Book Review: Hour Game, by David Baldacci

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Richard H. McBee Jr.

Once again, David Baldacci has hit the nail pretty much on the head with a tale of mystery, murder, action, and intrigue. As an avid reader of this genre, I found the book to be well written but straying from the original thesis of our murderer who sets a clock to a specific hour of the day in a copycat murder mystery. Sean King and his sidekick, Michelle Maxwell are the center of attention throughout this book as they charge from one murder to the next in hopes of finding a clue that will bring to light a maniac who is terrorizing a small town in the backwoods of Virginia. As a reader, I am generally inspired by author Baldacci’s tightly woven plots that lead us through a sequence of events that eventually lead to a blow-out ending. In this particular novel, I felt that the author got us built up to that point of beginning to lay out the clues leading to the denouement and final climax, and then got sidetracked. It’s almost as if two separate shorter novels have been cobbled together to make the six hundred page tome that was published. A pity as the murder mystery disappeared into a series of random killings that when finally explained at the end was not an overall well thought-out plot. I enjoyed the read, but there was too much mental downtime and fluff without enough thinking meat to really keep me coming back. Better luck on the next Baldacci book I pick. You will still enjoy the overall story.

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