In a world of secrets, human genius is power.

And sometimes it is simply deadly...

A three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., two clandestine institutions face each other across a heavily guarded river. One is the world's most unusual laboratory, whose goals and funding are a mystery. The other is an elite CIA training camp shrouded in secrecy. Now a man and a woman are about to run a gauntlet between these two puzzle factories, straight into a furious struggle to exploit a potentially world-shattering discovery--and keep some other secrets underwraps forever...

Former secret service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have seen their lives splinter around them. Michelle lies unconscious ina hospital bed after a night of suicidal violence. And Sean is forced to take on a thankless investigation into the mutder of a scientist just inside the CIA's razor-wire fence near Williamsburg, Virginia.

Soon he is uncovering layer after layer of disinformation that shields a stunning world filled with elite mathematics, physicists, war heroes, spies, and deadly field agents. Amid more murder, a seemingly autistic girl's extraordinary genius, and a powerful breakthrough in the realm of classified codes, Sean soon learns enough to put his life at risk. Now more than ever, he needs Michelle--at her best--to help stop a conspiracy of traitors operating in the shadow of the White House itself.

From Michelle's courageous struggle to defeat her long-buried personal demons to a
centuries-old secret that surfaces in the heat of action, SIMPLE GENIUS pulses with stunning, high-intensity suspense. The heroes of Split Second and Hour Game, David Baldacci's #1 New York Times bestsellers, are back--as you've never seen them before.

Well, it's for sure that Baldacci will never be accused of word economy. I've read several reviews suggesting the quality of his books are on the decline. I disagree. I read his early work and his later, and both seem spectacularly and consistently and excessively and terribly over-written. His words just get in the way of what might have been a good story had the characters not made so many implausible decisions to support an overly contrived plot. I just want a good story without having to wade through what feels like an explosion in a thesaurus factory.

There is a fascinating style in Baldacci's books. We are always dealing with state business and crime intertwined in the plot. In this case the CIA, the FBI and the DEA are concerned. They are shown as shady and even dangerous if not criminal from the very start. Then two intriguing levels are woven into the narrative fabric. Babbage Town, a research center next to a major CIA base in Virginia. That highly private and secret research center is dealing with quantum computers, the generation promised to us for the next decade or the decade after the next. These computers will be so powerful that there will be no protection against their power and that may make the whole world crash because of an implosion in its mechanical brain (which is a rewriting of the `Terminator' axiom, or that of `Matrix'). Babbage Town is thus dedicated to that research in order to come to results first and have the necessary time to invent the protection before it is released on the market. The author takes great pleasure at sharing the grotesqueness of these scientific geniuses doing the research, and yet their normal ambivalence as for right and wrong, duty and betrayal makes them pathetic in all possible ways. The second level added to the plot is that of the private investigators hired by the owners of Babbage Town to solve the mystery of a suspicious death that seems to be a suicide of one of the scientists on the CIA base. These two people, that couple or pair, have left CIA, Secret Service or whatever, to run private. And they have their own problem, a relational problem, and - for the woman Michelle - some deep subconscious old conflict that disturbs her in her ability to cope with some crisis situation. When all the actors are on the stage you have to provide them with a plot. It is Afghanistan. When the West decided to take Afghanistan over the Talibans had eradicated the cultivation of opium poppies. But the occupation of the country has apparently brought its economy down and opium poppies started to be cultivated again and the brother of the Afghan President has recently been implicated in that drug dealing. The book pretends the CIA has been entrusted with buying this crop to prevent the profit from ending in the hands of the terrorists, and then destroying it. This shows how limited our dealing with the problem of terrorism is, how ineffective. We are not able to bring modern development to the Afghans because we have no way to make it as profitable as opium can be. The idea in the book is absurd because the USA cannot buy all the opium - or heroin - produced by Afghanistan without distorting the market: artificially low offer would increase the price of the drug, which would encourage its production. In other words that dealing with the problem goes against the principles of market economy, increases if not multiplies the problem, and thus is doomed to fail. But the worst part of this aspect of the book is that it shows how our invading Afghanistan was based on our absolute distrust in history and its power to produce progress from the very dynamic contradictions of any situation, and also on our foolish belief that democracy could be exported by military forces and the use of violence. Of course the book is nothing but a novel. So suspend your disbelief slightly. Yet we are dealing with politics and nothing else, so there cannot be any suspension, of any disbelief. It is too dangerous to suspend our disbelief: it breeds historical mistakes or crimes that could be prevented if disbelief had not been suspended (Auschwitz and the Shoah for one example: still in 1938 it was possible to stop the war machine of the enterprising criminals who were starting the Shoah then. But we did not have the courage to do it and we suspended our disbelief, or is it suspended our knowledge?)

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

I loved the "King and Maxwell" series Baldacci has been writing, but I think this book is probably the weakest in the trilogy. The story developed for this book had great potential, but the characters in it were underdeveloped and uninspiring, and the details of the story were often unclear. Overall, the book seemed somewhat rushed. It's a good read if you like Baldacci, but it's definitely not his best.

I've read numerous Baldacci books and honestly wondered if he subcontracted Simple Genius to the author of the children's Encyclopedia Brown series.

This book, while moderately entertaining to read, unfortunately comes across as a one-dimensional juvenile reader genre, comparable to Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Encyclopedia Brown. Possibly a Janet Evanovich / Stephanie Plum episode.

At best, it is a fanciful shallow comic book tale polluted with trite dialog, an overabundance of tangential side plots, and character depth you'd normally have to watch Saturday morning cartoons to find.

Sean is our protagonist hero, in the role of Encyclopedia Brown. His partner and bodyguard, Michelle, plays the Sally Kimball role. There's trouble in Idaville, err, Babbagetown, which is across the river from a scary mysterious hideout run by, is it the CIA? The FBI? ? Bugs Meany and Wilford Wiggins?

It's hard to believe the author of Absolute Power also penned Simple Genius. Like a term-long science project that got started the night before the due date, Simple Genius comes across like a tired collection of cartoonish stereotypes, hokey plot devices, and thinly crafted juvenile dialog. Seriously, I half expected Mama Fratelli and The Goonies to show up and fight for the secret hidden treasure!

I liked Baldacci's other works, but I wouldn't recommend Simple Genius, unless you're looking for the print equivalent of the next "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" movie.

The lead characters - Michelle and Sean - seemed real and appealing in previous Baldacci books. What an incredible letdown reading this one. I finished it ONLY because I was reading it aloud to my wife. Otherwise I would have taken it back to the bookstore and thrown it in the face of the buyer (well maybe not).

If you have to tell someone you've read ALL his books, then read this one. I can think of NO other reason. The characters balance the plot by being unreal and unbelievable. No one acts like a human.

A disgusting bit of work by an author that I had previously enjoyed. I'll never try him again. Disgusting effort. Sounds like he made it up of the contributions of a 6th grade summer class on writing novels.

Other than that, it's size and weight were similar to other books.

Oh, perhaps I should add that I didn't enjoy it?