This best-selling author had an Aussie holiday. It became a thriller in the making

Let’s start with a spoiler alert. The plot of the Lunch With column often rests on the restaurant chosen by the dining subject. As with Chekov’s gun, an interviewee doesn’t pick a takeaway sandwich shop unless they want to show how salt of the earth they are; or a nose-to-tail restaurant if they don’t intend to espouse the virtues of sustainable farming practices. But novelist David Baldacci has never been to Australia before, so it’s up to me to frame the story.

Where’s appropriate for one of the world’s top-earning authors who has sold so many novels that biographies seem to have reached an unspoken agreement that it’s always “more than 150 million copies”? A man who counts American presidents as fans, and some as friends (more on his wild boat ride with George Bush senior later). I consider a deli, as Baldacci writes so frequently at one near his home in Northern Virginia, about 30 minutes outside of Washington, DC, that the owners have installed a plaque above his usual seat that reads, “David Baldacci’s Remote Office”. Perhaps a dive bar, where I could imagine some of his thriller leads, like Amos Decker, John Puller or Will Robie, trading information. Or, perhaps, a bookshop café as Baldacci is a passionate campaigner against the book bans sweeping the US and established the literacy foundation Wish You Well.

David Baldacci was working as a trial lawyer as he wrote his debut novel Absolute Power.

In the end, I settle on Bambini Trust Restaurant and Wine Room, a white tablecloth Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the historic St James Trust Building, opposite Sydney’s Hyde Park. I explain my reasoning when we sit in a cosy window seat, looking out on a city still shell-shocked by storms, as gentle piano chords play in the background. The building, in the heart of the court district, is home to the chambers of legal bigwigs. Baldacci was a trial lawyer in Washington for nearly a decade. The cuisine also speaks to Baldacci’s heritage; his dad, a mechanic, was the son of Italian migrants. Plus (and I concede this one is a bit of a reach), Bambini Trust opened in 1997, the year Baldacci’s debut novel Absolute Power became a blockbuster film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

Baldacci graciously accepts my reasoning, and expertly weaves together the threads with a story about the Italian publication of Absolute Power, which he wrote over three years while working as a lawyer. “The publisher’s problem was that everybody wanted American thrillers, so they thought with ‘Baldacci’ readers would think, ‘he is Italian’ and the thriller wouldn’t be first-tier. So, they wanted me to change my name,” Baldacci says. “Luckily, we had just bought a car. I was on the phone and I looked out, and I said, ‘OK you can call me David Ford.’ They were like, ‘Oh my god, that’s so American.’ So number one bestseller, David Ford.”

There are no shortage of fun anecdotes during lunch with David Baldacci.Credit: James Brickwood

His second novel was published under the name David B. Ford; his third as David Baldacci Ford. The book covers weren’t wide enough to fit any more names, he jokes, so he has since been published as David Baldacci in Italy. Yet, he still meets readers who know him as “the car guy”.

Baldacci says people mostly recognise his name, rather than his face. He goes undetected at Bambini. Indeed, a couple seem to request to move to a table away from us, confused by the recorder and the photographer, even though I feel assured the well-to-do mister has picked up a Baldacci or two for his business-class trips.

Wearing a bright mandarin knit polo and a Florida tan (he lives there during winter), Baldacci stands out against the dreary weather. For entrées, we both order the buffalo mozzarella, which arrives with the perfect amount of wiggle. As he sips a tall glass of Coke Zero with lemon through a candy-striped straw, Baldacci jokes that he could be in a soft drink advertisement. When he turned 61, he quit drinking (despite having built an impressive European-style wine cellar in his main house in Virginia).

The buffalo mozzarella at Sydney’s Bambini Trust.Credit: James Brickwood

“I’ve always worked out and been very healthy, but it was time to take back control of that. I never drank to excess, but I feel a lot healthier,” he says.

Baldacci, now 64, has an aura of longevity to him, like the Tom Brady of letters. He played sports as a young man including baseball and football (he wasn’t the quarterback) and wrestling helped him get a scholarship to Virginia Commonwealth University. Now, he uses a workout app, but mixes it up with the bikes, rowing machines and elliptical.

“When I tell people I stretch 45 minutes every day, they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s crazy.’ But put this in perspective. That means for 23 hours and 15 minutes every day, I’m not,” he says.

Plus, he’s walked more than 450 kilometres since he arrived in Sydney on December 21. He’s never been to Australia before, but his wife, Michelle, was keen to celebrate a birthday so it turned into a family affair. His two children, daughter Spencer, who is following her father’s footsteps into law, and son Collin, who works in advertising, came too. They’ve been staying in a rented house in Darling Point in Sydney for nearly a month. Baldacci’s touched a koala, hiked in the Blue Mountains, enjoyed seafood at Doyle’s and visited the Julie Mehretu exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The bill.

Australia hasn’t featured in any of Baldacci’s soon-to-be 60 novels (he chuckles when asked if he remembers them all – he does). Might the star of his latest series To Die For, the soldier turned finance analyst turned Homeland Security undercover agent Travis Devine, dine at Bambini Trust? A wry grin. But turns out, I’m not too far off the case.

“I’ve been taking notes while I’ve been down here because I think a new 6:20 man [Travis Devine] will be set in Australia. He’ll fly down for a mission and things will happen,” Baldacci offers. “I get my ideas when I wake up every day and I walk out the door so you have to adjust your mentality to seize opportunities that might come your way.”

Baldacci writes two, sometimes three, novels a year. He doesn’t need pristine conditions; he’s a planes, trains and automobile kind of writer. Even now, on holiday, he’s working on two books simultaneously. Some tourists leave Australia with a jar of vegemite, but Baldacci is pocketing plots. He’s already decided a character in a novel he’s writing will own an artwork by Julie Mheretu.

Actors Ed Harris and Clint Eastwood in Absolute Power.Credit: Getty Images

“People ask how many hours of the day I write, I don’t know, I just know I do it a lot,” Baldacci says, as he twists his fork around scampi pasta with graceful expertise.

Baldacci’s novels have dominated bookshelves for years, and soon they’ll take over our screens as well. During the past 18 months, there’s been a steady stream of streamers knocking at his door. There are adaptions with Netflix, Amazon and NBC Universal on the way, as well as talks with Apple.

Baldacci meets producers, writers and showrunners to understand their vision, and he’s happy to give his input on scripts and stars. Yet, he doesn’t want to have the final say. The film version of Absolute Power had a different ending to the novel because, back then, Clint Eastwood didn’t die in his films. The legendary screenwriter, William Goldman, called Baldacci one evening, pulling his hair out.

“He said, ‘I can’t figure how to keep the son of a bitch alive. Do you want to have a shot?’” Baldacci says, with the timing and tone of a professional comedian. “I was like, No, I don’t. I spent three years writing a book that killed him.”

David Baldacci earlier in his career, in 1997.Credit: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Baldacci is used to people turning their noses up at commercial genre fiction, but quotes Mark Twain on his literary detractors: “Those people write wine, I write water. Everybody drinks water.” But part of Baldacci’s skill is that beneath the great plot twists, his novels are deeply interested in morality, justice and political machinations.

Baldacci apologises a few times for “lecturing” as our conversation moves between health care, tax, climate change and wage inequity. He’s addressed Congress and been to the White House a few times, plus rubbed shoulders with a few of its famous residents.

He became friends with the Bushes after Barbara Bush wrote him a fan letter, and later invited him to stay at their estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

“I went out on a boat with Bush senior who is a total daredevil maniac on the boat. I wasn’t sure we were coming back alive,” Baldacci says. “Years later I went back up to see them. Mrs Bush answered the door and she says, ‘Oh, George is out on a boat. Do you want to go for a ride?’ No, I did not want to go for a ride ... It’s all about staying alive.”

Bill Clinton is also a fan – Hillary reportedly buys a Baldacci novel for him each Christmas. Baldacci was selling books to support a local bookstore when he was introduced to Barack Obama and his daughters, who were doing their Christmas shopping.

“Obama stops. He turns around, ‘David Baldacci, he’s famous?’ I was like, yeah, the most famous person in the world is saying I’m famous.”

However, Baldacci’s not expecting fan mail from Donald Trump as “he doesn’t read”.

As we wrap up lunch, it’s clear Baldacci is as much a storyteller in person as he is on the page – leaving his listener eager for more. You can’t help but wonder what twists and turns his next chapter – both in fiction and in life – will take.

David Baldacci will be in conversation at The Capitol Theatre in Melbourne on January 28 and at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney at noon on February 10.

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