The Winner

What would you do to change your life? LuAnn is beautiful, young and dirt poor. She's married to a low-level drugs dealer whose infidelities and incompetent double-dealing put her and her child's lives at risk. Enter master-criminal "Jackson" who offers her vast wealth if she agrees to help him fiddle the lottery. She refuses until she finds herself on the run from false charges of murder. After years abroad she returns because she wants her daughter to be an American teenager. Can she escape the FBI, an inquisitive journalist and the murderous and endlessly ingenious Jackson?

The Winner is a departure for Baldacci. LuAnn is as plucky and resourceful as the heroines of Absolute Power and Total Control, but the plot she inhabits is a new departure for him. Normally he shows us a dark vision of how things really work, but here he brings to life and makes plausible what might have been pulp cliches. As in the description of Jackson, a master of disguise: "Sitting across from her was her double, or the double of the woman she had just become. The same short red hair, facial complexion, crooked nose, everything--it was as though she had suddenly discovered a twin". What's more, his method of rigging lotteries is clever and convincing enough to worry lottery organisers the world over. Perhaps the sunniest and least cynical of Baldacci's thrillers, The Winner is an intelligent, exciting and deeply moral read whose switchback plot is full of surprises and touching moments. --Roz Kaveney

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Good story, but very implausible - Rated
This was my third Baldacci book, and although I've enjoyed them all, I had to stretch a point to give this 4 stars. The plot was interesting if implausible, and judging by the reviews on Amazon and Amazon.com, I wonder if the effort to write a book with a woman as hero might have been a struggle for the author. Her martial arts skills and high body strength seemed more in the Jack Reacher mould than someone who cared so much for her little girl. I'm still a fan - some of the plot twists were completely unexpected, and the author had a lot of fun with the cunning and mysterious Mr Jackson, a very worthy villain. I read to the end but found myself thinking that Mr Baldacci has done better elsewhere.

Outstanding reading - Rated
This was the first book I had read by David Baldacci and will most definitely not be the last. Although I more or less guessed what the outcome would be I was still intrigued. Where does he get his ideas from? An absolutely brilliant read. Highly recommended. Now I'm looking for more books by this author. Outstanding.

A Terrific Thriller Writer - Rated

David Baldacci attended law school at the University of Virginia, and went on to work as a trial lawyer, and later as a corporate lawyer, in Washington, D.C. He is now a full-time writer whose best selling novels include Absolute Power, Total Control, The Winner, The Simple Truth and Saving Faith. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.

This is one of David Baldacci's earlier books, written in 1997. Probably one of the books that has made him such a popular author for thriller reader's everywhere. His writing style has changed very little since then and the plots of his early novels are just as interesting as his later work.

A young woman, LuAnn Tyler is approached to take part in a crooked lottery scheme. However she uses her common sense and says that she refuses to have anything to do with it, even though it solve all of her problems at a stroke, with the millions of dollars that she could make on the crooked deal. Later when the single mother is framed for a murder she did not commit, she has no choice but to go along and participate . . .

Entertaining - Rated
I tend to get fed up with books populated by incredibly ingenious villains overcome by a fortuitous combination of handsome, spunky men and beautiful, talented women who live more or less happily ever after (what they call in German a "Happyend"). But then, I guess, if they were ordinary folk, we'd never get to hear about it because (a) they would be too boring for words (just like all the rest of us), or (b) the baddie would inevitably triumph and we'd never be any the wiser, so perhaps I shouldn't moan. So, what we need to get us from the beginning to the inevitable end in an entertaining manner is a good plot, well told. This manages fairly well on both counts.

At the beginning of the book, I guessed the end, and got it nearly right (there were more survivors than I expected). All in all, an entertaining read, just the right thing for train and plane journeys. Sure you could read a lot better, but you could also read a lot worse.

Don't take it seriously... - Rated
This is my first introduction to David Baldacci and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

The plot is good and the action sequences have their moments but I struggled to get through the first 30 pages. Once past those, it did pick up and was, for the most part, very enjoyable. But the antagonist is truly awful. What starts out as a fairly believable sinister character, descends into farce and overly dramatic cliché by the end of the book.

By the end of the book I cared less for LuAnn than I did at the start.

I'm not writing off Baldacci just yet, I have already bought two of his other books.

Baldacci is nowhere close to Grisham's league and has a lot of ground to make up to reach my current favourite, Michael Connelly. And I don't believe this should ever be made into a movie.