Rating: 
Summary: a good book, until...
Review: I'm a fan of Baldacci's books. This one is a real page turner and you spend a good moment, until you arrive after de 2/3 of the book. Then you realize something is wrong with the story, that is a bit artificial... This feeling is confirmed by one of the most ridiculous "end-revelation-solution" that I have read in my life. I told myself: "He's kidding"... But no, Baldacci is not kidding.
Rating: 
Summary: Average for Baldacci
Review: I am a huge Baldacci fan, and after "Last Man Standing" and hearing this was the 1st in a new series I was really anticipating this book. Although pretty good, it certainly isn't his best work. I recommend it to any fan of his, but do not expect too much. It is a good read and think it is better than most author's work, just not his best.
Rating:
Summary: Middle-road Baldacci
Review: Baldacci is going to have a hard time topping his first four books ("Absolute Power","Total Control","The Winner","Simple Truth")After that, his plots weren't as devious or slick and the revelations seemed tired. With "Wish You Well", nice try, good intetions but ZZZZZZZ and "Last Man Standing" his storytelling just evaporated. "Split Second" is a return to the style of the first four books. And it's very fast reading. But his skill has always been having all the plot threads unravel quickly as you get closer to the end. This time, those revelations aren't as exciting as the setup that proceeds them. Instead of thinking "Cool!", I thought "Oh." However, it's still above average compared to other contemporary suspense novels, just below average for Baldacci.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent thriller -Ending was a little too unbelievable
Review: Secret Service Agent Michelle Maxwell let a presidential candidate out of her sight against her better judgment. He disappears with a trace. Eight years ago, Sean King's career as a secret service agent was derailed when the presidential candidate he was protecting was killed in front of him when his attention was diverted for a split second. Michelle and Sean's lives entwine when the circumstances of their respective screw-ups appear to be related. David Baldacci has written another winner. This was book had me hooked from the first page. The plot was skillfully written interweaving past and present facts. We have two very compelling protagonists that look like they were set up for a sequel, at least I hope so. This is the kind of thriller that keeps you on your toes from the first page to the last. It would have been a 5 star book, except the climax was a bit too unbelievable. It was almost like a light bulb went off and suddenly the case is solved. It all unraveled a little too fast. I don't want to give too much away, but the first 4/5 of the book was so good that the ending really did not detract from my overall enjoyment.
Rating: 
Summary: "Ignore the bogus slams...this book is terrific!"
Review: I loved this action-packed page-turner! Don't believe the bogus slams of this talented writer's jealous rivals...SPLIT SECOND is one terrific story! Once I started the story I couldn't pull myself away from it until after I had finished the whole book! I know you will be blown away with this story too!
Rating:
Summary: What an ending!
Review: Most of the reviews I've read here by other customers seem like they only read the first half of the book. I'm a big Baldacci fan, a big mystery/suspense fan and I really enjoyed the first half of this book...maybe even the first three quarters of it. But the ending and plot unveiling is just so ludicrous, so insipid and so filled with "who gives a damn" moments that this book went from a 5 to a 2 in about 20 pages. Very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: First Class Suspense
Review: David Baldacci's current thriller is another winner. It follows the investigations of two highly skilled but disgraced secret service agents out to find the answers to the mysterious events that have been haunting them. Sean King was an accomplished secret service agent until his attention wandered for just a 'Split Second' that changed his life. Now a successful attorney he's living a quiet life in Virginia while continuing to dabble in law enforcement as a part time deputy sheriff. Suddenly King discovers the dead body of a man in the witness protection program in his office and now he must find some answers before he becomes the lead suspect. Michele Maxwell is the quintessential over achiever. She's a Harvard grad, an attorney, an Olympic silver medalist, and a rising star in the secret service. Then she makes a small error in judgement. She allows her protectee to enter a funeral home alone, to pay his respects to the widow of his former mentor, and he is abducted. With her career in ruins Maxwell seeks answers which lead her to Sean King and some uncanny connections between two incidents almost a decade apart. In 'Split Second' Baldacci has once again penned compelling characters and intriguing suspense. He managed to take three seemingly unrelated events and seamlessly weave them into a spell binding mystery. Maxwell and King are extremely likable and convincing. They reluctantly make a great pair of detectives with just a hint of romantic interest. It is impossible to put this one down until the final culprits are revealed. I was glad to read that Baldacci is working on another book that will bring back King and Maxwell.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was very disappointed with theis book. I read the cover and inside & thought it sounded like it would keep my interest. I couldn't wait to finish only to get it over with because it was boring. Those that thought it was so good should read books by Harlan Cohen. He is an author and you can't put his books down.
Rating:
Summary: Baldacci Just Gets Better with Each Book
Review: Secret Service Agent Sean King looked away for a split second, the assassin shot, the candidate died and King's career with the service was over. Eight years later agent Michelle Maxwell let another presidential candidate out of her sight to comfort a grieving widow and the candidate disappeared into thin air. Maxwell believes there is a similarity between what happened to her and King eight years earlier. She goes to King, an attorney now, but he doesn't want to be drawn into the case, however when his law partner is murdered, he decides to help. He and Maxwell work well together and the ... tension builds as the they work with and against the FBI agents investigating the cases. Also, King's former lover, Joan Dillinger, who runs an investigative agency has been hired to find Maxwell's missing candidate, so now there are two woman competing for King's attention as they work to unravel what happened eight years ago and how it connects to the current disappearance. SPLIT SECOND is already a bestseller and my guess it's going to be on the top ten list for a long time and it gets five stars from me. Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Rating:
Summary: (4 1/2) A Page turner by an Excellent Storyteller
Review: David Baldacci burst on the scene with his action-adventure novel ABSOLUTE POWER; while his next four books included some elements of mystery they were all basically in the genre of the original work. However, when SAVING FAITH was followed by WISH YOU WELL, an intensely personal story of Applachian hardship and its effect on all the lives that it touched, it was clear that he possessed more versatility as an author than his early work had indicated. He then returned to the action-adventure genre with the successful LAST MAN STANDING, an incredibly suspenseful but overly long story involving the unraveling of a very complicated mystery (four star review of 9/18/02). He then once again demonstrated his versatility with THE CHRISTMAS TRAIN, a delightful novel with marvelous character development in the guise of a mystery (five star review of 11/20/02). SPLIT SECOND returns to his original genre but with sporadic intense action interspersed with a complicated mystery involving two Secret Service agents whose careers were each destroyed in the "SPLIT SECOND" that it took for the presidential candidates whom they were guarding to be the victims of foul play. On September 26th, 1996, Clyde Ritter was killed by an assassin while campaigning for President; that assassin was then immediately shot to death by Agent Sean King. But as Baldacci observes, "three men had actually died that day, and King had been one of them... [but King] had it far worse than the others...they went into their coffins and were forever mourned...after his death his burden was that he had to keep right on living". Eight years later, King has gradually constructed an "unspectacular" life for himself, but this life is suddenly disrupted by a seies of killings in which he becomes a suspect. At the same time, Agent Michelle Maxwell's Secret Service career is destroyed when John Bruno, the candidate whom she is guarding is mysteriously kidnapped and a fellow agent in her detail murdered by individuals whose motivation is a complete mystery. Michelle becomes obsessed with the simalarities between the Bruno and Ritter incidents and eventually convinces Sean to join forces with her in attemting to locate John Bruno and investigate the highly improbable fact that there is a connection between the recent killings in his community and the events involving Bruno and Ritter. A romantic complication and additional intrigue and plot complications are provided by the appearance of Joan Dillinger, a fellow agent of Scotts who was at the scene of the Ritter assasination and is now working for a private agency hired to find John Bruno. Needless to say, the plot is complicated, and it is often unclear which events are truly connected and what are just surprising coincidences. While I really enjoyed the story and found it hard to put down, it had some flaws which after some deliberation kept me from rating it five stars. First, the narration switched between the first person and the third person, and while the technique was very effective it was irritating at times. Sean King would be the narrator and yet suddenly you would not be privy to certain thoughts that he had or conclusions which he had drawn. Since this was offset by information provided by the author that Sean did not have available, it was like the reader was trying to solve the mystery with different (although overlapping) clues than the characters in the story. Second, while the story was very clever and internally consistent some elements were quite unlikely or farfetched. Third, while in retrospect there were some clues available to the reader as to the eventual solution to the mystery, the misdirection and withholding of some crucial information make it overly difficult to anticipate who the mysterious central character "Buick Man" really is and what his motivation might be. Last, the ending was quite contived and abrupt, although it does seem to indicate that we might meet Sean and Michelle again. So, I highly recommend this book to those readers who want a blend of mystery and action in the typical Baldacci style, and felt that it benefitted from the fact that it was more concisely written than LAST MAN STANDING. Tucker Andersen
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