Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Wealthy arms dealer Nicholas Creel is facing his own personal credit crunch, and needs to find a way to kickstart his business. Would starting a war help? Creel would hardly be averse to that. Anna Fischer is enjoying her professorial activities, but is growing dismayed at world events. Her life is transformed when her new lover proposes marriage -- but there is a side to her boyfriend's life that may threaten all she holds dear. Journalist Katie James is casting around for a way to salvage her stalled career, when something falls into her lap -- a story with very dangerous elements. And the mysterious Shaw, operative for a clandestine intelligence organisation, wants to give it all up -- but finds that an employer wants him to tackle one final all-important job.

As this very varied dramatis personae suggests, we are in the presence of an ambitious global thriller here, with a host of elements juggled to facilitate an ever-accelerating plot. Baldacci -- a writer who prefers the straight-ahead effect rather than the more nuanced touch -- is an absolute master of the blockbuster thriller, and as well as keeping the narrative on the boil, manages to delineate his cast of characters with a sure touch. The Whole Truth is Baldacci's most entertaining novel yet. --Barry Forshaw

Average Customer Rating:

Don't bother	Customer Rating:
This book was terrible. The men are steel-hard, the women are sobbing and has tears in their eyes all the time. That's the deep characters. The other characters are plain cardboard copies. Such rubbish. And if it was a desk where you could return the book because it was so ill written and bad I would have done that!

Baldacci hits the spot with corruption thriller

Customer Rating:

Consistenly readable Baldacci has excelled with this story about a global arms manufacturer who has to engineer a war due to lack of serious conflicts in the world. Some of the insights in to how and why decisions in arms procurement by governments are made are fascinating. Slightly veered off at the end for me but enjoyable nonetheless. Strong characters and easily hateable villans - great escapism for the tube ride.

Flashy, plastic and pointless

Customer Rating:

I've found Baldacci's work to be variable in the past - some of them can make a long journey fly as well though-out and well written thrillers. Others are distinctly unmemorable. This is by some distance the worst I've read. The whole thing is basically ludicrous and not recovered by a thoroughly predictable plot. One single unexpected thing happens in the whole book - from that point on you could write the rest of the story and be spot on. The characters are plastic and unconvincing; the idiot-level explanations of their motivations and "the way the world really works" grate from early on and some of the crowbarred-in supposed "secret service insider" detail harks back to the worst of Frederick Forsyth telling you what sequence the cylinders in the tank engine fire in. Going to London before writing about it might have been a good idea too if you expect people who actually have been there to take you seriously. Don't buy this - the rest of his books that I've read have been better.

Fast paced: best to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride

Customer Rating:

The Whole Truth is a thriller about the head of a weapons manufacturing company (Nicolas Creel) who hires a perception management company to plant false information about Russian atrocities, with the aim of creating a Cold War between Russia and China that will cause all the world's superpowers to increase defense spending. At the same time, we are introduced to our hero Shaw, who works for an unnamed and mysterious international law enforcement agency. Shaw's fiancee, Anna, has suspicions about the false media reports and this will eventually lead to Shaw being pulled into a vendetta against Creel. I read The Whole Truth while on holiday recently and after a slightly slow start, I thought it made an ideal fast-paced and mindless holiday read. Yes, the plot is fairly silly, but if you decide to just go with it, it's entertaining enough. I did get irritated by the cardboard characters throughout (one of whom never gets referred to as anything but "Miss Hottie") and the romance between Shaw and Anna never feels even remotely realistic. My husband read this book after me, devoured it in a day and rated it more highly than I did. He also had far less problem with the characters than I did and was entirely comfortable with Shaw's mysterious occupation. While it sounds sexist, I do think this is a book than men will enjoy more than women. You can decide for yourself if that means that women are more discerning or perhaps that we are more innately critical. Having said that, the way that the book ends implies that there may be a sequel and if there is, I'd read it.

Good, Action Packed Thriller

Customer Rating:

Nicholas Creel, the owner of a huge weapons manafacturing company, is trying to create a second arms race, to boost his company's ailing finances. To do this he hires a Perception Management firm to create false, but convincing stories of alleged Russian atrocities, over the iternet. This he hopes will enflame public opinion, against that country, and ratchet up tensions between the world's greatest powers. I found this book an enjoyable, easy read. The storyline reminded me a bit of novels by Clive Cussler, as their is a lot of action going on, within the pages. The main characters in the novel, while interesting, come across as a bit one dimensional at times, though, and the character development is not nearly as good as in other books that I have read by this author. However, I feel this book is worth four stars, as it is something of a page-turner. I thought the whole perception management angle was interesting, also, and would wonder how often it is used in the real world.