I have read a number of his books over the years. I never thought he was a particularly good writer, but his books helped fill the gaps when I needed something to read. I remember liking the Camel Club series and the Will Robie books. However, the last two books I started I abandoned after a few chapters. His dialog is so bad that it is distracting. It’s almost as if he has never actually interacted with people and writes dialog based on cliches and other bad books. I know he is extremely prolific and popular, so my opinion may be the minority, but he is coming off my author list.
I started reading his stuff after seeing the movie “Absolute Power” and liked the first few books. I quit reading him somewhere around “The Hour Game” when the quality declined and he seemed to be putting out lousy product on a regular basis. One or two duds is acceptable, but when they come out consecutively it’s usually a red flag to me.
I remember a record review back in the 60s where the reviewer started with “I just listened to this album, and I liked it, but that was over an hour ago, and I can’t remember one bit of music or a single lyric from it.”
I have a lot of Generic Thriller audiobooks (great for long trips or workouts where, if your mind wanders and you miss a chapter, no big deal). I’ve realized I have to mark them as “read”, because they’re so interchangeable that I can’t tell from the title or cover.
I recently needed space on my laptop, so I deleted everything labeled Baldacci, Patterson, Berry or Connelly (better writer, especially the Bosch and Haller stories, but still no huge loss).
Buuut, I couldn’t part with the Agent Pendergast books, or Brad Meltzer’s early work (The Zero Game is still one of my favorite books of any genre, and the reader captures the inner voice of the “innocent protagonist caught up in his coworkers’ machinations” perfectly).
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Oh, and I didn’t need to throw out any Clive Cussler books; did that long ago. Talk about PAINFUULLY hackneyed plots and dialog! Makes Baldacci seem like David Mamet.
LOL!
Thanks for the tip.
Kind of like driving on an endless, straight throughway for countless miles and suddenly finding yourself in another state without realizing it.
I haven’t read this author but from the sounds of it I would likely experience quite a few “missed chapters” during my reading!
Add Jeffrey Deaver to the list. I enjoyed the early Lincoln Rhyme books. I just started “The Midnight Lock” and it is SO bad I finally bailed. What a hack. Also writes like he’s never been in actual human situations.
Whenever I’m tempted to get something by Baldacci off the bargain rack, a glance at the weirdly worshipful promo material on the book jacket reminds me of the gap between hype and reality.
It’s formulaic hackery from a world of pseudo-humans.
Yeah, Baldacci is terrible. I’ve tried multiple times but I always give up. Just cliche piled on cliche.
I haven’t read any Baldacci myself, but I never was too interested in the synopsis of any and he seemed more like a best seller from airport book stores and lots of people looking for something easy and mindless that a lot of best selling authors seem to fall into, especially if they have a large output.
Not that people can’t enjoy that. Some of my favorite books (David Gerrold’s War Against the Chtorr series) is some of the easiest, quickest reading I have done.
I would put Lee Childs into the same category, perhaps unfairly, but it seems like it’s all formula now. Also the Grey Man novels. Maybe it’s something about that kind of genre.