Nash Falls
Nash Falls (Walter Nash, #1)
By: David Baldacci
[Fulfills the prompt: ‘Book featuring a character pretending to be someone else’ for the Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge]
In short: This is like The Accountant meets Taken meets The Fugitive meets a regular businessman with a head tattoo.
And I gotta be honest.. I was not diggin’ this book for the first 30-40%. I didn’t like ANY of the characters. There was a lot of swearing and sexual content and I wasn’t sure where it was even headed.
Had I known about the swearing and sexual content I’m not sure I would have picked it up. But I am at least happy to say that after 50% the book got much better!
I still didn’t like most of the characters, but you at least develop a few that you like and the plot becomes a little more noble. A lot of the swearing comes from one particular character who is a Vietnam vet and not that it makes it easier to take in, but I guess it helps it make a little more sense .
I’ve had this ARC for too long now and had already also got the second book so I was a little nervous that I wasn’t going to want to read the second book after all. But Nash Falls ends on a pretty big cliffhanger so now I’m very glad to have Hope Rises all queued up and ready to go! No waiting for me!
In case you’re wondering, Nash Falls is not the name of a picturesque series of waterfalls. Knowing the sequel is named Hope Rises, you get a better understanding of the nature of this book.
The main character, Walter Nash, has a similar personality and intellect to The Accountant (the guns, muscles, and fighting show up in the latter part of the book) and works at a company worth billions. He’s living the good, rich life until he’s approached by someone from the FBI about Nash’s boss:
“‘Let me cut to the chase. The FBI strongly believes Rhett Temple to be a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people over some highly illegal business… That’s why I’m here, to recruit you as our inside person to build a case against Temple and his partners and tear down the whole nefarious enterprise, brick by brick.’”
Nash is not given much of a choice and begins his role as informant/whistleblower. Pretty much immediately things go south. Even though he’s aware that the three lower-level informants before him were found out and murdered, he is unable to stop his 19-year-old daughter, Maggie, from being taken.
It’s not quite like The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins— instead of actually doing something wrong, Walter Nash is framed for a bunch of terrible things he didn’t do and he’s not rising by rebuilding his reputation, he rises by doing a secret couple-year stint of Rocky-style fight training montages compliments of his late father’s Vietnam buddy (Shock) and remakes himself into a completely different person named Dillon Hope with a head tattoo who now has a special set of skills and is going to Liam Neeson the crap out of the people who kidnapped his daughter.
So. Yeah. You get it.
Nash stops being the boring, rich guy who puts work before family and becomes the protective loving father who will do anything to get his daughter back. Likeable character.
Shock stops being the obnoxiously rude and hostile war buddy who takes the side of Walter’s estranged dad and becomes the confidante and stand-in father who teaches Walter everything he knows, giving him the loyalty he previously demonstrated for Walter’s dad. Still obnoxious but likeable character.
Maggie and her dad have a really meaningful conversation right before she gets kidnapped so you also root for Walter to get her back because you want them to be together again.
Other than that… everyone else is pretty shady, shallow, disgusting, or immoral. But now that we have a noble revenge arc and the lines are properly drawn, I can understand and respect the story.
Obviously stories like these require some suspension of belief and I’m all good with that, but one critique I had with how the story played out was when Rhett finally went to Nash’s house to ask Judith more questions. The answers led him to search Walter’s study where he finds the letter Walter got from his dad after his passing which immediately sends him to Shock’s compound.
That was too easy. You’re telling me when the ‘crime’ first occurred and Walter was the prime suspect the police didn’t search his study?! It’s not like Rhett found the letter in a secret spot. It was just in the desk. But this letter in a desk just sat there for like two years untouched?
No. The police would have searched the study, found the letter, and been immediately led to Shock’s ‘secret compound’ that was conveniently listed under his real name for some reason. Walter would have been found.
I think Baldacci needed to make that whole discovery make more sense and been more difficult considering how much time had passed.
But moving on.
The second part of the book gets more exciting, you are more invested, and you’re ready to see some bad guys brought down!
Nash Falls ends with Nash’s full transformation and re-entrance into his old life as a new man, his plan in motion to go after the people who kidnapped his daughter. These are really bad people with deep and wide ties in high places all over the globe, endless resources, and billions of dollars riding on the protection and maintenance of their ‘enterprises’. How Walter is going to infiltrate and take that down all by himself is the problem for the next book and I’m ready to see how it goes!
“I failed the people I was supposed to take care of. But I may have gotten a second chance to make restitution, at least in a small way. And I will sacrifice everything I have, including my life, to make it right… I will try my best. And I’m Ty Nash’s son. .So bet against me at your peril.”
Recommendation
If you love Taken or any movie/book where the guy’s wife or kids are killed or kidnapped and the guy goes heroic rage-style to get revenge, then yeah, I think you’re going to like this book— as long as you don’t mind or can handle some of the other content.
I think the swearing and sexual content would probably be the only reason I would warn against people reading it. So you’ll have to decide if that’s a factor for you.
Or if you saw my Reggie Dinkins reference and think Nash Falls will be like that… you will be highly disappointed.
I will add that if you read this book, you are basically signing up for two books (unless Hope Rises ends on a cliffhanger, then it’s more) because you will not get closure until you read the next one. I think it would be hard and a little depressing to read this one and not keep going unless you’re able to easily forget about it; there’s some hope in this book but we don’t really see any redemption yet. I’m hoping that comes next!
[I’ll try to update and clarify that part once I finish Hope Rises— I already started it!]
If you like the concept of this story but want it without a ton of swearing and sexual content, I would highly recommend Out for Blood by Ryan Steck, Broker of Lies by Steven James or even Baldacci’s Memory Man books (though I read the first of that series a really long time ago and am not sure what content it had). The first two for sure I recommend to everyone— they are great!
[Content Advisory: 37 f-words, 101 s-words, 10 b-words, 59 a-words, 6 blasphemes; infidelity and several scenes throughout the book of somewhat graphic, though short, sexual encounters and sexual harassment; a couple male side characters are married to each other but it’s not a plot point or major part of the story]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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