THE ESCAPE by David Baldacci

Finished Sa 2/8/20

This was a paperback that Janny loaned me. Over six hundred pages, but a compelling, yet typical Baldacci yarn. Very much a page turner, but not so much on character development or clever description.

CHARACTERS:

Robert Puller: in Leavenworth, Kansas, The United States Disciplinary Barracks for espionage.  He had been incarcerated for over two years, but one night the prison lost power and a killer came in to murder him. He overpowered his killer, put on his SWAT suit and escaped to find out who framed him.

John Puller: Robert's younger brother who is a CID agent in the Air Force. He was in Iraq at the time of his brother's incarceration and is contacted by high-level military and espionage people to find his brother.

Veronica Knox: She is working for one of the seventeen US intelligence agencies and is also looking for Robert with John. She is kind of a spy on John and fakes allegiance with the bad guys.

Susan Reynolds: She is the bad guy. She is a high level intelligence officer that is working with a Russian agent. She was behind Robert Puller's attempted murder and she is trying to unleash a deadly ebola attack at the Pentagon. Canisters of the Ebola virus have been converted to aerosol and they were timed to go off when the sprinkler system was activated. Puller and Know cut the wires seconds before they went off.

John Puller falls in love with Veronica Know, but she wants to 'take a rain check' on their relationship, but doesn't rule out future involvement.

From Publishers Weekly about the novel:
"In bestseller Baldacci's clever third John Puller thriller (after 2012's The Forgotten), the chief warrant officer faces his most difficult and most personal assignment yet. Puller's older brother, Robert, a former major in the USAF, is a convicted traitor serving a life sentence in Leavenworth. A seemingly impossible chain of events ends with Robert escaping and a corpse left in his cell. A trio of high-placed officials, Army, Air Force, and National Security, go against normal protocol, and charge Puller with finding and arresting Robert. Puller has to figure out the identity of the dead man found in his brother's cell, as well as who enabled Robert to escape. To add to his problems, he's not sure he can trust the Army Intelligence agent assigned to work with him, Veronica Knox. The Puller brothers are in deep trouble, and it will take all their ingenuity and skills just to survive. Baldacci handles the complex plot with consummate ease as the Pullers navigate nearly endless surprises." 

I would read anything by Baldacci, but all of his stuff is 'beach or airport' material. As long as you're not looking for more, you can't go wrong.