Just Finished Reading Deliver Us from Evil by David Baldacci

I was first introduced to David Baldacci...who tends to write cloak and dagger spy novels...when I checked out one of his books from my local public library.  It was from his Camel Club series but wasn't the first book...causing continual annoyance throughout it whenever a reference to something or someone from an earlier book was given.  I vowed then to subsequently be careful not to start reading a novel in mid-series, but sometimes I goof up and do it anyway...Baldacci's 2010 novel (once again spy-oriented) Deliver Us from Evil is the most recent example.  It's the second in a developing series featuring the protagonist A. Shaw, a tough, smart guy in the James Bond mold who works for a shadow troubleshooting arm of our government.  There are pros and cons to getting involved in a series, both from the author's and from the reader's viewpoints.  An author, when discovering that his or her "first" book has taken off in popularity, can often decide to expand it into a series that is almost guaranteed to continue to rake in the sales every couple of years or so with each new story.  One the other hand, authors doing this can find themselves the target of criticism if they're perceived to be tardy with their expected output...look at the flack that George R.R. Martin is receiving (largely from me) with his delay in finishing his next A Song of Ice and Fire ("Game of Thrones") book.  Readers, for their part, if they take a liking to the series, can count on a rewarding string of reading adventures. But if it's suspense-based, they already know that the series protagonist is in no real danger and will survive to the next installment.  And they have to take care to read the books in chronological order lest they miss the continually developing background story...even if, like Baldacci's novels or that Kinsey Millhone series of the late Sue Grafton, each book has a separate, self-contained main story line.  My irritation with the missing background story to Deliver Us from Evil notwithstanding, I still enjoyed it while keeping in mind that it is largely escapist literature with an intrepid, though flawed, hero struggling though personal issues to save the day. The story has three adversarial groups: how will they align?  There's Shaw and his superior/helper Frank, the bad guy Evan Waller...an evil businessman who makes money through human trafficking and who has a suspected past in the KGB, and a vigilante assassination group working first to rid the world of Nazi war criminals and then to bump off anyone else they don't particularly like.  The "protagonist" of this organization is Reggie Campion, a young woman with her own past to deal with.  How Shaw, Waller, and Campion come together...well, guess you're gonna hafta read that for yourself...

I give a qualified recommendation for Deliver Us from Evil, but you probably would be better off first reading its predecessor, titled The Whole Truth.  Apparently, that introductory book in the series contains more about journalist Katie James, who also appeared in the book I just read but wasn't as central a character.  I like David Baldacci's writing...I also just recently read a standalone novel of his titled One Summer...so far I haven't found anything I dislike...