re:mote voices

Title: The Winner
Author: David Baldicci
Publisher: Pan

The Winner is one of those slabs of a thriller, by the writer David Baldacci. Epicly written in a slow, drawn out fashion. The two main characters are Mr. Jackson and LuAnn Tyler. Tyler is the dictionary definition of white trash - dirt poor, only 20 years old, living with a man she doesn't love, who drinks too much, and has fathered her baby. Despite the fact that she is smart and beautiful she is still in a dead end. Which makes her the perfect target for Jackson, who is running a lottery scam - he has found a way to fix the lottery, and picks out poor people as his fronts. So for a year he picks the winners, they hand over their winnings to him, and invests it smartly, making them even more money, but of course making himself richer than all of them put together.

But things get complicated, LuAnn realises that this endeavour is illegal, and is going to turn the offer down. Unfortunately she walks in on her boyfriend's murder, he has been running drugs behind her back, and been stupid enough to skim off the top. Somehow she manages to fight the killer and escape, in the process she thinks that she is fleeing the scene of two deaths - forcing her to accept Jackson's offer in the hope that she will be able to take her baby to safety. This starts the deal, where she is to travel the world for the rest of her life, and never return to America.

Which is all fine and good, but at the end of the ten year contract, where her initial money reverts back to her, on top of all the other money she has been making from the profits, she decides it is time to settle down. Which is bad timing as a prize winning journalist is looking to expose the downside of the lottery and starts to realise that something strange happened 10 years before. With the murder connection he decides to target LuAnn, in the process bringing her to the attention of a mystery man from her new town, with a dark past, along with the FBI who have been looking for her for the last 10 years, as well as Mr. Jackson who is willing to leave a trail of bodies to protect himself.

The Winner is one of those densely written novels -for example, the whole set up of the lottery scam before flitting forward 10 years takes a good 150-200 pages. Baldacci's style is in some ways admirable, I am impressed that he can write so much about characters, so much detail about all the events. But on the other hand it makes for a very over written and melodramatic read, which I find quite off putting. It also fattens the pace up, so that instead of hard, fast and thrilling, it perhaps feels more bloated to that. Which gives the question is it a great thriller? No. Well, is it a great read? To be fair, it is decent, and enjoyable enough for what it is.

The character of Mr. Jackson is of course key. He is such a spectacular comic book villain. A man who has been keeping his identity secret for years, driven by his bitter relationship with his father. Implausibly, and yet crucially, he did a double degree in chemistry and drama - making him a master of disguise and capable of killing people while leaving no traces. Add to that his father had been a politician, who even though he had squandered the family money, still left enough key contacts for Jackson to exploit. Of course by the same degree the already impressive LuAnn transforms herself over the years - martial arts, and the best education money can by transforming her into some kind of super woman! The perfect foil to the evil Mr. Jackson and his sinister plan for world domination.