Simple Genius (©2007)

by David Baldacci

A three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., two clandestine institutions face each other across a heavily guarded river. One is the world's most unusual laboratory, whose goals and funding are a mystery. The other is an elite CIA training camp shrouded in secrecy. Now a man and a woman are about to run a gauntlet between these two puzzle factories, straight into a furious struggle to exploit a potentially world-shattering discovery -- and keep some other secrets under wraps forever...
      Former Secret Service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have seen their lives splinter around them. Michelle lies unconscious in a hospital bed after a night of suicidal violence. And Sean is forced to take on a thankless investigation into the murder of a scientist just inside the CIA’s razor-wire fence near Williamsburg, Virginia.
      Soon he is uncovering layer after layer of disinformation that shields a stunning world filled with elite mathematicians, physicists, war heroes, spies, and deadly field agents. Amid

more murder, a seemingly autistic girl’s extraordinary genius, and a powerful breakthrough in the realm of classified codes, Sean soon learns enough to put his life at risk. Now more than ever, he needs Michelle to help him catch a killer, save an innocent life and solve a stunning mystery that threatens the very soul of the nation.
      From Michelle's courageous struggle to defeat her long-buried personal demons to a centuries-old secret that surfaces in the heat of the action, Simple Genius pulses with stunning, high-intensity suspense. (546 pages)