ever fail to deliver. However, the life of a hitman is prone to various twists and turns, and once Will Robbie has been ordered to eliminate a target bizarrely close to his home in Washington, D.C., he begins to suspect that something is up.

As it turns out, Will was in fact hired to murder an innocent person. However, something inside of Robie simply doesn’t let him shoot the innocent, and as it turns out, this was Will Robie’s last mistake.

Having disobeyed his orders, he is now on the run from an establishment far bigger than himself in hopes of escaping from the country in one piece, and perhaps pay the ones who set him their dues. Things get even more convoluted as Robbie meets a fourteen-year-old teenage girl who is running away from her foster home.

Naturally, as these stories usually have it, the teenage girl is not just some random kid running away, as her parents have been brutally murdered and she believes herself to be in great danger.

As the story progresses, escape becomes more and more of an infeasible option; the more Robbie learns about the girl, the closer he gets to the heart of a giant conspiracy which reaches all the way up to the highest levels of the social pyramid.

Even though he would prefer to stay in the shadows until everything cools down, Robbie will have no choice but to risk himself and do what he does best in order to save the life of his newfound companion, and perhaps even his own.

All in all, while there are some heavy and graphic passages in this book, it still makes for an a very entertaining read, and although some of the plot points will have you screaming “cliché!”, there is more than enough originality in this piece of work to keep it interesting.

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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.