Unputdownable

I don't know who invented the word unputdownable, but they must have had David Baldacci in mind.

Baldacci usually writes long novels, but they don't seem long because the pages fly by so quickly. Such was the case with The Innocent (2012), a story about Will Robie, a 40-year-old man who kills people for a living. At the beginning one doesn't know whether to root for him or not. By the end he is the greatest of heroes.

Robie works for the U.S. government, eliminating bad guys around the world. In this new assignment, however, he discovers his target is a sleeping woman with two small children. When he hesitates to pull the trigger, a second assassin fires through the window, killing the woman and one of her sons.

On a bus, trying to escape the scene, Robie saves the life of a 14-year-old girl, whose parents, somehow connected to the woman he was supposed to kill, have also been killed. The two of them flee the bus, just before it blows up, and go on the run together, not knowing who to trust.

The plot gets more and more involved, yet Baldacci skillfully keeps everything clear enough so that readers can follow, in most cases, what is going on. And even if they do get lost, the nonstop action will keep them turning the pages anyway.