I have recently read a thriller by a new author, well new to me anyway, that was really good. First Family by David Baldacci is about Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, two former secret service agents who are now private investigators. Sean and Michelle are asked to a meeting with an old friend of Sean’s only to arrive and end up in a firefight. They quickly discover that the woman they were to meet is now dead and her oldest daughter is kidnapped. Things spiral even more out of control when the woman’s sister-in-law hires them to investigate the kidnapping and find her niece. The problem is that the sister-in-law is the First Lady of the United States and the kidnapping is also being investigated by both the FBI and the Secret Service. It goes from bad to worse though as there continue to be few, if any, clues that could help them find the girl and Sean and Michelle end up diving into the sordid history of the President and First Lady. At the same time they also have personal problems to deal with as Michelle’s mother is found dead and her father appears to be a prime suspect. Like things couldn’t get any worse.
I really enjoyed this book but I tend to enjoy a good mystery and that is basically what this is. However, I greatly appreciated the depth and intricacy of the plot, alongside the dual mysteries of who was behind the kidnapping and who killed Michelle’s mother. There was a lot of very minor and subtle clues throughout the text about what was actually going on and the real motive behind the kidnapping yet at the end when it was all revealed, I was still slightly surprised by some of what had happened. Mind you, I was only surprised in that I wasn’t expecting it for this story. I was not surprised by who or what had happened in terms of characters personalities. One thing that really surprised me, especially considered how well it added extra layers to the story, was the continuation of scenes from the bad guy’s perspective. Many stories that do this only have a few scenes throughout the book from the villain’s viewpoint which typically works fine. However, in this book he was as prominent as Sean and Michelle in terms of narration which was surprising. I think that this was done primarily to add a layer of humanity to him though as it provided added depth to his motivation and reasoning behind his actions. At the same time, because of the reveal of his motivation it also puts all kinds of other things in doubt such as who is the real villain and who is the real hero of a story. This story really shows some doubt on that topic as many of the supposed good guys do bad things and some of the villains do good things. Of course, some of this is only revealed at the very end of the book and I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who haven’t read it yet. I like this element in the story though because it helps to show just how complex humanity can be and how that complexity can be shown in any given sequence of events. I could also just really like when things get all mixed up and there is only a somewhat happy ending. Overall, a pretty good book and I would give it a four out of five stars.
This is a good book and a great thriller but I am not sure how well it would appeal to readers who don’t enjoy thrillers or mysteries. If you do enjoy those genres then I would definitely suggest you consider trying this book out as it was superbly written. In terms of age range, the book was primarily aimed at and marketed towards adults which is logical considering its contents. The book deals with a lot of difficult topics and themes, such as the kidnapping and murders that take place at the beginning. There is also a decent amount of violence and other mature topics. Because of this I am not sure if it would be suitable for younger readers, at best it would probably only be suitable for older teens and not necessarily anyone younger than that. If you decide to try this one out feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.