A bit slow out of the gate, what with the going back and forth of introducing/back-grounding of the primary characters, and then it picks up speed. It's an entertaining read, good guy done wrong and a bit predictable in parts. I told myself who the bad guys were and then talked myself out of it and was surprised at the ending. ( )

2006

No more Baldaccis? Juoni tuskallisesti Remestäkin epäuskottavampi. Miksi kääntäjä valitsi yleisesti teitittelymuodon; vaikutti oudolta. ( )

Keeps my interest going from start to finish. ( )

Michelle Maxwell, Sean King - 1 ( )

Loved this book. It was my first David Baldacci book and it was a good one ( )

This was ok, though I felt like I was missing stuff - I realized *after* the fact that it was an abridged version.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF ABRIDGED?!?!?! ( )

If I had known how crappy this book was I never would have read it. Like a bad Hollywood movie. ( )

This is the first book of Baldacci's series that pairs Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, two members of the US government Secret Service Squad. Both have faced the unthinkable - the loss of the person they were supposed to be protecting on the job. Both take these losses very hard and try to compensate for their personal guilt by working on a current case independently of the Secret Service, but together as their own team. From the start they are in sync and have a good working relationship uncluttered by personal attractions or anything to take their focus off the job they've assigned themselves. Split Second starts off as a page turner and continues that way throughout.

Unfortunately, the plot itself is highly improbable. So much so that at times it made me laugh rather than draw me into some kind of suspense or tension. However, those pages did keep on turning because whether or not the plot is credible, I had to find out how all the loose ends would resolve. While the ending did stay true to the over-the-top plot basics, it was a satisfying finish and tied everything together in a better conclusion than I expected.

As thrillers go, I think Baldacci is adequate, and would definitely read more of his books in this series. ( )

Death, more death, betrayal and a little romance. What's not to like? ( )

I like the reader (Scott Brick, who also read The Wish List), so enjoyed the book, despite its inconsistencies. Kate Ramsey knew nothing that could help the investigators. Then she knew a little. Then within minutes she knew a lot. She couldn't conceive of her mother having an affair with Thorston (spelling?), yet she knew they were engaged eight years later. Continuity was lacking. Joan thinks about a Trojan horse just before she's blindsided by one? Katy says she knew of nothing in her dad's past that would have kept him from getting a professorship at a better college. Then a few minutes later she says he was in a protest in the '70s and was accused of murder and that had kept him from getting on with a better university.
Baldacci loves to tell you that the protagonist has clues that he isn't yet ready to share with his partner or the reader. The mystery isn't so much "who done it" as "what does he know".
Too many of the solutions were things the reader couldn't have known about, and the bad guy was an unbelievable character. ( )

It Is what It Is – and Its Entertaining Besides

I admit it. I am surprised by the hostile nature of so many of this book’s reviews. I think it is a great thriller.

David Baldacci has created an intricate plot that sees the lives of two discredited Secret Service Agents converge. The story charges ahead, making the book difficult to put down. What more can you ask for from a novel written to entertain? ( )

Drawn into a maze of lies,and secrets, two discredited Secret Service agents uncover a shocking truth.

Maybe my favorite Baldacci book, I just couldn't put this one down. ( )

A great listen in the car. Not quite as tight a story as it could be, I am looking forward to listening or reading the sequel ( )

A great who-done-it. Two secret service agents, who both lost candidates under their protection, work together to solve a complex tangle that relates both incidents together. There is quite a bit of good action in this book but the most fun is the theories that the agents throw back and forth as they work their way to the conclusion. ( )

While I generally enjoy David Baldacci's books, this one was somewhat of a disappointment. It was a relatively entertaining read, but not much else. I thought the characters were a little too typecast and cliched. For example Michelle Maxwell was the perfect ex-jock golden girl. She was practically flawless.
Also, the plot ran at an okay pace, but it was nothing to alert the media about. Split Second is all about how a political assassination that happened more than a decade ago links to the kidnapping of John Bruno, a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Bruno is kidnapped as a result of Secret Service Agent Maxwell's error in judgment, and thus she sets out to exonerate herself by linking up with ex-Agent Sean King - the man who took the heat for the first assassination. The rest of the book is basically all about how the two form a partnership and go about trying to nab the bad guys and clear their name.

It's a far-fetched plot, with not particularly empathetic characters. At certain junctures it even seemed as though Baldacci had run out of options and was just winging it.

So read it if you've got nothing better to do. But if you want a good Baldacci nail-biter, pick up Saving Faith which is a real page turner. Well actually, Split Second was a page turner also. You had to keep turning them back and forth to try and figure out this confusing mess. ( )

"Michelle Maxwell has just blown her future with the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she led a presidential candidate out of her sight to comfort a grieving widow. Then, behind closed doors, the politician whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air." "Living a new life on a quiet lake in central Virginia, Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. He's been there before. In an out-of-the-way hotel eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service man allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the presidential candidate Sean was protecting was gunned down before his eyes." "Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge. She has become obsessed with Sean's case. And he needs a friend - especially since a series of macabre killings has brought him under suspicion and prompted the reappearance of a seductive woman he's tried hard to forget." "As the two discredited agents enter a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, they uncover a violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making - and are a long way from over."--BOOK JACKET. ( )

Eight years after leaving the Secret Service following the assassination of the presidential candidate he had been protecting, Sean King reluctantly joins with agent Michelle Maxwell to uncover the truth when another candidate is abducted. ( )

‘Split Second’ by David Baldacci

Essential Details

Genre: Crime/thriller
Setting: Present day USA, East Coast.
No. of pages: 600
Standalone (subsequent books with same main characters)

Synopsis

Secret Service agent Sean King is momentarily distracted, and a Presidential candidate dies. Years later, a different Secret Service agent, Michelle Maxwell, makes a mistake and another Presidential Candidate is kidnapped. On the edge of losing her job and career, Michelle seeks out Sean King, drawn by the similarities in their downfall. Together they investigate both cases and are drawn into a complex and dangerous situation…

What I Liked

Baldacci’s writing is good quality, and I like his style. He pays a lot of attention to detail, draws a good plot and has likeable characters. The opening third of the book is particularly good.

What I Didn’t Like

The final third of the book really went downhill in my opinion. There were four separate characters all working together like a committee, and when is a committee ever a good thing? After a masterfully plotted storyline the final third, and in particular the ending, was poor.

Plot

The build up of the plot was good. You really didn’t have much of a clue what was going on for a long time, there were two main plot strands and various sub-plots that I knew must all tie together, but couldn’t fathom out how.

Characters

The main character, Sean King, was quite well drawn. I was interested in what happened to him, and by the end of the book felt I knew quite a lot about him. I’d be happy to read another book with him as the main character. I didn’t feel any especially strong emotion or attachment towards the character however. The secondary character Michelle was also moderately well drawn, however the other characters were fairly two dimensional.

Language/Structure

The language was good, well written but easy and quick to read, with no swearing or bad language. Lots of short chapters quickened the pace of the book and made it easy to read.

Overall Impression

A fairly standard, run of the mill crime thriller. It started well, and had the potential to be really good, but the author let it slip in the latter stages. Of the three books of his I’ve read, this is certainly the worst.

Rating – 6/10 ( )

Sean King/ex-Secret Service
Michelle Maxwell
both lost men, both in a split second...
read 8/06 from mbissel ( )

too many characters. ( )