A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci
A Calamity of Souls
by David Baldacci
Historical Fiction | Mystery | Thriller
480 Pages
Released April 2024
Rating: ★★★
Goodreads
Content Warnings
This book has been on my TBR list for a while now and when my hold came through at the library I decided it was finally time to pick it up. I’ve never read any of David Baldacci’s previous works so I was curious as to how this would go.
This book follows Jack Lee, a lawyer during post Civil-Rights 1968 in Southern Virginia. When a horrifying murder occurs in Jack’s hometown, resulting in the death of a well-to-do elderly couple, a black employee by the name of Jerome Washington is quick to be blamed. After some convincing, Jack hesitantly agrees to represent Jerome, who claims he is not responsible despite being found at the scene of the murder. Having never defended a murder case, Jack is out of his depths, until Desiree DuBose enters his life. Desiree is a black lawyer with a passion for racial and social justice. In a world still filled with deep racial divide, the two must work together to bring justice to their client.
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, this isn’t something new or ground-breaking. In fact, it’s quite similar to a lot of courtroom racial divide stories already out there (think To Kill a Mockingbird or A Time to Kill). The characters felt very stereotypical and rather flat and I felt disappointed that there was nothing new or refreshing about this story other than, perhaps, Desiree or Jack’s mother. I suppose if I wasn’t familiar with the aforementioned stories, I’d probably have a more positive reaction to this book but readers who read a lot of these type of books may be bored by the familiar material.
That said, I still found it to be an engaging courtroom thriller, though I must admit I don’t read a lot from this genre subset. I thought the writing was engaging, the pacing was good and I felt interested from start to finish. Again, because of the flat characters I didn’t necessarily feel as invested as I was hoping to, but because the plot was interesting I didn’t feel the urge to skim-read. I also found this book reads fairly quickly despite its nearly 500 pages.
While overall this book was good, I wish the author had pushed the envelope a little more and brought something new to the table. That said, it’s a solid (albeit typical) courtroom thriller and I would still recommend picking it up.