Ticket 2 Ride

I don’t know how he does it, publishing as many books as novelist David Baldacci manages, sometimes two in a year. He’s back with A Calamity of Souls (Grand Central Publishing, 2024), a stand-alone mystery (not part of an existing series) about a murder trial.

As I’m writing this review, David Baldacci’s email newsletter appears in my inbox. Baldacci has been promoting the book and in an interview with Northern Virginia Magazine said much of the book, not the story per se, but the setting and the atmosphere of the time, was autobiographical. Baldacci is a native Virginian and was a lawyer, like Jack Lee in the novel. “And this is a book that has been percolating for a while in my head, and I wrote it off and on for over a decade, he said. “I got to the point where I don’t even know if it’s relevant anymore. And then I went back and read some of what I’ve written and I felt like well, if I didn’t tell you it was 1968, you would just assume it’s contemporary, so I thought it’s probably still relevant.”

So the setting is 1968, in Freeman County, Virginia. A young, white lawyer teams up with a young, Black lawyer to represent a Black man (and later his wife) accused of murdering an elderly white couple. The air hangs thick with racial tension. This case is not simply about a Black man on trial, this is a case the white lawyer can’t be allowed win, there’s too much riding on a conviction.

In Baldacci’s story, the deck is stacked, and jokers keep being added to the deck. Baldacci is a master of setting the underdog up against the odds. His books dial up the suspense, and if the protagonist gains a foothold, Baldacci throws a banana peel into the mix. This is how Steven Spielberg constructs his films, giving the audience a sliver of hope, and then throw another challenge or setback at the hero.

Baldacci is normally good at constructing his characters, making them believable, but here they are almost too good or too bad. His heroes need a few flaws and imperfections like his secondary characters. Don’t get me wrong, Baldacci is a Best Selling writer with a gazillion books sold in every language including the extinct ones. I’ll give him credit, he does try and show several of his characters changing in the last part of the book, but it feels a little forced, and preachy at times. Small complaints.

I don’t intend to give away any more of the plot, sorry about that. At the end of a Baldacci mystery, someone you never expect is the guilty party, and those involved in the journey come through with a changed perspective or become better people from the experience. Or they end up dead, which is really a surprise.

“From her satchel she slipped out an old copy of the Green Book, a publication that she and her family had used for many years and that told Blacks where they would be welcomed while traveling, allowing them to avoid danger. As a child she vividly recalled that her parents would always leave long before dawn when the family was driving to the South, to avoid traveling late at night. You didn’t want to end up in a sundown town on the wrong side of the clock, when whites went looking for Blacks to arrest or kill.” from A Calamity of Souls

One of the characters in the book is named Cheryl Miller, a news reporter. Cheryl Miller is a real person, who is also a journalist and new anchor. When Miller interviewed him recently, Baldacci compared 1968 to today, the divides in the country, with nasty racial overtones. “This book is a nice history lesson with all the things we faced as a country,” he told Miller. “And we are still standing at the end of the day.”

“Much like Native Americans forcefully sequestered onto reservations, Blacks had thus been relegated to areas where the housing-dilapidated though it was-and other associated costs were exorbitant, the jobs scarce and low-paying, the crime and drug use high, the loan sharks and pawnbrokers ubiquitous, the imperious police omnipresent, and the deep feeling of inferiority and isolation inspired and demanded by the white community rampant. How could anyone really be happy being told where they had to live?” – from A Calamity of Souls

He’s right, the story could be set in 2024 instead of 1968. Same ingrown prejudices, new generation. Yes, history can hurt people’s feelings when it points out our failings and resistance to change. History can be a bitch for holding up a mirror.

Baldacci says that this book began when his wife gave him a journal as a present, twelve years ago. Another journal user. Maybe there’s still time for me!