The Innocent, by David Baldacci, Grand Central Publishing, 2012

What can get me to read outside my accustomed genre?

That’s right, free books can!

My husband, a truck driver, knows another truck driver who likes to read. This man has somehow found out that I am also a reader, so when he finishes a book, he sometimes passes it on to me through my husband. I have never met the man, but we now share a number of harrowing mental experiences. Such is the secret society of readers.

The Innocent is a spy thriller. The first several chapters follow the lonely life of crack government assassin Will Robie as he carries out two different hits. (Apparently, this is going to be “the first Will Robie novel.”) We see that Robie is tough, cool under pressure, and professional at killing people. He’s covered in scars, which are covered in tattoos. Due to the nature of his job, he leads a lonely life. He goes to many exotic locales but never has relationships with any of the people there. He gets to eat good food and drink alcohol sometimes, but he has to keep insane hours with very little sleep sometimes. His home base is in Washington, D.C.

Robie was an inch over six feet and a rock-solid one hundred and eighty pounds. He possessed a compact musculature that relied more on quickness and endurance than sheer strength. His nose had been broken once, due to a mistake he had made. He had never had it reset because he’d never wanted to forget the mistake. One of his back teeth was false. That had come with the broken nose. His hair was naturally dark and he had a lot of it, but Robie preferred to keep it about a half inch longer than Marine buzz cut. His facial features were sharply defined, but he made them mostly forgettable by almost never making eye contact with anyone.

the first page

I love that that’s on the first page. That’s how you introduce a character, boys and girls! Now I have a clear mental picture of Robie (like a shorter Jim Caviezel), and the author won’t need to say much about his appearance for the rest of the book. Also, the description is given in a way that’s woven in with a sketch of his history.

It’s a good thing Robie has a cute last name that sounds like a first name. It’s the only thing softens him for some time.

For the first eight chapters (per the thriller genre, they are very short chapters), we see Robie go about his business. He carries out two hits. He withdraws from each successfully. He goes back to D.C. He starts to make tentative friends with a young lady who lives in his apartment complex, though he wonders whether this is a good idea. He gets ready to carry out his next hit, which is local.

Then, finally, in Chapter 9, we meet The Innocent.

She’s a fourteen-year-old girl named Julie Getty. Julie is smart and scrappy. Her parents love her, but they are druggies, so she’s been in and out of foster homes. Nonetheless, she’s in AP Calculus. In Chapter 9, Julie sneaks out of a subpar foster home to go meet up with her mom, who has sent her a note saying they are moving. When she gets to her house, though, she witnesses her parents get shot by unknown men. Not having a phone, Julie flees. Her story and Robie’s will soon intersect.

Julie came along at just the right moment. I didn’t want to read a whole novel that was basically Jason Bourne, consisting only of action + Hero Is No Longer A Normal Person Because of His Past. Once Robie starts to feel responsible for Julie, he now has to behave like a normal person in ways that he didn’t before. He also has to put up with a canny teenager who, naturally, wants to be involved in finding out why her parents were killed. And he has to do this while keeping her safe.

I’ll stop there because of spoilers, but this book was an outstanding example of its genre. It’s mostly action, but the plot is also a twisty puzzle. I don’t think the reader is meant to be able to figure out the puzzle in time to Save the World, but Robie is meant to be able to. Even the assassinations in the early chapters become relevant later. All the subplots get tied in together. There is a satisfying debrief at the end, where it’s all explained from a bird’s-eye view in case the reader missed any pieces. There is some emotional turmoil (Robie might not be normal, but he’s still human, you see). And there are hints that Robie has a heartbreaking back story, no doubt to be alluded to in later novels. Four stars.