Having survived combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and been decorated with medals, Travis Devine leaves the army in mysterious circumstances, under a cloud of suspicion. And at thirty-two years old, he’s swapping fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda for a different kind of danger in the cut-throat world of high finance.

His daily commute on the 6:20 a.m. train into New York’s financial district, to his new job as an analyst at the powerhouse investment bank Cowl and Comely, takes him into a world where greed, power, jealousy and ambition result in the financial abuse of the masses and the enrichment of an elite few.

When a close friend of Devine’s is found dead, the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death at Cowl and Comely compel him to investigate further. As he digs deeper, he discovers strange coincidences and unnerving truths.

As the deaths pile up, and the major players show their hands, Travis must question who he can trust – and who he must fight .

The only other David Baldacci thriller that I’ve read was ‘Split Second‘ (2002) which kicked off his six-book King and Maxwell series. I had fun with it but didn’t take the series any further as I didn’t like either of the main characters.

So, twenty years later, Baldacci launches another thriller series with an action hero at its heart. I hear good things about the plot and the characters and I decide to give it a go.

Twenty years have made a lot of difference. This time around, Baldacci’s characters, while still (almost) incredibly competent, aren’t cut from the white middle-class effortlessly entitled stock that put me off the King and Maxwell series, The plot was fast-moving and action-packed but it was also stuffed with contemporary issues and attitudes that engaged and kept my attention.

This is good solid entertainment. We have multiple murders, flawed main characters with guilty secrets, the creeping corruption of Dark Money, Wall Street Assholery, computer hacking, deep fake technology, secret government agencies and lots of violence ranging from hand-to-hand fighting that would make Jack Reacher proud to the frequent, efficient and lethal use of knives and guns, all moved along by a plot that continues to surprise almost to the last page.

Our hero is an ex-Army Ranger (of course – where else would he get all those skills that make him so hard to kill) who has resigned from the Army, taken an MBA and signed up to work seventy-hour weeks crunching numbers on Wall Street and trying to make the cut for the next level by competing with everyone around him. He’s bright, dangerous and (like pretty much everyone else except the Russian White Hat hacker and the sleazy billionaire) good-looking. He’s also more introspective than Baldacci’s heroes were twenty years ago and more socially aware, He has a (guilty) conscience and is working on Wall Street as a self-imposed penance.

I enjoyed watching his life being de-railed as he stumbles into murders and financial malfeasance and gets coopted by a covert government agency. He copes with it well but I liked that he didn’t just sail through everything. He regrets being back in a place where people keep trying to kill him. He’s disturbed by having to doubt everyone around him. He’s a nice guy who keeps being asked to win the trust of people around him by lying to them about who he is and what his motives are and from time to time, he has to stab, shoot and kill people (all of whom deserve it of course). He’s also surrounded by beautiful, brave, intelligent women, some of whom are keen to have sex with him,

This is the kind of book where I feel I should have popcorn to hand as I read it. I don’t mean that as a criticism. I was totally entertained and consumed this eleven-hour book in two days.

I’ve had fun with this book, so I’ve pre-ordered the audiobook version of The Edge, the second Travis Devine book, which will be released in November 2023.

I recommend that audiobook version of The 6:20 Man. Zachary Webber does a great job of narrating the book from Travis Devine’s point of view and Christine Lakin and Mela Lee improve the listening experience by providing the voices of the female characters. This works so much better than asking a deep-voiced male narrator to attempt multiple credible female voices.