The Target

At the start of bestseller Baldacci’s tense third thriller featuring CIA hit man Will Robie (after 2013’s The Hit), Earl Fontaine, a terminally ill Alabama death row prisoner, plans one last killing that will personally affect Robie and his fellow agent, Jessica Reel. Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., the U.S. president authorizes an operation to assassinate a foreign leader. Evan Tucker, the head of the CIA, recommends Robie and Reel, whose recent exploits have earned them the CIA’s highest medal, for the job. When that mission is scrubbed, Robie and Reel end up attempting a dangerous incursion into North Korea to rescue a couple of prisoners from the notorious Bukchang labor camp, a move that results in North Korea deciding to retaliate against the U.S. on its own territory. In unsparing detail, Baldacci depicts the brutal conditions in the North Korean camp, in particular their impact on 25-year-old Yie Chung-Cha, a prisoner groomed as a deadly assassin. Agent: Aaron Priest, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. (Apr.)