Will Robie 1
My version: Paperback
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Publisher: Macmillan
First published: 2012
ISBN: 978-15509859672
Pages: 591
Bought
From the cover:
He could no longer remember the names of all the people whose lives he had ended.
Master assassin Will Robie is the man the US government call to eliminate their most ruthless enemies at home or abroad. He never questions his orders, and he never misses his mark.
He’s just returned from a covert assignment in Edinburgh to neutralise a growing threat, having drawn upon all his expertise to complete his mission and disappear without a trace. The odds were stacked against him, but that’s never made a difference before.
But now he’s facing the most difficult operation of his career. Dispatched to kill a US government employee, he does the unthinkable when things don’t add up – he refuses to pull the trigger. In doing so, Robie finds himself becoming the target. On the run from his own government and with everything on the line, does he need to change sides to save lives – including his own?
American readers have clearly grown to love the idea that their government has secret agencies within other secret agencies, that have agents, only a few, who ‘take out’ their ‘most ruthless enemies.’ It’s everywhere in the American thrillers I read – Mitch Rapp, Orphan X, Jason Bourne and now, Will Robie. That there clearly aren’t any such agencies, as last time I read a newspaper, the USA’s most ruthless enemies are not lying about dead all over the place after being ‘tapped out’ by the afore-mentioned, off-the-books, black ops, asassinations agency… However, this doesn’t seem to stop the thriller fiction authors from writing that there is / are such things at work. And the more thriller writers write about them, I’d think the more American thriller readers believe there actually are such agencies. The average American seems to suspect his or her govt is up to all sorts, from creating tornados that only hit Republican areas in Florida just before an election, to creating ‘a man-made virus’ – so why not agencies that no one knows about, no one admits to and no ex-assassin has ever come forward shouting “I was involved in this sort of thing!”? So the whole genre has created its own live, its own rules and runs and runs. And notice – not one of the various off-the-books-agency-assassins knows or has heard about the others. Jason Bourne doesn’t know Mitch Rapp, Orphan X doesn’t know Will Robie.
Given all that – for books that operate as if The Assassin Agency deep within the US Govt, is a given – the next thing for us readers to decide, how convincing are they? This one is pretty good. I was – fairly convinced. And I guess, like a ‘leaving your ego at the door’ kind of thing, you have to leave your scepticiam at the door with this sort of thriller. It wasn’t too slick in a sickly American way, a pretty convincing plot and it kept me going to the end. Can’t say better than that for a book I picked up for next to nothing in a book sale. Will read others of his, for sure.
You can buy The Innocent by David Baldacci from Amazon
*I’ve cheated again and used WordPress’ AI for the picture at the top
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