Review by Booklist Review
One of the hottest commodities in the action arena (Absolute Power, 1995, and Total Control, 1996), Baldacci, in this kinetic extravaganza, sets up a fix in a national lottery. The scam artist, a creepy character with the alias Jackson, could be a John Malkovich clone: his precise, icy threats to kill are realized more often than not. But Jackson has another side complementing the part of the demented genius--that of the altruist. Who could deserve more Jackson's benefaction than the dirt-poor, waitressing, unwed mother who lives in a trailer house in the middle of a Georgia junkyard? LuAnn Tyler accepts Jackson's condition for becoming an instant multimillionaire: to kick back a portion of her dough and leave the country permanently. After 10 years abroad, the homesick LuAnn reneges on the deal and returns to set up house in the horsey Virginia countryside. Naturally, Jackson discovers this breach of security through his spies and high-tech bugs; also a master of disguise, he conducts much of his surveillance personally. At this point, Baldacci injects the subplot--imminent exposure of the rigged lottery by an investigative reporter--that ignites the stakeouts, chases, and shoot-outs that have become his stock-in-trade. A spunky heroine unafraid to go gun-to-gun with her evil antagonist, LuAnn Tyler earns the riveting attention of fans of Baldacci's pedal-to-the-metal plotting. This is undemanding fun. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The title doesn't refer to Baldacci but it could, as the author of last year's not-so-hot Total Control sets a wildfire of a thriller that rivals his Absolute Power for suspense, excitement and bankability. The premise is another Baldacci blockbuster: the national lottery has been fixed 12 times by a man who demands access to his handpicked winners' windfalls and who now, to protect his secret, aims to kill the lastand lovableillicit winner, LuAnn Tyler. To save her baby girl from a hardscrabble life, Bright, beautiful and dirt poor LuAnn accepts the offer of the mystery man known as Jackson to reap nearly $100 million in a forthcoming drawing. Jackson is a marvelous mad hatter of a villain who's not only a modern Moriarity but a master of disguise; his ability to shift from old to young, male to female springs many of the novel's twists and enhances its made-for-the-movies air. Because LuAnn is accidentally implicated in a murder just before the rigged drawing, Jackson orders her to flee the country forever. After 10 years of wealthy, lonesome exile she returns, however. When Jackson finds out, he goes for the jugular. The ensuing mayhem draws in press, the FBI and the White House, sees LuAnn herself shift from hunted to huntress (with help from a romantic interest), and will have readers gasping. Baldacci recycles himself a bit herehe played the mom-and-daughter in-peril gambit in Total Control, and the sympathetic outlaw ploy in Absolute Powerand, again, his prose is workaday and his plotting mercilessly melodramatic. His strong characters and sheer Grisham-like exuberanceunlike many thrillers, this is flat-out fun to readwill, however, thrust the novel toward the top of the charts. 500,000 first printing. BOMC main selection; Time Warner Audio. (Dec.) FYI: Tri-Star will release Total Control as a CBS miniseries in 1998. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Absolute Power. Total Control. And now The Winner: Baldacci doesn't settle for second best. Here, his heroine, who gets rich after being forced to participate in a fixed lottery, is wanted for murder. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be--poor, undereducated but proud--and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
