David Baldacci

David Baldacci is an American thriller writer and one of the genre's most prolific and consistently bestselling names, with over 150 million books in print and dozens of New York Times bestsellers since his 1996 debut, Absolute Power — a political conspiracy thriller adapted into the 1997 film starring Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. A former trial and corporate lawyer, Baldacci writes fast-paced, plot-driven thrillers usually built around a recurring investigator, and he has run several such series in parallel for decades, including the Camel Club novels and King & Maxwell, itself adapted into a 2013 TNT series. His two flagship series today are Memory Man, following Amos Decker, a former football player and detective whose brain injury left him with perfect, painful recall, and the Will Robie novels, about a government assassin sent on missions even his own agency won't officially acknowledge. New readers are best served starting with Memory Man for the Decker series or The Innocent for Robie, since both launch strong ongoing arcs. Baldacci has also written the young-adult Vega Jane fantasy quartet and standalone novels including Wish You Well, for which he wrote the film adaptation's own screenplay. He continues to publish multiple new novels a year, including a new series launched in 2025 with Nash Falls.