Government operatives (read CIA assassins) Will Robie and Jessica Reel are recalled by their boss Evan Tucker, head of CIA, to carry out what he describes as perhaps the most important operation that the agency has undertaken.
But before Robie and Reel can be entrusted with the assignment, they must prove that they are up to the job, thanks to an operation in Syria during which Reel “overstepped boundaries”, disobeyed direct orders and killed fellow CIA operatives. The fact that if the two hadn’t done what they did, the world as we know it would have turned to chaos, does not seem to bother Tucker, who wants Reel to suffer.
The two are put through their paces in what is called the Burner Box, a CIA training installation where the bullets are live and waterboarding a daily ritual.
What the two operatives haven’t been told is that their assignment will be to kill the supreme leader of North Korea. A suicide mission if there was one, which is the reason Tucker convinces the President that Robie and Reel are the best for the job. Well, they are. But not because Tucker wants them never to come back.
Meanwhile, in the Burner Box, the two figure out what the assignment will be thanks to some inside information, but just when they are mentally prepared to carry out the riskiest assassination in history, their target changes.
To know why, we are introduced to Chung-Cha, a North Korean assassin, Mata Hari and Bruce Lee rolled into one. Chung-Cha unearths the mole — a high-ranking North Korean general — who has had enough of the “Supreme Leader” of the North Koreans and wants US help to take him out.
But once the plot is unearthed, the general’s position is compromised and Robie and Reel now have to assassinate him to ensure that nothing leads back to the US.
However, “the target” is not the general, it’s the US President’s wife and kids, whom the North Koreans send Chung-Cha to assassinate. And circumstances put Robie and Reel in a position that only they can save the day.
Bestselling author David Baldacci’s latest offering, The Target, is his third book featuring agent Will Robie. And he delivers exactly what he promises — a fast-paced page-turner full of thrills, gore and a lot of human emotion thrown in as well.
The problem with the book is that it perhaps has too many “targets”. It starts with a death row inmate who is also in the last stages of cancer. Other than killing many people, he has also killed his wife. And before he dies, he wants his daughter to be dead too. Why? We don’t have a clue.
So that’s one target — his daughter. That side story takes us into the gory world of Neo Nazis, abduction, rape and, of course, white supremacy.
Robie and Reel, however, take care of that threat quite easily.
The other targets are of course the North Korean leader, the general and the US First Family. The Target is a fast-paced absorbing read, but it needs to be pointed out that the plot is disjointed.
It is like a series of adventures, with their own climaxes, joined together, with the book ending in a bit of an anti-climax.
Baldacci’s character portrayal is superb. People who you are supposed to like, even if they are with the bad guys and do some pretty awful things, you grow fond of, like Chung-Cha. And some who are with the good guys, like Tucker, you start hating their guts.
While Baldacci is no Clive Cussler, Steve Berry or James Rollins, his books always maintain a certain standard and if you know what to expect, The Target does not disappoint. And while things might seem to fall in place a bit too easily, it makes the reading easier.
It would help to have read the earlier books of the series because Robie and Reel — who seem to always be on the verge of becoming lovers — have a huge history, not all of which is good (trying to kill each other tends to start a relationship on the wrong foot), and the author frequently refers back to incidents in earlier books that we will not have a clue about.
The Target is one of those books referred to as “airport reads”. Ideal to pass the time and leave behind when you are done with it.
Priyak Mitra is a freelance journalist
