Product Description

People are dropping dead in Washington, D.C. First the Speakerof the House falls victim to a hitman in a carefully orchestrated murder infront of dozens of the city's power elite. Next, the director of theLibrary of Congress's Rare Books Room dies in a book vault, but no oneknows how. Caleb Shaw, Camel Club member, nearly falls victim, too. Acrossthe country, a gifted con woman assembles an A-list team to pull off one ofthe most audacious scams ever, against one of the most dangerous men in theworld. When the worlds of Washington and the elite con collide head-on, theCamel Club finds itself teamed with a person they don't really trust butwhose skill helps them unravel a secret that threatens to bring America toits knees.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156913 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-17
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 10
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Baldacci's entertaining if overly long sequel to The Camel Club (2005), renegade CIA agent Roger Seagraves has set himself up in the business of freelance assassination and selling our country's secrets to the highest bidder. The Camel Club, a group of four dysfunctional crime solvers headed by ex-CIA assassin Caleb Shaw, becomes involved with Seagraves through a killing at the Library of Congress, where one of the club members works. Meanwhile, an enigmatic young woman, Annabelle Conroy, is assembling a team to engineer a "long con," a $33 million scam targeting Jerry Bagger, the sleazy owner of an Atlantic City casino. This time around, Baldacci wisely tones down the wackiness of the club members, focusing instead on bringing Seagraves to justice while Annabelle works her ingenious scam. The splicing of the two plots is problematic, but Baldacci sacrifices a bit of believability to cobble together a new cast of characters destined to continue fighting the forces of evil in the next installment. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The four disillusioned, aging gentlemen featured in Baldacci's 2005 best-seller, The Camel Club, are back in this engaging offering. The ringleader of the eccentric Washington, D.C., group (comprising obsessive-compulsive computer-whiz Milton Farb, decorated Vietnam vet Rueben Rhodes, and slightly rumpled library-scholar Caleb Shaw) is an ex-CIA conspiracy theorist who goes by the pseudonym Oliver Stone. All are reunited when Shaw's boss, the Library of Congress' director of Rare Books and Special Collections, is found dead. (Might he have been killed for possession of a rare collection of Puritan psalms?) Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away, sexy scam artist Annabelle Conroy avenges her mother's death with a fiendishly clever con pulled on a nefarious Atlantic City casino magnate. Though his two plots converge in a rather contrived way, Baldacci delivers crisp, economical prose and a cast of spies, misfits, and assassins that would make even the most patriotic citizen question the American political system. The best of the characters include gorgeous, gutsy newcomer Annabelle and the wonderfully idiosyncratic Stone, who spends many a day camped out on the lawn across from the White House with a sign that says, "I want the truth." Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Reed characterizes Conroy with a sexy, commanding voice and flirtatious manner. The fast pace and intricateplot won't disappoint Baldacci fans. (Audio File 2007)

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable, but not his strongest effort...
It wouldn't be October without the publication of a new David Baldacci thriller, and The Collectors is his latest for 2007. While I enjoyed The Collectors, I don't think it is his strongest effort.

The Collectors is actually two stories. In the first, the Speaker of the House and a curator at the Library of Congress are both murdered (the second is made to look like natural causes). Caleb Shaw is a librarian at the Library of Congress, and he is also a member of the Camel Club (introduced in the book by the same name). The Camel Club consists of four misfits (nearing senior citizen status) who form a secret conspiracy watchdog organization. They decide to investigate the deaths and immediately, they discover they're being followed by agents who could be FBI, CIA or NSA. The subplot involves four individual cons who launch a scheme to swindle an Atlantic City casino owner out of $30 million. The ringleader, Annabelle Conroy, becomes immersed in the Camel Club's investigation when she attends the funeral of the library curator. The closer they come to the truth, the more endangered their lives become.

All thrillers have a bit of disbelief in their stories, and The Collectors is no exception. I don't think Baldacci was on top of his game with The Collectors in terms of plot development. Plus, the ending never really resolves all the questions and is just an opening for a sequel. While good, it doesn't come close to his earlier works including Absolute Power and A Simple Truth.

Perhaps Baldacci's Best Yet. Sit Back and Enjoy This One!
David Baldacci's ensemble of fascinating and brilliantly created characters in `The Collectors' coupled with two intertwining plots of murder and a clever financial con make for a completely enjoyable and page-turning read. Following his best selling hit `The Camel Club' with some familiar faces and the addition of the sultry yet incorrigibly scandalous Annabelle Conroy, readers will be continually amused and entertained as Baldacci, as if a grand maestro, intertwines and blends the character action and movement with such ease and storyline pleasure. As usual and expected in Baldacci's novels, readers will be left turning the pages, in this case as the plot moves to a very interesting conclusion when the World of Washington politics and those involved with a long-term swindle are forced to collide. Folks, sit back and enjoy `The Collectors', it very well may be David Baldacci's best yet.

You have to give this one a chance, its worth it!
I agree with the previous reviewer that you have to give this book a little time. Through the first half of the novel I was wondering how the two separate plots were ever going to come together in any realistic way!

On the one hand there is a death by seemingly natural causes of the head librarian of the Library of Congress, and the assassination of the speaker of the house. On the other is a con woman who is trying to job a crooked casino owner out of over 30 million! Like I said, you'll be questioning whether the author will ever be able to bring these plots together in any cohesive way. But Baldacci manages to do IT! The twists and surprises will leave you shaking your head and wondering why you did not see them coming! This book is highly recommend for light entertainment (think beach or plane book).