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As a government-trained assassin, Will Robie gets in and gets out, no questions asked. But when he’s sent to assassinate a woman with two small children, he falters. Something’s not right. After he refuses to pull the trigger, he finds himself on the run from his own people, and things are about to get even more complicated.
Fourteen-year-old Julie Getty has been in and out of foster homes most of her childhood, and she’s getting pretty fed up with the system. When they place her with a family that makes her sell drugs, she leaves and heads back home. Once there, she witnesses the murder of her parents, and she has no choice but to flee again.
Will and Julie get thrown together on a bus headed for New York, only to have things go terribly wrong even before the bus leaves the terminal. Neither one trusts anyone, but Julie needs help, and Will finds that he can’t abandon a scared but resilient young girl. Together they try to figure out random events that seem to have a connection to both of them.
All of David Baldacci’s novels are pretty awesome—but The Innocent is the best I’ve read to date. Right from the beginning, I loved Will Robie. He may be an assassin, trained to kill without emotion, but he also has a heart and a keen sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. His concern for Julie is touching, and you’ll come close to laughing when this tough guy almost goes into a panic when he thinks something has happened to her.
Julie, meanwhile, is a sturdy, street-wise gal who’s learned how to survive on her own. She also has a touch of the scared little girl in her, but that doesn’t stop her from being brave, making her an endearing and wholly likeable character.
Julie and Will have one thing in common: they both seek a normal existence, which may never be possible—and that’s what makes them an unconventional team who must stick together in order to survive.
The Innocent also has a plot that’s filled with so many twists and turns that it’ll keep you guessing and reassessing the things that you think you’ve already figured out. Just when you think there’s no way that any of it can possibly come together in a believable manner, Baldacci pulls it off like the master he is. And when the end comes, it’ll shock and surprise you.
Wildly suspenseful and packed with hold-your-breath thrills, The Innocent is impossible to set aside. You might want to save this one for a quiet afternoon at home—that is, if you can even wait to start reading it.
