The Winner

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Fast forward ten years and our damsel-in-distress is a force of nature - wielding a gun whenever possible and chopping wood faster than her groundskeeper as well as being indescribably beautiful. In fact, her youthful beauty is so unbelievable that she is often mistaken to be her 10 year old daughter's sister. Of course, there are troubles to deal with [tax-evasion has never been so thrilling] and a man who may or may not be an FBI agent steps in to rescue her. This lottery scam even involves the president! Mercy!

The Winner is a surprisingly interesting and good book. The characters seem very real and you choose your sides very early on. The plot is something else. Even though I'm a writer, I can't imagine coming up with something that intricately planned. It just baffles the mind the twists and turns in this book. Just when you think you've got something figured out, it takes another direction and you're left scratching your head. In addition, the villian was a master of disguise. OK fine. But in this case, it was over the top. Nobody is going to be so good at disguise that they can basically mimic individual people to the extent that they will fool people who are closest to them. HOWEVER, Annie from Stephen King's Misery would have slit his throat on this one because the believability of the premise just wasn't there. Above average plot with intricate developments, but it was missing the wow factor. Good but not great.

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Now in "The Winner," Baldacci has come up with yet another good one. LuAnn Tyler, of Rikersville, Ga., is a 20-year-old unwed mother with only her Daisy Mae good looks and her raw physical strength going for her. She's solicited Legal Thriller - Yes Legal Plotlets - finding out whether someone is really guilty Crime Thriller - Yes Murder Mystery (killer unknown) - Yes Main Character Gender - Female A single mother is offered a guarantee to win the lottery and after initial hesitation, accepts. Circumstances force her to leave the country but her eventual return is not welcomed by everyone.

Most of the supporting characters are cliché. Some of that I can forgive, even from a best-selling author, but that was not the worst of it. I started reading The Winner based on a recommendation from my eye doctor, of all people. Frankly I'd never heard of the author before, but decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. I'm even more glad I gave up on the hardcover library book and, instead, got the Kindle version (it's much lighter!). it came and went upon demand by its owner and varied in its intensity depending on the situation, rising to the occasion and mustering just enough reserve so that failure was never a possibility. Either you had that type of power or youBaldacci cuts everyone's grass—Grisham's, Ludlum's, even Patricia Cornwell's—and more than gets away with it.