Just in case Christmas shopping hasn't frazzled your nerves enough, here's David Baldacci to finish you off, big time. The author has the face of a choirboy and the mind of a demon. He lets loose in "Hour Game," with one of the nastiest killers imaginable, right up there in the top five or so.
What is crazy-making about Baldacci is his devious plotting. It is hard to keep up with the author, let alone the killer, but once the hook is set, we are in for the long haul, which is to say an all-nighter or two.
We are in the company of old friends, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, both former Secret Service agents who are now private investigators in a smallish, bucolic town, Wrightsburg, Va., soon to be on the map in the least desirable way.
It begins with the discovery of the body of a young woman left in the woods for several days, no longer attractive.
Too soon, another horror takes place: two youngsters, randy with hormones, are shot to death during the act of love. The car is a mess, broken windshield, blood, everything but evidence. Not a trace, not a clue. The killer is doing his work perfectly.
King and Maxwell have been hired to clear the name of a man accused of breaking into the home of a wealthy, if eccentric, family, the Battles. The suspect had access, no real alibi and a shaky reputation.
The head of the Battle family is in the hospital after suffering a stroke; the wife, Remmy, is imperious, sure that poor "Junior" did the deed. Their daughter Savannah is a sexy, ditsy blond, a lot smarter than she looks, on none too good terms with her mother; son Eddie and his wife live in a house on the place; another son, Eddie's twin, died of cancer when he was in his teens.
Before his stroke, the elder Battle was a womanizer and didn't care who knew it. He had so much money he could do as he pleased.
Meanwhile, the killer is on the prowl again. In perhaps the most chilling section of the book, he recounts to himself, and the readers, how easy it is to get information about possible victims: bumper stickers ("My child is an honor student at ..."); carelessly tossed aside receipts with charge numbers on them; a cell phone left in a car, not to mention keys in the ignition.
So easy. He's keeping several women in mind, full of all the information he needs to find and kill them.
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