The Simple Truth by David Baldacci

From Barnes & Noble

The author who stunned us with the brisk plotting and unique storytelling prowess exhibited in 1996's Absolute Power -- and has since served up the mega-bestselling Total Control and The Winner -- now delivers The Simple Truth, a towering roller-coaster ride of shocking twists and unrelenting action and suspense.

From the Publisher

With his New York Times bestsellers Absolute Power, Total Control, and The Winner, David Baldacci proved beyond a doubt that he can break new ground every time out of the box. Now he does it again with his most powerful work yet, a heart-pounding thriller that brings to life two vastly different worlds joined by a deadly secret, and by a man and woman searching for...

Behind the scenes, the U.S. Supreme Court is a battleground of egos, intellects, and power. Here brilliant young attorney Mike Fiske toils as an elite foot soldier. His colleague Sara Evans is clerking for a female Court justice who is powerfully connected to Congress. But Sara, whose career has limitless possibilities, is becoming a key player in a struggle that will link a convicted murderer to the Court.

Far from the imposing facade of the High Court is the world of street crime, prison time, and bare-knuckles criminal courts defense. In a Virginia military prison Rufus Harms is just one more lifer claiming innocence. Convicted of killing a girl on an army base twenty-five years ago, Harms smuggles a desperate letter out of his prison cell. It's a bombshell-an appeal to the Supreme Court-that claims he was forced to commit murder.

Suddenly everyone who has anything to do with Harms or the appeal mysteriously dies, including Mike Fiske. When his brother, John, an ex-cop, investigates and asks for Sara's help, they both face a conspiracy that is shaking the very foundations of power in Washington. And the one man who can help them, the one man who knows what really happened twenty-five years ago-and why-has escaped from prison and is running for his life.

From scenes of swift,savage violence to scenes of the cloistered, intricate workings of the High Court itself, from the heat of a summer night on the Potomac to the cold reality of a lifer's prison cell, David Baldacci has written a novel that is passionate, brawling, and electrifying-and as vividly courageous as only the truth can be...

Entertainment Weekly - Charles Winecoff

The cliches snowball in the TV movie of a thriller. . .

People

Lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci cuts everyone's grass — Grisham's, Ludlum's even Patricia Cornwell's — and more than gets away with it.

Library Journal

Will Baldacci's most recent title be another winner, like his recent New York Times best seller? Here, a man convicted of a murder he's convinced he committed suddenly realizes that he's been framed and launches an appeal that leads to more murder.

Kirkus Reviews

A tiresome potboiler in which an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court sets off a killing spree that produces enough corpses for each justice to go one-on-one.

Rufus Harms was put away for murdering a little girl, and for 25 years that was okay with him because he thought he was guilty. But now, by dint of bureaucratic snafu, he learns the real story. On that horrific night, he was drugged—for reasons of a sketchy nature—by a group of wicked conspirators; ergo, he had no control over his behavior. Rufus is no mental giant, yet even he can see he may have an out. He contacts his lawyer, the reluctant Samuel Rider, and intimidates him into filing an appeal before the Supreme Court. One fateful morning, then, Michael Fiske, the brightest and best of the Supreme Court clerks, opens the Court's mail, spots the Rider-Harms document, and decides to steal it, hying himself off to the jailhouse to offer Rufus help. This very act tips off the suddenly wary conspirators, and, naturally, they kill Michael. Enter John, Michael's brother, a former cop, currently a somehow idealistic defense attorney, who vows to search out the perp, in turn making himself a suspect. And then, naturally, there's Sara, a superbrilliant, incredibly beautiful lawyer, whose faith in John is immediate and unshakable. Together, they sniff out clues, a process that takes them into the cloistered chambers of the highest court in the land, where, according to Baldacci (The Winner), the justices behave like ill-tempered children—except for the lone woman on the Court who behaves and talks like a character out of a romance novel: 'Sara respected your brother,' she tells John, 'but her heart lieselsewhere.' In the final, bloody act, the villain is revealed and denounced amid a Hamlet-like body count. Just another big, silly book about lawyers.

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays
• Read a Sample Chapter

Interviews & Essays

David Baldacci: Thank you! It's good to be here!

David Baldacci: It's always a pleasure to talk about books in any form. And it's especially nice to do it online. Let's go!

David Baldacci: You can go onto WarnerBooks.com on the Internet and find information about my books, my tours, and things like that. I don't know of any specific fan club. Regarding the miniseries, hopefully it will air within the next year or so, but it's hard to make any guarantees when Hollywood is in the equation.

David Baldacci: Ever since I was a kid, I've liked to tell stories. I have a great curiosity about a lot of different things in life. The one thing I like doing more than anything else is telling a good tale. I think all writers need to be very curious and they need to be insatiable storytellers. That's what keeps me going.

David Baldacci: I have not offered THE SIMPLE TRUTH to Hollywood. I think if Hollywood discovers the book on its own by someone going to the bookstore and reading it, I might get the level of commitment that you need to get anything accomplished in the film world. Then again, I'm in the book business, and if they don't make a movie out of the book, then I still have the book, which is the most important thing to me.

David Baldacci: They would probably reach higher than I could ever read. There are a lot of good books out there that don't get the attention they deserve. I am an avid reader and will always be an avid reader.

David Baldacci: I appreciate that very much! I'm glad you enjoy the books as much as you do.

David Baldacci: There are elements of fact in all of my books. Probably THE SIMPLE TRUTH has the most fact-based situations. All of the legal cases and some of the scenarios in the book are completely true. The law that I discussed in the book is the law that is in this country today.

David Baldacci: I do most of the research on my own, but I do have one friend who I practiced law with who helped me with research. A lot of the research I do is one-on-one; I become a journalist and go and interview people who work in the fields I need information on. That's where you get the little nuances and details in the book that make it interesting and fascinating for the reader. You really can't get that level of detail in books from references.

David Baldacci: I read all sorts of different types of books, both fiction and nonfiction. I'm a big fan of John Irving, and John Updike, and I enjoy Stephen Ambrose. I really enjoy reading good writers, whatever they happen to write about.

David Baldacci: I feel like the only person I'm in competition with is myself. There are some writers who are very competitive and they really dwell on the number of books other authors sell. I don't worry about what other people are doing. My dad told me a long time ago that the worst disease in the world is called other-guy-itus and it's a good recipe for a miserable life.

David Baldacci: Generally, I don't know what the ending will be when I start writing a book. I don't use really detailed outlines. I let the story flow. And I think that allows me to be more spontaneous and unpredictable, and I think that results in a more entertaining story.

David Baldacci: Yes. I practiced law as a trial lawyer and corporate lawyer in Washington, D.C. I no longer practice law.

David Baldacci: Yes, I do. The difference is how well you can write. Writing is like many other professions. It takes a lot of hard work and a long time to get really good at it. It's why you have to love to do it because it can be very frustrating. It requires a lot of patience and perseverance.

David Baldacci: There's certainly pressure there because the publishers are in a for-profit business. And they like to see you turn out books in a consistent manner. But it doesn't always work that way. The one thing I've done is avoid long-term book contracts, which gives me the flexibility to write at my own pace. A book a year is an awfully hard thing to do.

David Baldacci: I know John Grisham; he's a really nice guy. I think he writes very readable books that entertain a lot of people.

David Baldacci: I like the law part of it. I didn't care that much for the business side of it. I became a partner in a Washington firm, and it became a real strain both to practice law full-time and also to spend a lot of time bringing in clients. I'm glad I'm off that treadmill.

David Baldacci: Those were not my parents, but there are a number of Baldaccis in that area of the country. Most, if not all of us, are related somehow. I hope they were good teachers! [laughs]

David Baldacci: Thank you, and I look forward to chatting with you on the next one!

David Baldacci: Goodnight.

Read a Sample Chapter

At this prison the doors are inches thick, steel; once factory smooth, they now carry multiple dents. Imprints of human faces, knees, elbows, teeth, residue of blood are harvested large on their gray surface. Prison hieroglyphics: pain, fear, death, all permanently recorded here, at least until a new slab of metal arrives. The doors have a square opening at eye level. The guards stare through it, use the small space to throw bright lights at the human cattle on their watch. Without warning, batons smack against the metal with the pop of gun reports. The oldies bear it well, looking down at the floor, studying nothing -- meaning their lives -- in a subtle act of defiance, not that anyone notices or cares. The rookies still tense when the pop or light comes; some dribble pee down their cotton pants, watch it flow over their black low-quarter shoes. They soon get over it, smack the damn door back, fight down the push of schoolboy tears and belly bile. If they want to survive.

At night, the prison cells hold the darkness of a cave but for odd shapes here and there. On this night a thunderstorm grips the area. When a lightning bolt dips from the sky, it splashes illumination into the cells through the small Plexiglas windows. The honeycomb pattern of the chicken wire stretched tight across the glass is reproduced on the opposite wall with each burst.

During the passage of such light, the man's face emerges from the dark, as though having suddenly parted the surface of water. Unlike those in the other cells, he sits alone, thinks alone, sees no one in here. The other prisoners fear him; the guards too, even armed as they are, for he is a man of intimidating proportions. When he passes by the other cons, hardened, violent men in their own right, they quickly look away.

His name is Rufus Harms and his reputation at Fort Jackson Military Prison is that of a destroyer: He will crush you if you come at him. He never takes the first step, but he will the last. Twenty-five years of incarceration have taken a considerable toll on the man. Like the age rings of a tree, the ruts of scars on Harms's skin, the poorly healed fractures of bone on his skeleton are a chronicle of his time here. However, far worse damage lies within the soft tissue of his brain, within the centers of his humanity: memory, thought, love, hate, fear, all tainted, all turned against him. But mostly memory, a humbling tumor of iron against the tip of his spine.

There is substantial strength left in the massive frame, though; it is evident in the long, knotty arms, the density of Harms's shoulders. Even the wide girth of his middle carries the promise of exceptional power. But Harms is still a listing oak, topped out on growth, some limbs dead or dying, beyond the cure of pruning, the roots ripped out on one side. He is a living oxymoron: a gentle man, respectful of others, faithful to his God, irreversibly cast in the image of a heartless killer. Because of this the guards and the other prisoners leave him be. And he is content with that. Until this day. What his brother has brought him. A package of gold, a surge of hope. A way out of this place.

Another burst of light shows his eyes brimming with deep red, as though bloodied, until one sees the tears that stain his dark, heavy face. As the light recedes, he smooths out the piece of paper, taking care not to make any sound, an invitation to the guards to come sniffing. Lights have been extinguished for several hours now, and he is unable to reverse that. As it has been for a quarter century, his darkness will end only with the dawn. The absence of light matters little, though. Harms has already read the letter, absorbed every word. Each syllable cuts him like the quick bite of a shiv. The insignia of the United States Army appears bold at the top of the paper. He knows the symbol well. The Army has been his employer, his warden for almost thirty years.

The Army was requesting information from Rufus Harms, a failed and forgotten private from the era of Vietnam. Detailed information. Information Harms had no way of giving. His finger navigating true even without light, Harms touched the place in the letter that had first aroused fragments of memory drifting within him all these years. These particles had generated the incapacitation of endless nightmare, but the nucleus had seemed forever beyond him. Upon first reading the letter, Harms had dipped his head low to the paper, as though trying to reveal to himself the hidden meanings in the typewritten squiggles, to solve the greatest mystery of his mortal life. Tonight, those twisted fragments had suddenly coalesced into firm recollection, into the truth. Finally.

Until he read the letter from the Army, Harms had only two distinct memories of that night twenty-five years ago: the little girl; and the rain. It had been a punishing storm, much like tonight. The girl's features were delicate; the nose only a bud of cartilage; the face as yet unlined by sun, age or worry; her staring eyes blue and innocent, the ambitions of a long life ahead still forming within their simple depths. Her skin was the white of sugar, and unblemished except for the red marks crushed upon a neck as fragile as a flower stem. The marks had been caused by the hands of Private Rufus Harms, the same hands that now clutched the letter as his mind careened dangerously close to that image once more.

Whenever he thought of the dead girl he wept, had to, couldn't help it, but he did so silently, with good reason. The guards and cons were buzzards, sharks, they sniffed blood, weakness, an opening, from a million miles away; they saw it in the twitch of your eyes, the widened pores of your skin, even in the stink of your sweat. Here, every sense was heightened. Here, strong, fast, tough, nimble equaled life. Or not.

He was kneeling beside her when the MPs found them. Her thin dress clung to her diminutive frame, which had receded into the saturated earth, as though she had been dropped from a great height to form the shallowest of graves. Harms had looked up at the MPs once, but his mind had registered nothing more than a confusion of darkened silhouettes. He had never felt such fury in his life, even as the nausea seized him, his eyes losing their focus, his pulse rate, respiration, blood pressure all bottoming out. He had gripped his head as if to prevent his bursting brain from cleaving through the bone of his skull, through tissue and hair, and exploding into the soaked air.

When he had looked down once more at the dead girl, and then at the pair of twitching hands that had ended her life, the anger had drained from him, as though someone had jerked free a plug embedded within. The functions of his body oddly abandoning him, Harms could only remain kneeling, wet and shivering, his knees sunk deeply into the mud. A black high chieftain in green fatigues presiding over a small pale-skinned sacrifice, was how one stunned witness would later describe it.

The next day he would come to learn the little girl's name: Ruth Ann Mosley, ten years old, from Columbia, South Carolina. She and her family had been visiting her brother, who was stationed at the base. On that night Harms had only known Ruth Ann Mosley as a corpse, small -- tiny, in fact -- compared to the stunning breadth of his six-foot-five-inch, three-hundred-pound body. The blurred image of the rifle butt that one of the MPs smashed against his skull represented the last mental sliver Harms carried from that night. The blow had dropped him to the ground right next to her. The girl's lifeless face pointed upward, collecting droplets of rain in every still crevice. His face sunken into the mud, Rufus Harms saw nothing more. Remembered nothing more.

Until tonight. He swelled his lungs with rain-drenched air and stared out the half-open window. He was suddenly that still rare beast: an innocent man in prison.

He had convinced himself over the years that such evil had been lurking, cancerlike, within him. He had even thought of suicide, to make penance for stealing the life of another, more pitiably a child's. But he was deeply religious, and not a fleeting jailhouse convert to the Lord. He thus could not commit the sin of prematurely forcing his last breath. He also knew the girl's killing had condemned him to an afterlife a thousand times worse than the one he was now enduring. He was unwilling to rush to its embrace. Better this place, this man-made prison, for now.

Now he understood that his decision to live had been right. God had known, had kept him alive for this moment. With stunning clarity he recalled the men who had come for him that night at the stockade. His mind once more clearly held every contorted face, the stripes on the uniforms some of them wore -- his comrades in arms. He recalled the way they circled him, wolves to prey, emboldened only by their numbers; the telling hatred of their words. What they had done that night had caused Ruth Ann Mosley to die. And in a very real sense, Harms had died as well.

To these men Harms was an able-bodied soldier who had never fought in defense of his country. Whatever he got, he deserved, they no doubt believed. Now he was a middle-aged man slowly dying in a cage as punishment for a crime of long-ago origin. He had no power to see that any semblance of justice was done on his behalf. And yet with all that, Rufus Harms stared into the familiar darkness of his crypt, a single passion empowering him: After twenty-five years of terrible, wrenching guilt that had relentlessly taunted him until he was just barely in possession of a ruined life, he knew that it was now their turn to suffer. He gripped the worn Bible his mother had given him, and he promised this to the God who had chosen never to abandon him.

Copyright © 1998 by David Baldacci