6:20 Man a Good Thriller with Too Much Military Nonsense

 

 

THE 6:20 MAN (2022)

By David Baldacci

Grand central Publishing, 417 pages.

★★★

 

 

 

A book labeled “A New York Times Best Seller” means it sold a lot of copies, not that Times critics liked it. The Best Seller tag has been applied to David Baldacci for so long that I decided to check out his latest, The 6:20 Man. My mixed review: Loads of thrills and loads of contrivances.

 

Travis Devine, the book's titular character, is so-dubbed because six days a week he gets up at 4 am for a vigorous workout, showers, and catches the 6:20 train from Mount Kisco where he shares an apartment with three roommates, and commutes to his job in Manhattan. He's a “Burner” in the investment firm of Cowl and Comely, his status an indicator that he and other recent hires are vying to remain on staff. That requires that they make scads of money for the firm. Travis hates his job and the workplace is toxic, but he left the U.S. Army under less-than-ideal circumstances and got an MBA. Coincidentally he’s trying win parental approval, which is unlikely; they disapproved even more strongly when he entered the military.

 

One morning he receives an untraceable email with the message, “She's dead.” She is Sara Ewes, a woman with whom Travis had a very short and clandestine affair, as she too worked at Cowl & Comely and interoffice relationships are frowned upon. Her death was ruled a suicide but changed to a homicide, which causes Karl Hitchcock of the NYPD to question Travis. Soon tongues are wagging, but who sent the email and how did anyone know he had slept with Sara? Can it get worse? Yep. He is summoned to a meeting with Emerson Campbell, an ex-Army officer now working with a powerful government agency. He knows that Captain Devine, an Army Ranger, was responsible for another officer's death. How and why don't matter; Travis either plays ball with Campbell or will spend the next 30 years in Leavenworth. He wants Travis to bring down Cowl, a slimy Machiavelli akin to a Wall Street Elon Musk.

 

This is the tip of the iceberg in a novel dealing with billionaires, funny money, and dangerous people. Cowl is an egoist with a modernist McMansion the 6:20 passes each day. Among its amenities is a gorgeous exhibitionist girlfriend whose poolside antics can be viewed through a gap in the trees where the 6:20 pauses. She titillates with colorful string bikinis and, once, by wearing nothing at all. She is Michelle Montgomery, Cowl's girlfriend of the moment, not that prevents him from also having sex with Jennifer Stamos, another top official at the firm.

 

The 620 Man is filled with characters with baggage. If Hitchcock is NYPD, how is other homicide agents in the office have never heard of him? What about Devine's roommates? There's Will Valentine, an overweight pizza-and-beer-loving Russian immigrant who works from the apartment as a hacker. What's the deal with yoga-loving Helen Speers, an NYU law school grad allegedly studying for the bar exams but whose books don’t seem to have been opned? Or Jill Tapshaw, who seeks venture capital for a franchise of dating apps? Why is Travis harassed by three guys, jumped in an alley, and forced to kick the crap out of them? How is that one of them is Christian Chilton, an old friend of Michelle's who owns more of Manhattan than Native Americans ever did? Why does another email alert Travis another colleague has bit the dust, and how is his face on a video inside the office the night she was murdered?

 

Welcome to the world of international finance, erstwhile lords of the world, dark web activity, spying, big guns, and Army Ranger machismo. There's even a teaser involving a Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot. The 6:20 Man is a heart-stopper in the mode of writers such as Lee Child, Tom Clancy, and Robert Ludlum. If you know their work, you know blood will be shed, men will be men, gals will be bedded (with some twists), and butts will be kicked. If this is your genre, you'll like The 6:20 Man.

 

Credit to Baldacci for masterful suspense and not tying things together in a neat bow. Yet there is much that’s not my cup of tea. Among them is slobbering over the military. Travis Devine has a Rambo-like side in that odds don't seem to matter. Plus, the oooo-he's-a-Ranger stuff gets my back up. Baldacci does take down the “Thanks for your service” cliché, but I'm not buying Special Services invulnerability. I also found Baldacci's conspiratorial worldview hard to stomach. He might be right but if so, we're so screwed I'd rather not know about it.

 

Rob Weir