Book Review, Last Man Standing by David Baldacci

Review by: Wekesa Edwin

“Speed, surprise and violence of action” is the motto carried by the HRT for  Hostage Rescue Team, where Web London is a member.

Web London, and his friends the ‘Charlie team’ of HRT , while on a mission,  gets  “Speed, surprise and violence of action” fed at them like mothers milk, in an ambush at an alley by what appears to be a castigation of drug barons in their attempt to frustrate the teams efforts and probably those of their rivals.

It is from this godforsaken den that Web loses all his friends but miraculously survives on instinct when he involuntarily freezes and falls on his gun at the time when the remote controlled guns, strategically planted in the alley, started firing.

He is the sole survivor in the tragic incidence which ironically doesn't augur well for his future he being a HRT guy where surviving your members is not something that is always met with smiles. Suspicion sets in from the bosses at the FBI headquarters, he’s faced with hatred and resentment from the widows and the now half orphaned children who can’t understand why their husbands and dads were wiped out in an operation where Web London survived but can’t explain how.

As baffling as the ambush seems,Web sets himself on a mission to understand the motives and the likely persons behind it. In his pursuit of truth, he stumbles into Francis Westbrook, an equally baffled leader of a drug empire who is out to identify the person behind the ambush, (which apparently happened in his “safe haven” rather area of jurisdiction) probably as a desperate move by his rivals in the trade (who have also kidnapped his brother-cum-son Kevin Westbrook) to bring him, F. Westbrook, at the wrath of the FBI.

Web seeks to answer two questions: First, who set up his team? Propounded by the fact that one of their undercover agents, Randal Cove has gone missing and two, to understand why he froze at the fateful alley which leads him to a psychiatrist firm where he becomes a client to Claire Daniels

Amidst this development, three prominent personalities, a judge, a defence council and a prosecutor are killed mysteriously. The nature of their deaths which came about as explosions of their electronic devices gives Web the hint that the killers must be the same group that earlier had half of his face torn of in a HRT rescue mission at some school where he painfully witnessed the death of a young boy David Canfields. He was traumatised and forever carried the guilt.

Last Man Standing is a masterpiece that will carry you through the thrill of self-sacrifice and dedication of service (Charlie team), suspicion and witch-hunt (senior officials at the FBI), betrayal (Francis Westbrook and his top allies) of love for people and family and of rare love between people and their guns. The HRT stands out as a group of heroes who will not allow havoc or evil to prevail in the rather peaceful society bestowed upon man by nature. Web London comes out as the true, loyal friend to his fallen friends and their families especially since he didn’t have any solid family of his own. You also get to learn, through his psychiatrist’s, of his early life with his abusive step father and the evils he had committed and now seeks to rectify.

Baldacci takes you through a very sophisticated plot allowing you the rare chance to interact with good and bad through the firing and ricocheting of guns as well as the silence and sporadic blabbering of hypnotised, highly trained men of service and their spouses.

The book, though written 13 years ago carries the fresh touch of contemporary living and crime especially in these parts of the continent where loopholes still exist in the confidentiality and information sharing among state security organs and their fighting of crime  besides giving an insight into what society should take of a wrongly accused/vilified citizen.