Mercy by David Baldacci

 

Mercy by David Baldacci is the long-awaited conclusion to the four-book search for FBI agent Atlee Pine’s twin sister who was kidnapped when the pair was six years old from their home in Andersonville, Georgia. Atlee does not know that her sister Mercy has survived kidnapping and torture, creating a new life for herself as Eloise Cain because she cannot recall anything but fragments of her life before the abduction 30 years ago.

On the bookshelves November 16, 2021, this thriller leads Atlee to Asheville, North Carolina, where she is on the trail of psychopath Desiree Atkins, who gave Mercy the name Rebecca and held her captive for 10 years, making her a slave in the household and abusing her with cigarette burns, knife carvings, and pin stabs before Rebecca escaped the shack in which she was imprisoned.

Atlee caught a break in her search for Mercy in Book 3 when she learned the identity of Mercy’s kidnapper, and she is on leave from her job and following that lead with her assistant Carol Blum. Meanwhile, Eloise has been surviving by her wits and brawn as she has been moving around the country taking any job she can get from truck-lift operator to security guard to a mixed martial arts challenger.

When Mercy-turned-Rebecca-turned Eloise hears on the radio that Rebecca Atkins is an FBI person of interest, Eloise begins to double down on her efforts to disappear because she fears that she will be arrested for the murder of Atkins’ husband who she knocked out while escaping her chamber of horrors. Little does Eloise know that along the way she has made another enemy who puts a plan into action to take her out because she killed his brother while defending a woman during a domestic dispute.

Those who have followed this long road to Mercy with Atlee through the three previous novels will not be able to put this volume down until they learn the outcome of Atlee’s quest to find out what happened to her sister.

David Baldacci’s debut novel, Absolute Power in 1996, became a popular movie starring Clint Eastwood. A former lawyer, Baldacci has published more than 40 novels for grownups over the last 25 years.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 4, 2021.

I would like to thank Hatchette Book Group, Grand Central Publishing. and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.