Last Man Standing

David Baldacci

Language: English

Publisher: Vision

Published: Jan 1, 2001

Pages: 572

Description:

A brilliant new action adventure from one of the world's leading thriller writers. When his hostage rescue team is wiped out in a brutal set-up, Web London is the last man standing. Now he just has to keep it that way... It took seven seconds for Web London to lose everything: his friends, his team, his reputation. Point man of the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team, Web roared into a blind alley toward a drug leader's lair, only to meet a high-tech, custom-designed ambush that killed everyone around him. Now coping with the blame-filled words of anguished widows and the suspicions of colleagues, Web tries to put his life back together. To do so, he must discover why he was the one man who lived through the ambush - and find the only other person who came out of the alley alive...a ten-year-old boy who has since disappeared. Last Man Standing is an explosive psychological thriller about a man desperate to find answers - from the secret terrors he has kept for himself to his unbearable guilt. His fight to save himself and those he cares for will come at a high cost... and threaten everything he has grown to believe in. With vividly realized characters and a breathtaking pace, this is another spellbinding novel from David Baldacci, one of today's best storytellers.

Web London roars into a dark alley one night with his FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Seconds later, the team is ambushed and every man is dead-except Web. As the FBI conducts their investigation, the suspicion surrounding Web deepens. Now, he needs help from an unlikely ally in his desperate search for the killer of his friends, and finds himself up against a force determined to finish the job that began in the alley-killing the seventh and sole surviving member of Charlie Team, Web London.

Amazon.com Review

Last Man Standing has the essential elements of a terrific David Baldacci novel: a tough but tender-hearted hero, dirty dealings in the nation's bureaucracy, and a roller-coaster plot. Web London, a member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, froze up on a drug raid and thus became the sole survivor of a remote-controlled ambush that killed six of his compatriots. Now the only witness has disappeared and the inside man on the botched raid has gone underground.

As a pretty psychiatrist puzzles over the corners of Web's brain that kept him alive, Web himself stays on the move. He's certain that the ambush is connected to the prison escape of a neofascist leader, Ernest B. Free, whom he helped arrest five years earlier, and a series of new murders leads him to a Virginia horse farm and the driving force behind all the carnage. It may seem as though Baldacci gives away the mastermind too soon, but both the bad guys and the good guys are complex enough that there's plenty of punch all the way to the last page. --Barrie Trinkle

From Publishers Weekly

Last year's Wish You Well, a historical family drama set in rural Virginia, proved that Baldacci, previously known for his thrillers (particularly his debut, Absolute Power), can do much more than supply maximum suspense. His latest is another exciting thriller, but one that hasn't forsaken the ambitions of Wish You Well, plumbing the emotions and exploring the shadings of human nature in an impressive way. And for the first time, Baldacci has created characters that readers will demand to see back in a sequel. He has chosen an immensely interesting subject: the (real-life) FBI Hostage Rescue Team, a force so elite that many of the Seals, Delta Force grads and other special ops who apply to it don't make the cut. Baldacci's hero is hostage rescue team superstar Web London, who inexplicably (to himself and others) freezes during an operation that leaves the rest of his team dead; hence, the book's title. Web's investigation into the massacre involves him with several bands of criminals, most notably a white supremacist terrorist cell, a gang of D.C. drug peddlers headed by a charismatic giant, and a secret group involved in both terror and drug activities. At the same time, Web's exploration into why he froze leads him to psychoanalysis and hypnosis, to budding romance and, ultimately, to revelations that tie together all the strands and questions of the immensely complicated plot. This is Baldacci's most accomplished thriller. The action, conspiratorial and overt, shifting from urban to rural and back, is nearly nonstop and expertly drawn; heroes and villains alike are believable and equally flawed; and there's a newfound maturity of tone here, a somber acceptance of the suffering that necessarily attends human life. (On-sale Nov. 6)Forecast: The American flag waving on the book's cover will draw readers' eyes; the strong title and the Baldacci name will carry them to the cash register. Expect hefty sales. Simultaneous audio cassette (abridged and unabridged), audio CD (abridged) and large-print editions.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.