TWO SUSPICIOUS DEATHS
When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that’s not the truth?
ONE YOUNG SURVIVOR 
Betsy Odom doesn’t trust the police but when she finds herself in the FBI’s custody after her parents’ deaths, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the authorities aren’t so sure.
ONE MAN ON THE RUN
Enter Travis Devine. Trying to escape a skilled predator who wants him dead, Devine finds himself as Betsy’s bodyguard. But when an informant is found murdered, Devine knows this job is perhaps even more dangerous than the one he’s running from . . . and the true enemy may be on his side.

I’d enjoyed ‘The 6:20 Man‘ and ‘The Edge‘ so I had ‘To Die For’, the third Travis Devine novel, on pre-order. I dived in as soon as it appeared on in my Audible Library and was immediately glad that I’d bought the book. From the opening, I thought it was going to be the best in the series so far. I had no idea what was going on and I wasn’t trying to figure it out. I was happy to just enjoy the read, confident that whatever the bad guys were up to, Devine, through a mix of determination, sacrifice, violence, empathy, analytical ability and fast reflexes, would find a way to stop them.

The storytelling was a nice mix of mystery and almost cute character-building, spiced with intermittent explosions of violence that Devine has to find a way to survive. It helped that I like Devine. He’s a rule follower with empathy and a strong protective streak but without any of Reacher’s weirdness. For the first half of the book, ‘To Die For‘ was great entertainment.

BUT…

…reading isn’t just about the text, it’s about what you bring with you when you’re reading the text. ‘To Die For‘ was published on 9th November 2024, so one of the things I brought with me was the outcome of the US Presidential Election four days earlier. That changed my experience of the novel. When, in the second half of the novels, it became clear that a key element of the plot was the attempt by multiple US Federal agencies to frustrate the plans of well-funded and well connected white supremacist domestic terrorist groups to overthrow the government, I had difficulty sustaining my interest. This newly published book suddenly felt atavistic. White supremacists don’t need to overthrow the government any more. After Trump’s inaugeration, they will BE the government.

I think Baldacci did a great job but I think he built a beach house in the path of the tidal wave of history.

If you can read ‘To Die For‘ as an entertaining thriller, free of the current political context, then I strongly recommend the audiobook version. All of the narrators are good and I really like the techniques of having some of the dialogue spoken by people other than the main narrator.

Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.