Book
Reviews
|
|||
|
Go to Executive Times
Archives |
|||
|
The Christmas
Train by David Baldacci Rating: • (Read only if your interest is strong) |
|
||
|
Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
|
||
|
|
|||
|
No Twain Some train lovers might like David
Baldacci’s new novel, The
Christmas Train. Readers who are looking for the next “It’s a Wonderful
Life” might see an amusing page or two. Most of the rest of us can take
another train instead of reading this book. Here’s an excerpt that explains how the
protagonist came to take the train (pp. 4-5): He'd slept for three hours at a
friend's apartment in New York before heading to the airport to catch a
flight to Texas. He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty
pageants there, which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much
as the next person. At the security gate at La Guardia, the search wand had smacked
delicate things of Tom's person that it really had no business engaging,
socially or otherwise. Meanwhile) another security person managed to dump
every single thing from Tom's bag onto the conveyor belt. He watched helplessly
as very personal possessions rolled by in front of suddenly interested strangers. To put a fine finish on this
very special moment, he was then informed that a major warning flag had been
raised regarding his ID, his hair color, his clothing choice, or the size of
his nose. (They were never really clear on that actually.) Thus, instead of flying
to Dallas he'd be enjoying the company of a host of FBI, DEA, CIA, and NYPD
personnel for an unspecified period of time. The phrase
"five-to-ten" was even bandied about. Well, that, coupled with his
exploited physical parts, was his absolute limit. So, the lava poured forth. Langdon was six-feet-two and
carried about 220 pounds of fairly hard muscle, and real honest-to-God steam
was coming out his ears. His eruption involved language he ordinarily wouldn't
use within four miles of any church as he launched himself at the security
team, grabbed their infamous search wand, and snapped it right in half. He
wasn't proud of his violent act that day, although the rousing cheers from
some of the other passengers who had heard and seen what had happened to him
did manage to lift his spirits a bit. Thankfully, the magistrate Tom appeared before had recently
endured airport security of an extremely overzealous nature, and when he gave
his testimony, she and Tom shared a knowing look. Also, the red flag raised
at the security gate had been, shockingly, a mistake. Thus Tom only
received a stern warning, with instructions to enroll in anger-management classes,
which he planned to do as soon as his uncontrollable urge to maim the fellow
with the search wand subsided. However, the other consequence of the blowup
was that he'd been banned from placing his miserable person on any air
carrier that flew within the continental United States for the next two
years. He hadn't thought they could do that, but then he was shown the
appropriate statutory power in the microscopic print of the airline's legal
manifesto under the equally tiny section titled "Lost Luggage Liability
Limit—Five Dollars." And that's when he had his
epiphany. Being unable to fly, his usual and necessary way of traveling, was
an omen; it had to be a sign of something divine, something important. Thus
he was going to take the train to LA. He was going to write a story about it,
traveling by rail from sea to shining sea during the Christmas season. He had
a grand motivation, beyond spending the holiday with Leiia. Tom Langdon was
one of the Elmira, New York, Langdons. To those with a keen knowledge of
literary history, the Elmira Langdons brought to mind Olivia Langdon. Olivia,
besides having been a lovely, resilient, if ultimately tragic person in her
own right, gained lasting fame by marrying the loquacious orator, irascible
personality, and prolific scribe known to his friends as Samuel Clemens, but
otherwise known to the world and to history as Mark Twain. David Baldacci, though, is no Mark Twain,
and you may prefer to read something by Twain instead of The Christmas
Train. Also, if your first thought on reading the above excerpt and being
introduced to Tom was “jerk,” you won’t be disappointed if you read The
Christmas Train and watch his character develop. Steve Hopkins, December 23, 2002 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the January 2003
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
|||
