True Blue by David Baldacci

From the Publisher

A mysterious high-profile homicide in the nation's capital collides with the dark side of national security in David Baldacci's new, heart-stopping thriller.

TRUE BLUE

Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything-her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she's back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major case on her own, and prove she has the right to wear the uniform. But even with her police chief sister on her side, she has to work in the shadows: A vindictive U.S. attorney is looking for any reason to send Mace back behind bars. Then Roy Kingman enters her life.

Roy is a young lawyer who aided the poor until he took a high-paying job at a law firm in Washington. Mace and Roy meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets from both the private and public world of the nation's capital.

Soon, what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn-into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal.

Publishers Weekly

This promising first in a new series from bestseller Baldacci (First Family) introduces Beth Perry, chief of the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police, and Beth's younger sister, Mace Perry, a former police officer dubbed “the Patty Hearst of the twenty-first century” after she was seized by bandits, drugged and taken along on a series of armed robberies around Washington. Mace, who's just getting out of prison after serving a two-year sentence, is willing to risk everything to clear her name and reclaim her life as a cop by cracking a big case on her own. The rape-murder of a powerful lawyer as well as the killing of a prominent U.S. attorney provide Mace an opportunity to vindicate herself. While Baldacci draws his characters in bright primary colors, and some of the action reaches comic book proportions, he delivers his usual intricate plotting and sets the stage nicely for highly competent Beth and impulsive, streetwise Mace to take on more bad guys. (Oct. 27)

Kirkus Reviews

Baldacci (Divine Justice, 2008, etc.) presents a law-enforcement sister act, curtain-raiser for a new series that has every chance of keeping the pot boiling. Beth and Mace Perry are loving, totally supportive of each other and remarkably untroubled by anything resembling sibling rivalry. Yet they are very different. Beth, the older, is rock-solid reliable; Mace is flamboyant, tempestuous, hard-wired for heedlessness. After years of worthy performance, Beth has become D.C. chief of police. Mace is an ex-con, albeit through no fault of her own; she was kidnapped, framed, dismissed from the police force and sent to prison for two years. Now she's out, and Beth, a by-the-book officer if ever there was one, knows that her life is about to become complicated. Because Mace, who bleeds blue, wants her badge back and will risk whatever she must in order to make that happen. And Beth will be in her sister's corner, even if on occasion that leads to behavior not sanctioned by any applicable book. Enter Roy Kingman, a susceptible young lawyer immediately drawn to uber-feisty Mace. He trails behind him a big-time murder case that has the sweet smell of opportunity for Mace. If she can solve it, she tells herself, reinstatement will inevitably follow. But this murder case has dark and dangerous ramifications that stretch across oceans and into terrorist enclaves. Powerful people, it turns out, don't want the case solved, people as ready to shoot the moon as Mace is. Gracelessly written, often implausible and inescapably pulpy, but also fast-paced and entertaining.

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