- Hardcover: 528 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (Jan 1 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0446522597
- ISBN-13: 978-0446522595
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.6 x 0.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 839 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (183 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #203,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
Absolute Power. Total Control. And now The Winner: Baldacci doesn't settle for second best. Here, his heroine, who gets rich after being forced to participate in a fixed lottery, is wanted for murder.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be--poor, undereducated but proud--and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An absolute thrill ride. One of Baldacci's best!,
By
This review is from: The Winner (Hardcover)
David Baldacci set the bar high for himself with his first huge hit, ABSOLUTE POWER (which later became a movie starring Clint Eastwood). He also reaches that bar with this effort, THE WINNER. Combining a plot not previously explored in popular fiction with believable characters and great writing, Baldacci produces a book worthy of a future screenplay.The heroine, LuAnn Tyler, is a young Southern woman who receives an offer she can't refuse...an offer to win millions of dollars in a lottery that is fixed. The offer is made by a mysterious man named Jackson. As the novel progresses, Jackson develops into one of the most brilliant, calculating antagonists of recent memory. The man seems unstoppable! LuAnn's bodyguard Charlie is a constantly important character as is Matt Riggs, who is thrust into LuAnn's life by random chance. As the novel progresses, it thrives not only on the lottery scam but also LuAnn's love for her daughter and her desire to protect her at any cost...and it plays into the hands of the reader, making you ask yourself if YOU would make the same decisions and take the same risks as she had. This added element really adds to the reading experience. All in all, this is Baldacci's best work since Absolute Power. Hopefully, the trend will continue in his future works.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A real page turner....,
By Shoeless (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Winner (Mass Market Paperback)
I read this book many years ago but I'll always have a special fondness it. It was the very first David Baldacci book I have read - I've since read almost each one he has written since. The story kept me captivated and intrigued. When I picked up the book, I was having a sleepless night. I ended up so engrossed in the book that I didn't fall asleep until I read the last page. Baldacci drew me into his story as if I was playing a role in it. I find he makes his characters authentic and people who we can all associate with, but that also have interesting and mysterious streaks to their adventures.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
The winner strikes out,
By
This review is from: The Winner (Mass Market Paperback)
You might think that fixing a $100 million lottery would be rather difficult, but according to The Winner's antangonist Mr. "Mysterious" Jackson it is quite easy! No other explanation is given on how someone could rig the lottery other than people are easily bribed and - don't you know - the last lottery was corrupt as well! It doesn't matter really, the book suffers from a pretty weak story and one dimensional characters. You get twist after twist - standard fair for a thriller, but nothing that is remotely suprising. The protangonist is your stereotypical big boobed heroine who is not only immensely smart and beautiful, but incredibly strong as well. In one scene she gets into a wood chopping contest with a lumberjack and not only does she quickly start to out pace him, she finishes his pile after he has to rest from over exertion from trying to keep up with her. And she can leap huge buildings in a single bound! Come on Mr. Baldacci how about some flaws in the protangonist, she's supposed to be human right? The antangonist "Mr. Jackson" seems to be modeled after the character "Kaiser Sose" from The Usual Suspects. Except he isn't half as interesting. Indeed he seems to have great power, but the author never bothers to explain much of it so it doesn't feel very authentic. What's even worse about the character perspectives is that the author frequently changes from one person's view to anothers, sometimes in the same paragraph. It gets a little confusing when you are reading Luanne's chapter and suddenly you get another persons point of view regarding LuAnne (usually admiring one of her many attributes). The story is moved along by a bunch of very unlikely coincidences and wild twists that are explained by some wild tall tails. Mr. Donovan the maniac reporter locks onto LuAnne based on the statistic that 75% of all lottery winners go bankrupt. He sees that 12 people straight won the lottery without going bankrupt and decides that's just impossible (a pretty amusing conclusion considering the premise of a lottery fix being pretty easy). He of course remembers LuAnne from the bunch and locks onto her. And where does the 75% bankruptcy statistic come from? I'm not sure, since the actual number varies depending on who you get it from (lottery or opponents of the lottery) but generally it is believed to be much closer to 20-30% (still a very scary statistic). Even with a rate of 75% a stretch of 12 winners probably wouldn't seem THAT unuasual when you are looking over a period of 40-50 years. Certainly not enough to justify the intensity at which he goes after her - the first time he confronts her involves a car chase which just about kills the both of them along with a bystander (who just happens to be some sort of ex-spy and involved with working on LuAnne's security fence). Oh boy. Anyway, I can't recomend this book. Too many predictable turns, bogus explanations, and poor character development.
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