Jason Archer is a rising young executive at Triton Global, the world's leading technology conglomerate. Determined to give his family the best of everything, he has secretly entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He is about to disappear - leaving behind a wife who must sort out his lies from his truths, an air-crash investigation team that wants to know why the plane he was ticketed on suddenly fell from the sky, and a veteran FBI agent who wants to know it all. Soon the startling truth behind Jason Archer's disappearance explodes into a sinister plot with the murder of the country's single most powerful individual. And Archer's wife, Sidney, is plunged straight into the violence that is leaving behind a trail of dead bodies and shocking, exposed secrets.
David Baldacci is the seven-time New York Times best-selling author of ABSOLUTE POWER, TOTAL CONTROL, THE WINNER, THE SIMPLE TRUTH, SAVING FAITH, WISH YOU WELL and LAST MAN STANDING. His most recent novel, SPLIT SECOND, will be published by macmillan in December 2003. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.
"Sidney Archer is devastated when she hears that the plane carrying her husband to Los Angeles has crashed. But her nightmare begins when she learns he'd traded identities and flown to Seattle instead. Evidence suggests that Jason Archer was selling corporate secrets to a high-tech rival. Soon Sidney herself is caught in a web of intrigue as wealthy men vie for more power and money. Fired from her law firm, pursued by hired killers eager to recover an encrypted computer disk Jason had mailed to himself, Sydney finally trusts only the FBI agent who believes her innocent. No one is immune here from high-tech snooping and violent death. Baldacci writes strictly for action, not wasting time developing characters or setting. Few books have higher heaps of dead millionaires at their conclusion. The scant literary value won't deter those who snatched up his first book, the best-selling Absolute Power (LJ 11/15/95), or keep them from standing in line to see the film version, due in February. Public libraries will need a copy or two to meet demand, especially with a major publicity blitz planned."
--Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ. Minn.
"Baldacci burst on the thriller scene with Absolute Power (1995), which stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for more than four months. Total Control is even more suspenseful, and it is also far more interesting in terms of the questions it raises about how much technology controls us. Baldacci's ruthless characters wield the latest in action weaponry, laptops, and cell phones. Everyone still carries guns, but they're fighting over computer disks and trying to outsmart each other with frantically typed e-mail. Except for a sabotaged airliner that hits the ground with enough impact to practically disintegrate, creating a huge crater in rural Virginia and killing a couple of hundred innocent people, and a bunch of vicious murders, all the crime is online, involving the stealing of top-secret financial documents pertaining to high-tech companies with names such as Triton and CyberCom. Baldacci's heroes are also a mix of the old and the new: a bighearted FBI guy and a beautiful, high-powered attorney who really just wants to stay home and take care of the kids. Maybe so, but when her husband disappears, Sidney Archer transforms herself from corporate deal-maker into a gun-toting momma with a sure shot and enough smarts to outmaneuver her very angry, very evil assailants. Good and slick. "
