Stone Cold by David Baldacci

This is the third book in the Camel Club series. It would be impossible not to like and hate the characters that Baldacci has created. This story further develops all of the main characters that have been set up in the first two books. There’s Oliver Stone, a.k.a., John Carr, the ex-CIA master assassin; Caleb Shaw, the rare book guy from the Library of Congress; Reuben Rhodes, the muscle of the group who has other talents; and Milton Farb, the true genius of the group with OCD. Given that the members of the group are all in their early 60s, they are easy for me to identify with. In the last book, Baldacci added the bad ass Jerry Bagger, casino owner, and his antagonist, the beautiful Annabelle Conroy, ace con woman, who successfully swindled the maniacal Mr. Bagger out of $40,000,000. In this book, Baldacci cleverly intertwines the troublesome past spy/espionage/assassination history of Stone/Carr with the current conflict of Bagger and Conroy. Not all of the characters survive the end of this story, and I can see good possibilities for the continuation of the saga. This was a good read and I’ll continue with the next one in the series. It’s of my “airplane book” category – enjoyable and entertaining, while not being more than that.