One of the best Camel Club novels. Do, however, try to read them in order. Baldacci, tells a great tale and keeps the action coming at you.

I loved this book. I hated when it ended. It is a 511 pages of colorful characters, nail biting suspense with non-stop action. I hate slow moving books, and this is not one. The characters to me were very real. For people who like violence, there's some of that too, but it isn't a super gory book at all. One highlight of the book is a major casino scam, and I do mean major, made possible only by a major scam artist and computer technology. I do hope the author will write a sequel to this book outlining the fates of Annabelle Conroy and "big, bad Jerry Bagger." What a book that would be to see if the great scammer can scam her way out of certain death. I believe Baldacci is a genius story-teller, and all his books I've read have been great. I do appreciate that he limits the raunchy scenes and raunchy language to a minimum and writes a super story without all the expletives. He has class as did Michael Crichton.

When librarian Caleb Shaw's boss drops dead in the Library of Congress' Rare Books Reading Room one morning, right after the assassination of an important politician, only the four members of Camel Club seem to think there's a connection. They start checking into the one link between the two men, an arms dealer who lived next door to the librarian, but little do they know that there are even more dangerous forces at work. Someone in the intelligence community is selling secrets to America's enemies, and they will kill anyone who gets in their way, so when the Camel Club starts digging into the deaths, they find themselves in the sights of some very ruthless men. Meanwhile, Annabelle Conroy is setting up the con of a lifetime...against the casino boss responsible for her mother's murder. She manages to scheme Jerry Bagger out of $40 million, but Bagger is hot on her tail.

The second Camel Club outing was just as much fun as the first, if not more so. Baldacci gave the characters a nice introduction in the first book and this one served to flesh out their characters even more, focusing much this time on fussy librarian Caleb with all his little quirks. The addition of Annabelle to their group livened things up quite a bit, as well, and she and lead Camel Club member Oliver Stone hit it off and develop a nice friendship.

I generally do not enjoy reading thrillers about Washington politics, but Baldacci manages to set stories about everyday people in the heart of Washington without devolving into a bunch of boring fake political machinations. These stories are more about the characters and their lives than political intrigue, even when they involve political intrigue, which gives them a depth and warmth often missing from political thrillers. This book clipped along at a good, page-turning pace while making me care about what happened to the characters within. My second visit with the Camel Club just made me want to read more.

So many authors feel the need to bounce from one story line to another and create a confusing web to keep you on edge. I don't find that kind of storytelling as engaging as a well written straight forward story. This novel does have two storylines which eventually converge and Baldacci does a great job writing a very interesting story.

Now I want to go read the "Camel Club" which came before this story. It was just so good, a rare treat! The group of characters drove the story and keep me enjoying the novel from the first page to the last.

I didn't really care for the story about the lottery winner, but I enjoy the camel club series.

A great thriller is a page-turner that you can't put down until the plot is resolved. The Collectors was mildly entertaining, but it didn't excite me as much as most books in this genre. Baldacci introduced an entertaining character in Annabelle Conroy, but also focused much of his book on his least interesting character, Caleb Shaw. When I finished the book I realized that a lot of the Collectors was about setting up another novel, which might explain why it wasn't as satisfying as I would have liked.