Video on David Baldacci and his new book, The Whole Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z48rUVUXdy0

The Whole Truth

THE ENTERTAINMENT CRITIC BOOK REVIEW, BY JAMES MYERS
www.theentertainmentcritic.com
www.theentertainmentcritic.net
www.theentertainmentcriticmagazine.com

THE WHOLE TRUTH
By David Baldacci
Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: April, 2008
Price: $26.95
406 Pages
ISBN-13: 9780446195973
Four Star Rating ****

BALDACCI RECEIVED A B.A. FROM VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY AND A LAW DEGREE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. AS A STUDENT, BALDACCI WROTE SHORT STORIES IN HIS SPARE TIME, AND LATER PRACTICED LAW FOR NINE YEARS NEAR WASHINGTON, D.C.

WHILE LIVING IN ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, BALDACCI WROTE SHORT STORIES AND SCREENPLAYS WITHOUT MUCH SUCCESS. IN DESPAIR, HE TURNED TO NOVEL WRITING, TAKING THREE YEARS TO WRITE ABSOLUTE POWER. IT TOOK BALDACCI TWO YEARS TO GET THE BOOK PUBLISHED, BUT WHEN IT FINALLY DID HIT THE SHELVES IN 1996 IT WAS AN INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER.

IT WAS MADE INTO A FILM, ABSOLUTE POWER (1997), STARRING CLINT EASTWOOD AND GENE HACKMAN

BALDACCI HAS GONE ON TO PUBLISH FOURTEEN MORE NOVELS: TOTAL CONTROL, THE WINNER, THE SIMPLE TRUTH, SAVING FAITH, WISH YOU WELL, LAST MAN STANDING, THE CHRISTMAS TRAIN, SPLIT SECOND, HOUR GAME, CAMEL CLUB, THE COLLECTORS, SIMPLE GENIUS, STONE COLD, AND THE YOUNG ADULT NOVEL FREDDY AND THE FRENCH FRIES: FRIES ALIVE! HE HAS ALSO PUBLISHED A NOVELLA FOR THE DUTCH ENTITLED OFFICE HOURS, WRITTEN FOR THE NETHERLANDS' YEAR 2000 "MONTH OF THE THRILLER". BALDACCI ALSO AUTHORED A SHORT STORY, "THE MIGHTY JOHNS", AS PART OF A 2002 MYSTERY ANTHOLOGY.

BALDACCI HAS AUTHORED SEVEN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAYS, AND HIS WORKS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS, AND JOURNALS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. ALL OF HIS BOOKS HAVE BECOME NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERS, TRANSLATED INTO OVER 37 LANGUAGES AND SOLD IN MORE THAN 85 COUNTRIES. OVER 40 MILLION COPIES OF BALDACCI'S BOOKS ARE IN PRINT WORLDWIDE.

DAVID BALDACCI SERVES AS A NATIONAL AMBASSADOR FOR THE NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY AND PARTICIPATES IN NUMEROUS CHARITIES AS WELL AS FOUNDING HIS OWN FAMILY FOUNDATION FOR LITERACY, WISH YOU WELL FOUNDATION.

“AT PRECISELY ZERO HOURS UT, or midnight Universal Time, the image of the tortured man erupted onto the world’s most popular Web site.
The first six words he spoke would be remembered forever by everyone who heard them.
“I am dead. I was murdered.”
He was speaking Russian on the screen but at the bottom his tragic story was retold in virtually any language one desired with the press of a key. Secret Russian Federation police had beaten “confessions” of treason out of him and his family. He’d managed to escape and make this crude video.
Whoever held the camera had either been scared to death, drunk, or both, for the grainy film vibrated and shook every few seconds.
The man said if the video had been released that meant he’d been recaptured by government thugs and was already dead.
His crime? Simply wanting freedom.
“There are tens of thousands just like me,” he told the world. “Their bones lie heavy on the frozen tundra of Siberia and in the deep waters of Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan. You will see evidence of this soon. There are others who will take up the fight now that I am gone.”
He warned that while the world had focused on the Osama bin Ladens of the world for so long, the old evil, with a destructive force a million times greater than the combined Islamic renegades, was clearly back, and deadlier than ever.
“It is time the world knew the whole truth,” he shouted at the camera, then broke down in tears.
“My name is Konstantin. My name was Konstantin,” he corrected. “It is too late for me and my family. We are all dead now. My wife, my three children, all gone. Do not forget me, and why I died. Do not let my family perish in vain.”
As the man’s image and voice faded from view, a mushroom cloud lit up the screen, and superimposed on the bottom of this horrifying visual was the ominous tagline: First the Russian people, then the rest of the world. Can we afford to wait? “

“Wars are the easiest things to start and the hardest things to end.”
---David Baldacci, The Whole Truth


The versatile David Baldacci is back with his new political thriller, The Whole Truth. This novel asks a unique question: What if the entire world, governments, leaders, and citizens around the globe were united on a crusade to stop an evil that doesn’t exist, was completely fabricated, and promulgated in a savvy public relations ploy through mass communications and the Internet. In his 15th legal thriller, Baldacci asks, how would we respond to an imaginary global crisis? Baldacci has elected to take us one step beyond 1984, by giving us a look behind the curtain at the wizard himself.

Nicholas Creed, owner and operator of the Ayres Corporation, is a billionaire military weapons manufacturer who has no boundaries for his ambitions. Creed wants to restructure the world in his own image, and he has the wealth, power and knowledge to do it. He can control world order by manipulating not only people, but entire countries. He wants to take the focus off the Mideast, and bring back The Cold War to put the world’s ire back where it belongs. He hires Dick Pender, former White House staffer and spinmaster, founder of Pender and Associates, a highly profitable perception magician who specializes in “perception management.” ("Dick, I need a war.") Perception management does not spin facts or stories; it prefers to manufacture the facts and sell them to the naïve public as true. ('Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?') Creed needs a war to boost sagging arms sales; Pender produces a fabricated “You Tube” type video, consisting of doctored news footage, and an actor, Konstantin, who claims thousands are being killed by a “Secret Russian Federation.” The actor on the video speaks, 'It is time the world knew THE WHOLE TRUTH.' The result is that the world condemns Russia as mass murderers. A build up of arms between Russia and China begins in earnest. The smear campaign works, enabling Creed to push and escalate an arms race, making his company wildly profitable.

Shaw, a mystery man with no past, working for a super secret agency of the US government, has lived many lives outwitting terrorists, drug lords, skinhead and international wrong doers. He is a James Bond-like figure, and Baldacci’s most intriguing character. As a hired gun, it is his job to find out who and what is behind this great fabrication. He works for this agency under duress (they’ve planted an explosive tracking device in his arm). He’d like to retire and settle down with his fiancee, Anna Fischer, who works for the Phoenix Group think tank. Unfortunately, the think tank is one of the pawns in the Creed/Pender network. The book really begins to heat up, when Anna sends an e-mail critical of the invented Russian story to an Internet blogger. By accident she has put her man into the dead center of this controversy. A team of supposed Russian hit men invade the Phoenix Group and kill everyone in the building --- including Anna. When Shaw learns of this, he re-ups with his agency and vows to find and destroy the people behind this massacre.

A fourth figure in this novel is Katie James, a journalist, who has written a story that turns out to be completely false, and return from Afghanistan an alcoholic barely able to handle her new assignment, the obit column. A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, disgraced and demoted, she is determined to get back into the limelight by landing a major story. Inadvertently, she stumbles on to an operation involving Shaw, who saves her life, but condemns her to life on the run with him. She may have finally found the biggest story of her life; that is if Shaw can keep them both alive. She and Shaw are on the run throughout the U.S. and Europe, just a half step ahead of the killers while trying to work out just what is the whole truth.

Baldacci’s tale is striking on several levels. Well written, great prose, spy-like dialogue and breathtaking suspense make this a great political thriller. The Shaw is a character we hope to see a lot more of. I get the feeling that Baldacci could create a whole series of thrillers around this guy.

Baldacci is the master of engrossing political tomes that are centered on frightening modern realities. The ease that the communications made through the ‘Net can be misused to mislead is a disturbing thought-provoking concept. Video is so easily distributed to your MySpace and Facebook pages, that mass movements, commercial and political, can be created overnight. No one is better at warning about the modern day Big Lie like David Baldacci. Big Brother meets You Tube in this one of kind international thriller. Bond and Bourne have nothing on Baldacci. This is an international spy thriller that you just cannot put down.

We Have Just Opened Our New Website, Your Place for Books, Movies, Music, Games, Review, and Interviews

SHOP, LEARN, READ AND EXPLORE AT THE ULTIMATE ENTERTAINMENT STORE

Hi! James Myers, The Entertainment Critic here. We are announcing the Grand Opening of our new website, The Entertainment Critic.Com found at http://www.theentertainmentcritic.com/. We sell books, movies, music cds, pc/video games and event tickets. We do reviews for best selling books, cutting edge movies, video games, theatre and events, television, and restaurants. We conduct interviews of the best authors, actors, directors, gamers, producers, restauranteers and other interesting people. Please check out The Entertainment Critic. Com and let us know what you think. Constructive Criticism is always apppreciated.

Here is an example of a review previously published on The Entertaiment Critic and in More Beautiful Woman Magazine:

Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death
The Entertainment Critic Book Review, By James Myers
BLONDE AMBITION: THE UNTOLD STORY BEHIND ANNA NICOLE SMITH'S DEATH
By Rita Cosby
Published by Grand Central Publishing, a Division of the Hachette Book Group USA
Publication Date: September 2007
Price: $23.99
244 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-40611-6
EMMY AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST
HOST OF THE TOP RATED SHOW RITA COSBY: LIVE & DIRECT ON MSNBC
HOST ON FOX NEWS LIVE AND THE BIG STORY WEEKEND
INTERVIEWS INCLUDE YASSER ARAFAT, SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, AMERICAN POW THOMAS HAMIL, POPE JOHN PAUL II, TIMOTHY MCVEIGH, MICHEAL JACKSON, DAVID BERKOWITZ, DR. JACK KEVORKIAN
Four Star Rating ****

"Realizing that this is a controversial book, I must remember what my old journalism professor Dr. Lee Dudek taught me years ago. He said that journalism is not a passive business. A reporter's job is to question the answers and actions, especially when intent and motivations may be hidden or unclear, and demand a voice.
My hope is that this book will serve to "connect the dots," provide solid facts in this captivating case, and finally 'break the dam of fiction' regarding what happened to
Anna Nicole Smith and what she wanted for her precious little girl.
I also hope Anna's story will serve as a lesson to us all to be mindful of our friends, careful about our physical well-being, and supportive of those around us who need to conquer their addictions before those addictions consume and, sadly, conquer them."

Shocking, stunning, captivating. Rita Cosby's new book, Blonde Ambition is unsettling in many respects. Rita is like the female version of Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley of our generation. An Emmy-Award winning journalist that has appeared on two major networks, interviewing and reporting on the central historical figures of our time has written this earth shaking book. A credentialed newsperson who has written a new book about a popular figure, who mostly graced the covers of gossip magazines of questionable value. Why would Rita Cosby write a book about the untimely deaths of Anna Nicole and her son Daniel? She tells us in her acknowledgement. She acts as the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves any longer, with the hope that inquiry and investigations to take place in the future will bring the truth to light. Rita had agreed to donate 10% of her advances and royalties for the book to D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).

I have to admit that I was more than a little skeptical. Some of the revelations in this book were so disturbing that the Today Show cancelled its interview with Rita and if you saw how limited O'Reilly's interview was with Rita when the book first came out, you got the feeling that some of the big boys did not want to discuss the material contained in the book. Check out my interview with Rita and draw you own conclusions. I found that she had investigated, documented, and thoroughly researched her facts. She very patiently answered every question that I asked her, and I asked some difficult questions. What is there about this book that has made it too hot to handle? Why should you read it?

Among the alleged statements of fact made in the book that are first time disclosures:
· On Monday, February 5th, Anna was given a shot which later the corner would contribute to her death. It is not clear whether she injected this into herself, or if Howard K. Stern did it or her psychiatrist, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich.
· On the day Anna died, February 8th, 2007, neither Stern nor Dr Eroshevich was present when she died. Howard had gone to finalize the purchase of a boat; the doctor had gone home on Wednesday, February 7th, despite Anna's begging her to stay;
· Dr Khris had prescribed medicine to Anna, that was listed as prescribed for Howard K. Stern and delivered in the Bahamas to a 3rd party-stranger, and then delivered to hotel where Anna was staying for her use. It was observed by many in the book that Stern would administer or give Anna all of her medications from what is referred to as a goody bag.
· On the day Anna died, Stern was not present when she was discovered in an incoherent state. He had left to purchase a boat. He arrived at that appointment 1 hour early. When he was told of Anna's plight and that he'd have to come back, his response was "Oh, ok." His tone was described as a monotone, unemotional response. Most of the phone calls he made that day were related to business.
· There was a tremendous delay in contacting 911 to respond to Anna's plight. Emergency services were called at about 1:38 pm. Anna was discovered in a comatose state about 12:44 pm.
· When Stern arrives at the hotel room at 1:51 pm, he's described as fidgety, waiving his arms about and screaming. He did not go initially to the hospital with Anna. He made numerous phone calls at this point in time, most related to business, including to Entertainment Tonight.
· In the summer of 2006 Daniel Smith, Anna's son, met with a private investigator, requesting that he investigate Howard K. Stern and the people that surrounded his mother in the Bahamas. According to investigator Jack Harding, Stern was giving his mother drugs and had given him drugs, that Stern was keep her from Daniel and that Daniel was deathly afraid of Stern. Daniel felt Stern had made Anna a prisoner, and Daniel wanted her out of there. A month later, Daniel was dead. The business card of Jack Harding was found, still on his person.
· On September 10th, 2006, Daniel Smith died in a hospital room where his mother had just given birth to a baby girl just two days before. Daniel was discovered dead and subsequently pronounced dead around 10:05 am, when attempts to resuscitate him had failed. Stern supposedly took pictures of Anna holding her dead son that he sold to Entertainment Tonight for $600,000.00. Before the police could investigate the scene, Stern removed the goody bag, which allegedly contained an assortment of drugs he doled out to Anna on an as needed basis. There were also 2 pills found in the bed where Stern had slept. These pills were discovered by a nurse, taken by police and analyzed. On Larry King, Stern stated that Daniel had spend sometime sleeping in his bed, but nurses on duty that night reported that Daniel was in a chair or the bed with his mother. The pills were determined to be Methadone, a narcotic and Carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant. Both pills were part of prescriptions written for Anna. Howard later two pills found in Daniel's pockets and flushed them down the toilet. Stern told the coroner on the Bahamas, that there was no way drugs played a role in Daniel's death. It was later determined that 2 drugs Daniel was prescribed Lexapro and Zoloft inn combination with the Methadone caused Daniel's death.
· Afterwards, Anna on occasion accused Stern of killing Daniel.
· Chloral Hydrate was prescribed for Anna. Over the last 5 months of her life, a total of 1800 pills. A normal dosage is about 500 mg/day. Anna was taking 5,000 mg/day for the last 37 days of her life. This drug is a sleeping medication that depresses the central nervous system, called knock out drops or a Mickey Finn, this same drug was felt to claim the life of Marilyn Monroe. It was felt that the combination of the drugs she took, plus the Chloral Hydrate caused her death. It was felt that an infection had started from the injection she was given, and simple hospital treatment would have saved her life, prior to the ingestion of the chloral hydrate.
· Anna was taking medication, like Speed, from Trim Spa that caused her to loose weight.
· The book alleges that Stern was stealing money from Anna and sending the money to his parents and to offshore accounts
· Larry Birkhead was considered to be just a sperm donor for Anna
· The will that named Stern as executor appears to have been altered
· Larry Birkhead and Stern may have cut a deal giving Stern the house in the Bahamas and Birkhead the baby. A deal was cut despite the fact that Birkhead was represented by counsel, and it appeared that he was going to be awarded the child by virtue of his succeeding in the paternity test.
· Birkhead and Stern had a homosexual encounter
· Both men agreed to exploit the baby and Anna to make millions of dollars

I don't know the truth or falsity of the allegations Rita makes in her book. But she does offer some compelling arguments that this was more than an accidental overdose complicated by the incredible misfortune of a son's death. The truth will someday be known to all, but I suspect that in the end, Rita Cosby's book will be just what she intended it to be; a voice for those who can no longer speak for themselves.