Usual y a sophisticated plotter, bestsel er Baldacci (Absolute Power) offers a story line and vil ain on a par with an average James Bond film in what’s bil ed as his first international thril er. Nicholas Creel, the head of the Ares Corporation, a huge defense contractor, hires a perception management firm to start a second cold war by planting fake news stories on the Internet about Russian atrocities. The propaganda campaign soon turns violent with the massacre of the members of a London think tank, the Phoenix Group, apparently by a Russian hit team. Creel hopes that the Phoenix Group’s links with the Chinese government wil lead to war between Russia and China as wel as feed a worldwide arms race that wil profit his company. A shadowy operative, A Shaw, whose fiancée perished in the London attack, al ies himself with a disgraced female journalist in an effort to thwart Creel’s evil plot. While some readers may find it a stretch that a resurgent Russia should so easily overshadow al other world crises, Baldacci in an author’s note makes an eloquent case for the very real threat of perception management.
very real threat of perception management.
Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world’s largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. He’s retained Dick Pender to “perception manage” his company to even more riches by manipulating world conflicts. Shaw (no first name), a man with a truly unique past, travels the world reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intel igence agency in order to keep the world at peace — and safe. Katie James, a journalist who wil do anything to get back to the top of her profession, has just gotten the break of a lifetime, the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has stunned the world.
