A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci

A Minute to Midnight is the second book in the four book series by David Baldacci regarding FBI Special Agent Atlee Pine. I recently reviewed the first book, Long Road to Mercy, and I immediately started reading the second one. This adventure for Atlee picks up exactly where book one ended, with a visit to Daniel James Tor, a serial killer who was residing in the federal supermax prison in Colorado. She learned he had been operating in the area of her childhood home in rural Georgia, and she hoped he would tell what had become of her twin sister who had been kidnapped right out of their bedroom. At the same time, the kidnapper viciously struck Atlee in the head, causing her to have skull fracture, nearly killing her.

 

Part of the mystery had to do with how the kidnapping could have occurred if her parents were in the home, drinking and smoking marijuana, as they claimed. Her family then slowly fell apart. When Atlee was away at college on her 19^thbirthday, her father committed suicide. They, shortly thereafter, her mother simply disappeared without leaving a note or any clue. Atlee had no idea if she was still alive. Atlee was a gifted athlete who completed for the Olympic weight-lifting team, but missed getting on the team by a kilogram. It was then that she chose the FBI as her career path. 

 

Meanwhile, she had avoided going to therapy to help with her mighty abandonment issues and her anger was sometimes not successfully contained. In this story, her FBI boss gave her some time off to pursue the mysteries of her family and for the first time, she revisited her home in Andersonville, Georgia, the home of the infamous Civil War prison. She found people who remembered her family and knew of her early tragedies. But then, the story got even more complicated as she learned the truth about her paternity, and suddenly some of the people she was investigating were also disappearing.  

 

This book is worth the read, but the pursuit of Mercy and their mother is far from complete. Meanwhile, the time for her leave is running out. One character that is carried over from the first book is Atlee’s administrative assistant, Carol Blum, but there are many new characters who Baldacci has used to fill out the story. I’ve already begun reading the third book, Daylight.