This is the fourth book in David Baldacci’s Camel Club series, and follows on very soon after the resolution of its predecessor volume, Stone Cold. Following the shooting of Carter Gray, former director of the CIA, Camel Club leader, Oliver Stone, is on the run. Not wanting to cause any additional disruption to the lives of his friends, Stone disappears.

Following a series of unforeseeable mishaps, Stone finds himself in Divine, a small town in West Virginia. The town is in decline, and there are only two local employers of any size. One is the coal industry, although the extraction of coal from the mountainous area offers only a grim and highly dangerous life. The other is the nearby Federal ‘super prison’ which contains hundreds of extremely dangerous convicts, most of whom have been shipped there after proving too dangerous to be incarcerated within more conventional jails.

Stone finds that life in this remote town seems almost as dangerous as he had found it in Washington DC. Wherever he goes he seems to find himself having to intervene in vicious fights. Meanwhile, he is being hunted down by Joe Knox, one of the CIA’s most efficient agents who has been tasked with killing Stone, rather than merely arresting him.

This is all fairly standard Camel Club fare, and Baldacci keeps the tension high. At times the book almost seemed like a modern version of a Clint Eastwood western (possibly High Plains Drifter), in which a solitary outlawed man wanders into a town beset with woes, and strives to redeem it. Baldacci’s writing style suits the content – there is no flowery prose, just a strong gripping tale, told without distraction. ( )

Suspense

(2008)Just when you thought this gang was done for, they breathe again. Oliver Stone (John Carr) is on the run from the Feds who are after him for the murders of two prominent government officials. He finds himself in Divine VA a sleepy out of the way mining town. He quickly gets embroiled in a series of suspicious deaths that ultimately lead to the crooked warden of the prison just outside of town. He is being pursued by CIA agent Joe Knox who comes to believe that Carr is being persecuted but still guilty of the 2 murders. They both are captured by the warden and tortured. The warden is running a drug ring out of the prison and Knox & Carr bring him down in the end. OK story.KIRKUS REVIEWBaldacci (The Whole Truth, 2008, etc.) moves his recurring Camel Club characters far enough offstage to let tough guy hero Oliver Stone take on a mean mountain town singlehandedly (for a while, at least) in something of the fashion of Lee Child's Jack Reacher.The dark American hole in need of a flushing out is Divine, a tiny burg in Virginia's far southwest coal country where quietly modest Vietnam hero Stone, n? John Carr, has landed. It's not where he was going. He had been getting the hell out of Washington, D.C., where heavy-handed, stonehearted, government forces were about to close in on him, but he couldn't help stepping into an unfair fight brewing in his Amtrak coach. Handsome, youngish ex-high school quarterback Danny Riker was stupid enough to accuse knuckle draggers with whom he had been playing cards of cheating, leading to a knock down drag out in which Stone wasted all of the thugs and incurred the wrath of the Amtrak conductor, making it necessary for all involved to get off at the next stop. Stone takes Danny under his wing and Danny reluctantly takes Stone back home to Divine and his pretty mother Abby, owner of Divine's best diner. Stone notes quickly that Divine has a gloss of prosperity very unlike the neighboring hellholes. That sheen doesn't extend to the downtrodden miners whose hideous labors keep them gobbling methadone day after day. Where's the money coming from? There is one other visible industry, a supermax prison run by the brother of the handsome, straight-shooting sheriff, but that doesn't explain the prosperity. Stone begins to nose around the place, running up against numerous unsavory characters, saving lives when possible, getting mad when not, dodging the usual falling safes until his probing causes him to wake up buried alive in a dead coal mine. There is a dalliance with Abby, but the evil feds close in on Stone so it is necessary for his Camel Club cohorts to dig him out in the end.Tighter than the writer's most recent efforts, but far from spellbinding.

FROM AMAZON: Known by his alias, "Oliver Stone," John Carr is the most wanted man in America. With two pulls of the trigger, the men who destroyed Stone's life and kept him in the shadows were finally silenced.
But his freedom comes at a steep price: The assassinations he carried out prompt the highest levels of the U.S. government to unleash a massive manhunt. Behind the scenes, master spy Macklin Hayes is playing a very personal game of cat and mouse. He, more than anyone, wants Stone dead.

With their friend and unofficial leader in hiding, the members of the Camel Club risk everything to save him. Now, as the hunters close in, Stone's flight from the demons of his past will take him from the power corridors of Washington, D.C., to the small, isolated coal-mining town of Divine, Virginia-and into a world every bit as lethal as the one he left behind.

Divine Justice is a book from the opening page through the end is a thriller. The characters are all believable. The settings, although some horrible, are all believable. The book received five stars the highest rating for a book. It is a thriller. It is a book that one did not want to end. Enjoy! ( )