A Review: Saving Faith by David Baldacci

Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Vision (September 1, 2000)
ISBN-10: 0446608890
ISBN-13: 978-0446608893







 The characters in this book are pretty typical for a Baldacci novel...

• Smart beautiful heroine
• Strong handsome hero
• Evil political bad guy
• Hired assassin

Although not his best, Saving Faith is enjoyable, but not riveting.  Faith Lockhart works for Danny Buchanan, a highly successful Washington, D.C. lobbyist, and together they bribe politicians to gain support for their humanitarian causes.  Evil done in order to do good.  CIA super-patriot Robert Thornhill knows about their activities and begins blackmailing Buchanan.  Thornhill is obsessed with regaining primacy over the FBI and will stop at nothing to attain his goal.  He is not above hiring an assassin to get rid of Faith after she goes to the FBI.  In the meantine, Buchanan hires our hero, private investigator Lee Adams to follow Faith and report back to him. 

Lee saves Faith from the assassin and together they go on the run.  The CIA follow Lee and Faith, and the FBI follow the CIA on an exciting chase from Washington to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The novel is a bit overdone with too many heroes and too many sub-plots, making it a bit cumbersome to get through at times.  However, it moves fast and is full of suspense and action.
 

Synopsis (from the author's website)

Not far from Washington, D.C., in a wooded area of Northern Virginia, a small house at the end of a gravel road serves a secret purpose. With its sophisticated security apparatus and hidden miniaturized cameras, it is being used by the FBI to interview one of the most important witnesses the agency has ever had, a young woman with an incredible story to tell. But a few people know about the secret meeting. And for them, a violent drama is about to begin.
One man -- a local private investigator named Lee Adams -- has come to the house on the orders of his client. Another man, a hired killer, stakes out the house on orders from his powerful paymasters. And the witness, Faith Lockhart, is coming to tell the FBI everything she knows about the powerful lobbyist with whom she has worked, a man who manipulates U.S. government policy and who, in the process, made some very dangerous enemies.

Then, before Faith can tell her story, the hit man pulls the trigger and the wrong victim falls. Now Faith Lockhart is on the run -- from the most dangerous people in America -- with Lee Adams, a man she doesn't know, yet must trust. A relentless chase novel that unfolds as both the FBI and a killer search for Faith and Lee, this is also a searing and utterly suspenseful tale of power gone mad in Washington, and of one woman's desperate attempt to break out of a web of corruption and terror that reaches much further than even she can know. Saving Faith elevates the thriller to a new level and poses stunning questions about the rules we live by, the rules we are governed by -- and what happens when some people make rules of their own.