Review: The Hit by David Baldacci

The Hit
by David Baldacci
Release Date: April 23rd, 2013
2013 Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover Edition; 390 Pages
ISBN: 978-1455521210
ASIN: B00A6JLDJ2
Genre: Fiction / Suspense
Source: Review copy from publisher

4 / 5 Stars

Summary
Will Robie is a master of killing. A highly skilled assassin, Robie is the man the U.S. government calls on to eliminate the worst of the worst-enemies of the state, monsters committed to harming untold numbers of innocent victims. No one else can match Robie's talents as a hitman...no one, except Jessica Reel. A fellow assassin, equally professional and dangerous, Reel is every bit as lethal as Robie. And now, she's gone rogue, turning her gun sights on other members of their agency. To stop one of their own, the government looks again to Will Robie. His mission: bring in Reel, dead or alive. Only a killer can catch another killer, they tell him. But as Robie pursues Reel, he quickly finds that there is more to her betrayal than meets the eye. Her attacks on the agency conceal a larger threat, a threat that could send shockwaves through the U.S. government and around the world.

My Thoughts
The Hit is another one of those novels by Baldacci that just seems to suck me in and I have a hard time putting it down until it is finished.  It's not that there is anything overtly mind-boggling about the action, or that there is any new ground covered in this latest offering, but he has a way of endearing the characters with the reader that just makes you care about them and want to know what is going to happen to them.  

In this second installment of what I hope to be a long series, CIA assassin Will Robie is tasked to go after another assassin who has apparently gone rogue and is killing U.S. government officials and top agency members.  Right away, you knew that there had to be more to the story.  First of all, anyone who has read a multitude of these types of novels can sense right away when something is wrong at home, and to be honest, it was quite apparent from the beginning that the issue is a home one, and not an agent being turned for money or other reasons.  As the action plays out, there are your usual scenes that you would expect in such a novel, the explosions, the shoot-em-ups, the train scenes, and so on, basically if you think of a big budget Hollywood thriller, you could probably visualize this book quite well.  What I do like are the little things that are written into the story that are not usually in a movie, the little quirks that make a character likeable, and I've always thought that Baldacci did that quite well.

Will Robie is a single-minded assassin who has always lived like a machine, allowing nothing to interfere in his job.  What I liked in this novel is that the crack in that machine is opening a little bit, and you get to see the heart of the man that exists within that machine and is perhaps seeking something quite different from the life he leads, but doesn't know how to do both his job and live.  I would actually like to see Baldacci explore this a bit more in his future novels as I think this would be quite interesting and pose some moral dilemnas for our Will Robie.  

Verdict
The Hit is your typical Baldacci novel with action around every corner and where characters are not whom they appear to be.  I always enjoy the interactions between the characters and the nuances that happen within the dialogue as I find that fascinating.  While perhaps not his best novel, and this one felt more like a filler novel for me in order to continue what has the potential to be quite an interesting series, it was still enjoyable. There were some things that were not fully explained in this novel, but I am hoping that events and situations will be clearer in subsequent novels as events unfold.