Mon 11 Jan 2021
DAVID BALDACCI – One Good Deed. Aloysius Archer #1. Grand Central, hardcover, July 2019; paperback, September 2020.
Best-selling author David Baldacci has written over 40 novels in nine different series, including this one, and several standalones. This is the first one of them I’ve tackled, using the verb advisedly, as it clocks in at 450 pages in the paperback edition.
What attracted to me to this one was the setting: 1949 in a small town in the American west, Oklahoma perhaps; not Texas, but somewhere nearby. It opens with its leading character, Aloysius Archer having just been released from prison and heading on a bus to the small town of Poca City, where his parole officer is waiting for him to check in.
To his surprise, the latter is female, a lady by the name of Ernestine Crabtree, and in spite of her sex, and the fact that she is, well, a looker, she knows how to lay down the law to Archer. One of the conditions of his parole is that Archer must have a job, and this he does, hiring himself out as a debt collector for a man who, as it turns out, owns a good chunk of the town and the business that’s done therein. Complicating matters is that the man’s choice of lady friends, other than his wife, is Jackie Tuttle, the daughter of the man whose loan has come due.
Things being what they are, Archer soon finds himself in bed with Jackie and the man he is working for is found dead in the hotel room just down the hall from Archer’s. And as things continue being what they are, Archer finds himself the obvious suspect. And who best to clear his name? Himself, and finding that he kind of likes being a detective. A shamus, if you will.
For about 90 percent of its length, this is a rootin’ tootin’ detective novel, and Balducci’s smooth quiet prose allows for the pages to, to coin a phrase, fly by, well into the small hours of the morning.
What goes wrong, and very very wrong, as far as I was concerned, is that as the conclusion is seen coming in the horizon is that when Archer finds several letters and other documents, he reads them, smiles, shoves them into his pocket. Are we the reader allowed to know what’s in the several letters and other documents? In a word, no. Foul play, I say.
Almost as bad is the trial that to all intents and purposes closes up the case, and any resemblance to a real trial is slim and none. Pure hearsay and other made up allowances for witnesses to say anything they wish. (I grew up reading Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason stories, and I know how real trials are conducted.)
This, and an ending that in perspective is way far ahead of its time in terms of the culture of the time, and that’s all I’ll say about that. Overall then, a waste of a good story most of the way through, and several hours of reading time.
January 12th, 2021 at 3:13 am
I too was attracted to this one: the period and the private eye aspects. But I just couldn’t get into it and set it aside after thirty or so pages. Sounds like I had a lucky escape.
January 12th, 2021 at 9:26 am
I have been debating calling this a PI novel in the title for this post. It seems extremely likely that there will be a second book in this series, and if so, we will know for sure whether Archer becomes one or not.
So far, though, while he does a lot of work that PI’s do, his only client is himself, and at this point, that’s really not enough.
January 12th, 2021 at 3:43 pm
I read the first four or five of his books along with the first two of the John Puller and the Will Robie series and thought they were all well done, but as he has gotten more popular I seemed to have lost interest in his work. Probably should at least read the Robie and Puller books, since I am half way through both series.
January 12th, 2021 at 5:19 pm
During my first five nights of reading this book at bedtime, I was enjoying it so much that I fully intended to check out some of his other series. Now I’m not so sure, but maybe?
“America has enemies — ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can’t stop. To combat them, the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone-cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target.”
“John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth.”
January 12th, 2021 at 7:02 pm
I’ve started reading three or four Baldacci books and thought they were all well-written, but each reached a point fairly early (40 or 50 pages) where I just didn’t feel compelled to finish it. Maybe I’ll try another one.
January 12th, 2021 at 7:12 pm
So far we seem to have a consensus on Baldacci, namely he writes well, starts well, but has no follow through. Plots peter out, characters act in bizarre ways, good setups are wasted, things happen that just don’t happen in the real world without selling them well enough to get me past the fact, it is almost as if he gets bored and just rushes to an ending before the book is really over.
At times I am reminded of those passages in Edgar Wallace where he writes so fast he forgets in the same paragraph whether a character is tall or short, fair or dark, and where and what he is doing.
This has been my experience with several books of his I was intrigued enough to buy. He’s not a finisher, and the finales just fizzle when they should pop.
Just a guess, but since there is a Ponca City in Oklahoma I would hazard this is supposed to be set here.
January 12th, 2021 at 7:28 pm
“He’s not a finisher, and the finales just fizzle when they should pop.”
That’s exactly what happened to me with this book. No pop. Fizz, fizz. I was really expecting a whole lot better.
Poca City, Ponca City. It’s close enough for me.
January 12th, 2021 at 8:37 pm
“Plots peter out, characters act in bizarre ways, good setups are wasted, things happen that just don’t happen in the real world without selling them well enough to get me past the fact, it is almost as if he gets bored and just rushes to an ending before the book is really over.”
This is also true. Very very disappointing.