Camel Club Stone Cold, (Paperback)

An attractive blond con artist, a successful lucrative con, a violent, revengeful casino owner--the victim of the con--and Oliver Stone (not the director) a retired, secretive operative for the government with knowledge that even the president doesn't have, now assisting his friend the blond to avoid the wrath of the casino owner, serve to set in motion another complex thriller by David Baldacci. Stone is the leader of an unusual group of conspiracy theorists monitoring the government's activities. He lives in a caretakers cottage next to a run down, historic cemetery on the edge of Georgetown. He attends to the cemetery and appears to live a meagre existence that suits him. After many successful years as an assassin for the CIA, he's unafraid of confronting authority when he's convinced he's right and this has made him unpopular with some of the establishment. Add to the mix a serial killer/assassin eliminating former fellow assassins of Stone. To what end is unclear. The man's other life is as a contractor for Homeland Security, testing the integrity of assets potentially subject to terrorists or governmental bad actors. He employs cutting edge technology in imaginative scenarios that flummox the unaware leaders charged with protecting those assets. The question being are his actions outside of his sanctioned responsibilities for good or ill? Stone is accused of killing his former head of the CIA after that man invited Stone to a meeting to tell him of the suspicious deaths of his former colleagues. Later that night the mysterious serial killer destroys the CIA chiefs home, and presumably its occupant, and Oliver Stone is suspected of being the perpetrator. Typically, David Baldacci entangles his protagonist in a web of difficulties and we are left to wonder how Stone will extricate himself from the tricky knot his life has become.