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First Published:
Nov 1998, 470 pages
Paperback:
Nov 1999, 544 pages
Convicted of killing a girl on an army base twenty-five years ago, a man smuggles a desperate letter out of his prison cell claiming he was forced to commit murder.
With his New York Times bestsellers Absolute Power, Total Control, and The
Winner, David Baldacci proved beyond a doubt that he can break new ground every time
out of the box. Now he does it again with his most powerful work yet, a heart-pounding
thriller that brings to life two vastly different worlds joined by a deadly secret, and by
a man and woman searching for...
The Simple Truth
Behind the scenes, the U.S. Supreme Court is a battleground of egos, intellects, and
power. Here brilliant young attorney Mike Fiske toils as an elite foot soldier. His
colleague Sara Evans is clerking for a female Court justice who is powerfully connected to
Congress. But Sara, whose career has limitless possibilities, is becoming a key player in
a struggle that will link a convicted murderer to the Court.
Far from the imposing facade of the High Court is the world of street crime, prison
time, and bare-knuckles criminal courts defense. In a Virginia military prison Rufus Harms
is just one more lifer claiming innocence. Convicted of killing a girl on an army base
twenty-five years ago, Harms smuggles a desperate letter out of his prison cell. It's a
bombshell-an appeal to the Supreme Court-that claims he was forced to commit murder.
Suddenly everyone who has anything to do with Harms or the appeal mysteriously dies,
including Mike Fiske. When his brother, John, an ex-cop, investigates and asks for Sara's
help, they both face a conspiracy that is shaking the very foundations of power in
Washington. And the one man who can help them, the one man who knows what really happened
twenty-five years ago-and why-has escaped from prison and is running for his life.
From scenes of swift, savage violence to scenes of the cloistered, intricate workings
of the High Court itself, from the heat of a summer night on the Potomac to the cold
reality of a lifer's prison cell, David Baldacci has written a novel that is passionate,
brawling, and electrifying-and as vividly courageous as only the truth can be...
The somber group of men sat in a large room that rested far belowground, accessed by only a single, high-speed elevator. The chamber had been secretly built during the early 1960s under the guise of renovating the private building that squatted over it. The original plan, of course, was to use this "super-bunker" as a refuge during a nuclear attack. This facility was not for the top leaders of American government; it was for those whose level of relative "unimportance" dictated that they probably wouldn't be able to get out in time but who still rated protection afforded no ordinary citizen. Politically, even in the context of total destruction, there must be order.
The bunker was built at a time when people believed it possible to survive a direct nuclear hit by burrowing into the earth inside a steel cocoon. After the holocaust that would annihilate the rest of the country, leaders would emerge from the rubble with absolutely nothing left to lead, unless you counted vapor.
...
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