*The world can change forever in a single...*

SPLIT SECOND

Michelle Maxwell has just wrecked her promising career at the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment, and the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air. Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. Eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service agent allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes. Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge.

Drawn into a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, the two discredited agents uncover a shocking truth: that the separate acts of violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making-and are a long way from over...

From Publishers Weekly

"We just solved a huge, complicated mystery," says one protagonist to another in this latest novel from the bestselling author of Last Man Standing, Absolute Power, etc. And that is the problem: this story of two disgraced Secret Service agents who come together to solve two campaign-trail crimes doesn't play to Baldacci's strengths, which are suspense and action (as well as strong characterizations; here's one thriller author who writes people that readers care about). The novel is primarily a mystery, with lots of talk and untangling of clues, and a less than gripping one at that. It begins in 1996, when Secret Service agent Sean King is distracted-by what isn't revealed until near the book's end-just when the presidential candidate he's guarding is shot dead. Eight years later, agent Michelle Maxwell lets the candidate she's watching enter a funeral parlor room alone; he's kidnapped. Then a body appears in the office of King, who's now a successful lawyer in North Carolina. Maxwell sees King on TV and decides to look into the event that caused his disgrace, so similar to hers. Meanwhile, King's old flame, Joan Dillinger, an ex-agent whose security firm has been hired to find the kidnapped presidential candidate, hires King to help in the hunt. The narrative ties binding the characters don't loosen much over the novel's course, as curious cross-currents flow between the two cases, all leading to a cinematic but off-the-wall denouement that reveals a villain who is more cartoon than human. What saves this novel are a few strong but brief action sequences and, above all, the interplay among the principal characters, particularly the romantic tensions among King, Maxwell and Dillinger.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Baldacci's new thriller is sustained by the pulse-pounding suspense his fans have come to expect. Sean King is a former Secret Service agent whose career ended eight years ago when the political candidate he was protecting was assassinated. Now a lawyer, King has organized his life to forget his past, but it barges rudely in on him when he finds a colleague murdered in his office building. Further complicating his life are two women: Joan Dillinger, a former coworker and lover, and Michelle Maxwell, a Secret Service agent whose candidate, John Bruno, has just been kidnapped. Sean and Michelle start to suspect that their candidates' fates are connected and begin to investigate any ties the two may have to each other. It doesn't help that the police are on King's case, especially when yet another body turns up, this time in King's house. King and Maxwell turn their focus to Arnold Ramsey, the man who assassinated King's candidate, but it remains unclear if he was working alone. Meanwhile, the danger mounts, for neither King nor Maxwell can guess who the conspirators' next target is. Kristine Huntley
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