Hour Game, Volume 2 (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell)

He's copying famous serial killers and the game has just begun.


A woman is found murdered in the woods. It seems like a simple case but it soon escalates into a terrible nightmare. Someone is replicating the killing styles of the most infamous murderers of all time. No one knows this criminal's motives...or who will die next.


Two ex-Secret Service agents, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, have been hired to defend a man's innocence in a burglary involving an aristocratic, dysfunctional family. Then a series of secrets leads the partners right into the frantic hunt that is confounding even the FBI. Now King and Maxwell are playing the Hour Game, uncovering one horrifying revelation after another and putting their lives in danger. For the closer they get to the truth, the closer they get to the most shocking surprise
of all.

Baldacci's last book, Split Second, was a relatively weak offering from this bestselling author, sunk by a cartoonish villain and absurd plot. But it did introduce two of Baldacci's (Absolute Power, etc.) most memorable characters, former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, in business together as private investigators in smalltown Wrightsburg, Va. Baldacci is back in form, and King and Maxwell reappear in this utterly absorbing, complex mystery-thriller that spins in unexpected directions. The novel starts as a serial-killer thriller, for there's a murderer at work in Wrightsburg whose selection of victims appears random but whose modus operandi, differing from kill to kill, mimics the work of a notorious serial killer—the Zodiac killer, John Wayne Gacy, etc. The fifth victim is local resident and international tycoon Robert E. Lee Battle. King and Maxwell have already been tangling with the gothic horror show of a dysfunctional Southern family that is the Battles, as they've been hired to help prove the innocence of a Battle handyman accused of stealing from the family. Then that handyman is murdered, and the duo (along with a clueless local sheriff and an obnoxious FBI agent) must race to figure out if the same killer is behind all the murders and, if so, why. There are terrific action sequences sprinkled throughout, and plenty of suspense, and the King/Maxwell relationship, while not romantic, emits sparks. It's Baldacci's portrayal of smalltown Southern life, however, and his sharp characterizations of the Battles, from the bombastic Bobby and his regal widow to his weird extended family, that give the novel texture and depth: this is Baldacci's most accomplished tale since his nonthriller Wish You Well, and it rivals that novel in its social commentary. Despite fair clues, few if any readers will ID the villain (villains?) before they're revealed, and a snappy surprise ending will have Baldacci's many fans remembering why they love this author so much.
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Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, the former Secret Service agents from Baldacci's previous outing, Split Second (2003), are on the trail of a serial killer in this new novel. King and Maxwell have just gone into business together as private investigators when Michelle discovers the body of a young woman in the woods. The body was posed with a wristwatch stopped at 1:00. Two high-school students are the next victims; both have watches on their wrists--the boy's reads 2:00, the girl's 3:01. King and Maxwell aid the police while working on their own case: a burglary in the house of Remmy Battle, a wealthy, tough southerner whose husband, Bobby, lies in a coma at the local hospital. The prime suspect is Junior Deaver, whose fingerprints are found at the crime scene. But Junior swears he's innocent. The victim list keeps growing: a successful high-powered lawyer and then Bobby Battle himself. Soon King begins to suspect that the serial killer might not be choosing his victims at random, and he believes one of the murders is the work of a different killer. The plot doesn't hold together perfectly, even starting out a bit slow, but it recovers to build to an exciting finish. Kristine Huntley
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