Overview: Editorial Review

Last Man Standing has the essential elements of a terrific DavidBaldacci novel: a tough but tender-hearted hero, dirty dealings in the nation'sbureaucracy, and a roller-coaster plot. Web London, a member of the FBI'sHostage Rescue Team, froze up on a drug raid and thus became the sole survivorof a remote-controlled ambush that killed six of his compatriots. Now the onlywitness has disappeared and the inside man on the botched raid has goneunderground. As a pretty psychiatrist puzzles over the corners of Web's brain that kept himalive, Web himself stays on the move. He's certain that the ambush is connectedto the prison escape of a neofascist leader, Ernest B. Free, whom he helpedarrest five years earlier, and a series of new murders leads him to a Virginiahorse farm and the driving force behind all the carnage. It may seem as thoughBaldacci gives away the mastermind too soon, but both the bad guys and the goodguys are complex enough that there's plenty of punch all the way to the lastpage. --Barrie Trinkle