The Camel Club is set in Washington, and Virginia. If you haven't figured it out yet, that is the White House on the front cover. The basic premise of the book is that there is a group of 4 conspiracy theorists, who meet to discuss their observations of political leaders. Their leader, Oliver Stone, sits out side the White House every day watching for the President or some other dignitary to come through the gates. The others do all they can to catch any scrap of information they can that comes from the political fields of Washington. The problem is, they have no credibility among the politicians and intelligence agencies of Washington, because of things they have done in the past. So, when they witness the murder of an intelligence worker, that was professionally set up as a suicide, they had no one to tell. Except Secret Service Agent Alex Ford. The problem is, as soon as he starts looking into the murder, he is immediately ordered to stand down, and he is put back on protection detail. As all of this is going on, so is the story of the terrorists. Middle easterners who are believed dead, who are planning to spend the end of their lives doing one thing -- kidnapping the President.
This book was really good. When I first started out reading it, I didn't know if I would like it. Baldacci used what I thought were WAY too many acronyms. I think I counted 10 on one page. It was a bit cheesy. For example, they kept saying: POTUS (President Of The United States), SAIC (Secret Agent In Charge), and ASAIC (Assistant to the Secret Agent In Charge). Another issue I noted at the beginning was that there were too many story lines going on at once. I won't list them all, but after 60 pages, there were 7 or 8. They did all tie together nicely in the end. The end was a bit sad, but not in an unneeded way. I would definitely recommend this book to all who enjoy John Grisham's novels. It is a tale of treachery and deceit that has twists you never saw coming....
