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It seems many best-selling thriller and mystery writers are cashing in with a relatively slight Christmas book. This is Baldacci¹s contribution to that sub-genre. Tom Langdon, once a foreign correspondent, but now a feature writer of inconsequential articles, decides to take the train from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to visit his current girlfriend for Christmas. Instead of a simple train journey, he encounters numerous events which force him to examine his life and determine his goals anew. There are all the conventional elements here: a handsome hero, a cast of quirky and singular characters, a former love of Tom¹s, a celebrity and his staff who all turn out to be just human too, the complication of his current girl friend arriving to join him on the train, and a disaster to the train giving Tom the opportunity to be a hero. The penultimate events are rather maudlin, perhaps more so in the hearing than in the reading. There is also a thief aboard the train and Tom manages to solve that conundrum as well before reaching Los Angeles where his new life awaits him. What I enjoyed most about this book was the train. . . or rather the two trains, one from D.C. to Chicago and the other, following the southern route, from Chicago to L.A. This book could be seen as a paean to train travel. With the train whistle in the distance and the leisure to meet and cultivate novel and intriguing acquaintances, it is easy to understand why this would be so attractive. It might have been more attractive if Baldacci had not worked so hard to convince us, primarily by putting long speeches of didactic acclaim in the mouths of several characters. Not only were they annoying, but they really interrupted the flow of events. Even so, I found myself wishing I could take a long train journey and also remembering some that I have taken, like that overnight sleeper to Rome. But I digress. The book is adequately read by Tim Matheson whose voice can portray many of the characters. Unfortunately reading Baldacci¹s prose aloud only accentuates the prosaic and often rather clunky writing. When reading a Baldacci thriller, I think one often hurries through, pulled by the story and not noticing that the writing really is not very good. But listening to each word forces the reader to notice. The characters are very two-dimensional and stereotypical. Tom is a hero, albeit reluctant and sometimes self-deprecatory. Eleanor is a heroine. The former girl friend, Lelia, is a gold digger and a selfish egoist. The train passengers, for the most part, are a collection of traits. . . the Irish priest, the goodhearted fat lady, the down-to-earth director, the young lovers hoping to marry even without their parents¹ approval. The fact that many of these people are not what they seem does not change the lack of authenticity. One very annoying fact about the recording is that there was nothing to indicate that you had finished listening to one side of the tape. Oh, yes, the train whistle blew, but it blew often to end chapters as well. So I continued listening long after the speaking was finished just to make sure. And there was no announcement of which tape and which side you were listening to. For those of us who listen in our cars and must fumble for the next tape often without taking our eyes off the road, this is a serious omission. Even so, I loved the trains!
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, March 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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