Spoilers!
And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you, er, meddling old people and your conwoman! David Baldacci’s 2006 book, The Collectors, is a great popcorn political thriller with some Scooby-Doo shenanigans thrown in, replete with a disguise reveal at the end, no less. This is the second in Baldacci’s The Camel Club series about four outcasts in society — Oliver Stone (fake name), a CIA-trained assassin who is one of the permanent protesters in front of the White House; Reuben Rhodes, former DIA employee; Caleb Shaw, a nervous Nellie who works at the Library of Congress; and Milton Farb, a savant with a photographic memory — who stumble upon cases, often involving national security, to solve. In the previous book, which I haven’t read (and rarely do I do this with a series, but I was set to read this one and wanted to follow through!), the group teamed up with a Secret Service agent, who does feature in this book minimally, too. However, in The Collectors, their team-up is with the aforementioned conwoman, Annabelle Conroy. Luckily, this is one of those series where you don’t necessarily need to have read the previous one to understand what’s happening here. The outcasts are defined early-on, Annabelle is well-developed as a new character, and it’s a book with spy intrigue, rare books, and murder afoot. What more could you want?
Annabelle puts together a team of “outcasts” of her own to begin pulling short-cons and then one long-con on a casino owner in Atlantic City. The casino owner, Jerry Bagger, is cut from the cloth of mob bosses of old. He’s vicious and violent. Annabelle’s father was in the con game and taught Annabelle. When the father crossed Bagger, Bagger killed Annabelle’s mother, hence why she wants to pull a long-con over him to the tune of $40 million. It works flawlessly. A member of her crew, Tony, a cocky and brash type, and brought in for his hacker skills, was always the fox in the hen house of Annabelle’s carefully crafted plan, though. Thanks to him, instead of Annabelle absconding with millions of dollars to never hear from Bagger again, Bagger is on the hunt.
Moreover, instead of Annabelle actually absconding out of the country as originally planned, she instead heads to Washington D.C. for the unexpected funeral of her former husband, who worked at the Library of Congress in the Rare Books section. They were briefly married after she met him in Vegas (where she was conning people, obviously), but his mother pressured him to end the marriage. Still, her past feelings implore her to go to the funeral. That’s where she runs into the Camel Club and becomes a honorary member upon hearing their suspicions that her former husband’s death was suspicious.
As readers, we know the death is suspicious because of the point-of-view Baldacci offers of Roger Seagrass, a ruthless CIA-trained assassin-turned-spy, who is selling out secrets to the highest bidders overseas in conjunction with a lowly Capitol Hill staffer. Together, they’re ensuring their trading of secrets for money continues unabated, which means assassinating the Speaker of the House, a big-time CEO of a defense company contracting with the government, and the aforementioned Library of Congress employee until they have to turn their deadly gaze upon the machinations of the Camel Club.
I loved the competent, effective, clever, and creative Stone and Annabelle characters, who also worked well together to uncover the plot. At first, they assumed the CEO of the defense company, who happened to be neighbors to the Library of Congress employee, was the man pulling the strings on the, well, string of murders. Then when he’s killed, they realize it must be someone close to the Speaker of the House who orchestrated his death. Thanks to Caleb’s job at the Library of Congress, Stone and Annabelle are able to learn more about how the plot all ties together, including that seemingly old patrons checking out old books are spies, too! (I happily called that one!)
It really did become a Scooby-Doo-like mystery and cat-and-mouse game, particularly bolstered by the seeming mismatch between Seagraves and the aged Camel Club members, with the added fact of Caleb’s nervous Nellie stature — that did provide the comedic relief contrasted with Stone’s stoicism and Annabelle’s surefire confidence, though. But that’s also why Seagraves lost in the end because he underestimated the Camel Club’s doggedness, ingenuity, and particularly Stone’s deadliness, owing to his assassin training. And finally, in the end, we also get the Scooby-Doo reveal where it turns out a rare book seller is also the conservationist at the Library of Congress who has been helping Seagrass and his minions trade and sell secrets. One of the Camel Club members quite literally pulls his beard and wig off.
The only plot thread Baldacci doesn’t resolve, presumably holding it for the third book in the series, is the fate of Annabelle. In fact, the last few sentences of the book are Bagger gleefully closing in on Annabelle’s location. While I would think she’s done being a honorary member of the Camel Club, which is a shame, I hope we do get resolution in that third book and she doesn’t die. My guess is that each Camel Club book has a different “fifth member” rotating in who has relevance to what the Camel Club needs. Also, I have to say, Baldacci’s book really made me want to visit the Library of Congress. Despite going to Washington D.C. numerous times, I’ve still not yet been inside the Library of Congress. For shame.
There’s nothing derogatory about a good old-fashioned popcorn book. I had a blast reading this, and had no issue turning off my brain for a bit to let the action and mystery unfold. I enjoyed the characters, their interplay, and how they conceived of solving the mystery. And Baldacci achieved the goal of anyone writing a series: propelling me on to the next book!
Milam's Musings 