‘The Escape’: Satisying as a detective novel, less so as a thriller

David Baldacci's 'The Escape” (Grand Central Publishing, 370 pages, $28) is a meticulously plotted detective novel dressed in the guise of a geopolitical thriller. As the former, it's quite satisfying; as the latter, a bit less so.

The book is the third in the prolific and best-selling author's series featuring Chief Warrant Officer John Puller (and the first your reviewer has read). Puller is asked to investigate the escape of a prisoner from a seemingly inescapable military prison at Fort Leavenworth. The complicating factor: the escapee is Puller's brother, a brilliant man imprisoned for treason.

As his investigation gets underway, Puller gains Veronica Knox as a partner, a woman from inside the intelligence community about whom he has reservations. Their tentative partnership is, unsurprisingly, also the book's romantic plotline, and Baldacci perhaps rushes their relationship along to advance his plot. Still, Puller and Knox's efforts to untangle a thorny set of clues - despite frequent misgivings about one another - to determine what's really going on is well portrayed.

Once the villain of the piece is identified, the thriller aspects of the book kick into high gear. Baldacci pulls off a rather stunning bit of misdirection late in the novel, but some of final scenes are less effective. The villain is somewhat cartoonish and the foiling of the evil plot comes down to one of the most clichéd tropes of the genre.

In the end, Baldacci's ability to conceive and execute his twisty plot trumped the relatively few moments in which things seemed implausible or forced. It's easy to pull for Puller, and 'The Escape” provides just what the title promises.