Simple Genius (Sean King and Michelle Maxwell Series #3) » (Abridged)

A Washington, D.C.-based lawyer-turned-author, David Baldacci writes legal thrillers that are as tightly constructed as they are authoritative. Readers know his books, with their cinematic plots and colorful details, are sure to offer the sort of breathless entertainment that thrillers always promise but can t always deliver.

David Baldacci's much-loved protagonists Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are having trouble adjusting to life in the wake of the terrible events that drove them to the brink in HOUR GAME. Dogged by hidden demons from her past, then almost killed in a barroom brawl, Michelle agrees to try therapy at a mental-health facility, where she simultaneously busts a ring of drug-dealers. Sean, hoping to right their shared career in the private security sector, accepts an offer to investigate a mysterious death at a scientific think tank called Babbage Town, located suspiciously close to the CIA's most infamous yet covert training camp—"The Farm". In Babbage Town, the security is tight as the world's great geniuses race to invent technologies powerful enough to conquer the most sophisticated microprocessor. Michelle soon joins Sean, and before long both find themselves pawns in a terrifying game whose elusive players cite threats to national security as justification for their most heinous crimes.

Publishers Weekly

Last seen in Split Second(2003), former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have reached a crisis in their relationship in this less than compelling Washington political thriller from bestseller Baldacci. When Maxwell instigates a fight with the most intimidating bruiser she could find at a local bar and lets herself be beaten unconscious, despite her superior fighting skills, her partner suggests she voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric facility. While Maxwell reluctantly undergoes treatment to find the childhood roots of her death wish, King probes the suicide of a scientist found on the grounds of Virginia's Camp Peary, a mysterious CIA facility. Both mysteries are fairly run of the mill, lacking the sharp twists and expert pacing that characterize Baldacci's fiction at its best. (Apr. 24)