Total Control

June 24, 2013
Sidney Archer is sent reeling when she learns that her husband Jason, an executive at a top technology conglomerate, was aboard a plane that went down with no survivors. Then she gets some good news: Jason didn’t make the flight. And some bad news: he’s on the run from the FBI, which suspects him of causing the crash. And now, Sidney is being chased by Lee Sawyer, a hardboiled FBI special agent who is falling in love with her, and a resourceful, relentless assassin, who isn’t. Jonathan Marosz narrates this audio edition with a high energy, breezy style that not only maintains, but intensifies, listener interest. He also manages to clarify the author’s detailed explanations of how various cutting-edge technologies work by vocally emphasizing key points. Marosz selects voices that match the attitudes of the novel’s many characters, from the puzzled but determined Sidney to the equally determined and logical Sawyer, whose gruff delivery softens as his feelings for Sidney intensify. A Vision paperback.

September 1, 1996
With sales of his first novel, Absolute Power (LJ 11/15/95), topping 300,000 copies and a movie version scheduled for release in spring 1997, Baldacci is living high on the hog. In this second effort, a woman seeks the truth about her husband's death in a plane crash.

November 15, 1996
Baldacci burst on the thriller scene with "Absolute Power" (1995), which stayed on the "New York Times" best-seller list for more than four months. "Total Control" is even more suspenseful, and it is also far more interesting in terms of the questions it raises about how much technology controls us. Baldacci's ruthless characters wield the latest in action weaponry, laptops, and cell phones. Everyone still carries guns, but they're fighting over computer disks and trying to outsmart each other with frantically typed e-mail. Except for a sabotaged airliner that hits the ground with enough impact to practically disintegrate, creating a huge crater in rural Virginia and killing a couple of hundred innocent people, and a bunch of vicious murders, all the crime is online, involving the stealing of top-secret financial documents pertaining to high-tech companies with names such as Triton and CyberCom. Baldacci's heroes are also a mix of the old and the new: a bighearted FBI guy and a beautiful, high-powered attorney who really just wants to stay home and take care of the kids. Maybe so, but when her husband disappears, Sidney Archer transforms herself from corporate deal-maker into a gun-toting momma with a sure shot and enough smarts to outmaneuver her very angry, very evil assailants. Good and slick. ((Reviewed November 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)

January 13, 1997
FYI: The film version of Absolute Power, starring Clint Eastwood, will be released in February 1997.

January 1, 1997
Sidney Archer is devastated when she hears that the plane carrying her husband to Los Angeles has crashed. But her nightmare begins when she learns he'd traded identities and flown to Seattle instead. Evidence suggests that Jason Archer was selling corporate secrets to a high-tech rival. Soon Sidney herself is caught in a web of intrigue as wealthy men vie for more power and money. Fired from her law firm, pursued by hired killers eager to recover an encrypted computer disk Jason had mailed to himself, Sydney finally trusts only the FBI agent who believes her innocent. No one is immune here from high-tech snooping and violent death. Baldacci writes strictly for action, not wasting time developing characters or setting. Few books have higher heaps of dead millionaires at their conclusion. The scant literary value won't deter those who snatched up his first book, the best-selling Absolute Power (LJ 11/15/95), or keep them from standing in line to see the film version, due in February. Public libraries will need a copy or two to meet demand, especially with a major publicity blitz planned. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/96.]--Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ. Minn.