David Baldacci is in my regular “mental floss” book rotation – whenever one of his books comes out it immediately ends up in the “read when you need a break from serious stuff” pile.  His latest – The Camel Club – didn’t disappoint me.  It started off slower than most Baldacci books and it took me 100 pages to get completely sucked in.  When I finished, I realized that he needed more time to set up all the characters in this one, as he had a large number of interconnected plots.  My evening was sacrificed to the reading gods as I downed 300 pages of riveting storytelling.  Spies, conspiracies, government corruption, secret societies, old CIA training facilities, presidential kidnapping, secret service heroics, many bad guys (some Americans), a bunch of scary dudes running the country including a few that thought nuclear war was a solution, computer hacks, meglomanics, near miss surveillance incidents, characters with major pasts coming back to haunt them, OCD, a little romance, and excellent gunplay made for a good evening.