Publication Date: September 1, 2009 | Audio Release Date: November 4, 2008
Oliver Stone (code name of John Carr) is the most wanted man in America. To evade authorities, he flees to a small coal-mining town in West Virginia with a big drug problem and a supermax prison. This is an audio book review of “Divine Justice”, the fourth book in Camel Club series.
I am not Baldacci’s biggest fan but have enjoyed all of the first three Camel Club books. “Divine Justice” as a whole, felt out of place, though it was essentially connected to the rest of the series with intersected characters and continuing plotlines. At the end of the previous novel in the series, Oliver Stone assassinates two high-level government figures and “Divine Justice” starts with the fall-out of that event and the necessity for Oliver to go on the run.
Oliver Stone is a man of steel. His knocking on the door of Social Security and Medicaid but manages to take on multiple men a third his age in a manner reminiscent of the old Batman television show. Oliver has managed to live under the radar for 30 years and suddenly his fake ID is so bad that he can’t hide any better than the single working light on the string of Christmas lights. A case could be made that as a man who doesn’t always do the legal thing but what he thinks is right, Oliver is a textbook anti-hero. It also could be said that the true fault with the character is not the character himself but that Joe Knox, the man tracking him, has near inhuman intuition. Whatever the case, the character and his movements are beyond belief.
Every superhero needs a villain and in the case of Oliver Stone, his is the Snidley Whiplash like Macklin Hayes. What follows is a chain of characters tracking each other in a tidy but improbable line. The suspicion of disbelief in “Divine Justice” is stretched and broken.
The secondary story line involves Divine, a drug culture and suspicious deaths at the supermax prison. The town is so isolated that transport links are limited, giving readers shades of Jack Reacher. The positive benefit of being a series novel for “Divine Justice” is that the established characters of the Camel Club series are fully developed and well rounded.
Ron McLarty, the novel’s narrator, does a really professional and credible job of making a somewhat ridiculous story interesting. It is not down to the voice acting and by the unconvincing ending, this reader was just ready for it to all be over. I did notice that McLarty also reads “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman and based on the strength of his performance in “Divine Justice”, I plan to pick that one up.
If you’re interested in checking out David Baldacci’s work, “Divine Justice” is not the novel to start. Listening to this novel was a disappointing experience. You can listen to the first minutes of
Divine Justice (Camel Club Series) by David Baldacci on Audible. Amazon U.S. • Amazon U.K. • Amazon Canada
| Title | Divine Justice |
|---|---|
| Author | David Baldacci |
| Narration | Ron McLarty |
| Length | 11 hours and 37 minutes |
| Released | November 4, 2008 |
Prefer the book? Read and excerpt and buy the book Divine Justice by David Baldacci on
Amazon U.S. • Amazon U.K. • Amazon Canada
For more information on David Baldacci and his work, visit his website. You can connect with him on GoodReads, Facebook and Twitter @davidbaldacci. Series reader can track his books on FictFact.