Thriller writer David Baldacci selects his own personal favourites out of his 30 bestsellers

ABSOLUTE POWER (1996)

Absolute Power was my first novel and it’s always going to be a favourite. I’d been writing since I was a kid. I spent 15 years writing short stories but you can’t make a living that way. So I had to go to college and spend 10 years practising law as a way to earn money, but I always kept on writing. If I didn’t love writing, I would have stopped years ago, because I got so many rejections. At the time I was writing screenplays, trying to break into Hollywood – I even had an agent in Los Angeles – and it was around this time I had the idea for Absolute Power: what if a burglar witnessed the President of the United States committing murder? It took me around three years to write Absolute Power. At the time, I had a full-time job, so I would work all day, come home at night to see my young family, and then write from 10 at night until three in the morning. It sounds draconian but that was the only time I had to write.

I wrote the whole 500-page novel and compiled a list of agents who’d successfully placed debuts, because that told me they had the wherewithal to get a first novel through. I sent it to half a dozen agents with a cover letter defying them not to read the whole book once they’d read the first page. That sounds pompous, but I didn’t think I’d hear back from any of them, anyway. Instead, within a couple of weeks, I heard back from all of them – and they all wanted to represent me without exception. It was unreal.

The moment when I realised I’d made it was when I saw Absolute Power on sale in a bookstore for the first time. That changed everything. I thought: “I can make a career out of this.” That was a good feeling. My wife and I had a long talk about it and I said: “Look, I can always go back to being a lawyer.” Fortunately, becoming a full-time author did work out.

THE WINNER (1998)

Even though this book was written in 1998, I still get emails about my villain in this book, who figured out a way to fix the US National Lottery. My goal with Jackson was for the reader to fear him every time he appeared on the page. Years later, I got a phone call from a journalist at La Repubblica in Rome, Italy and he asked if I’d been following the Italian lottery scandal. When I said no, he said, well, people have fixed the National Lottery using a method similar to what you wrote about in The Winner. And I thought, despite the illegality of it, well, that’s pretty frickin’ cool.

WISH YOU WELL (2001)

It’s a historical novel, but the setting is where my mother grew up in southwest Virginia. Very rural. They didn’t get electricity and running water until 2004. Wish You Well was very much a labour of love, very different to my other books. This wasn’t a thriller, this was my To Kill a Mockingbird. I interviewed my mom for her recollections of growing up. I’m very proud of it and my publisher was very supportive, despite my being known for mysteries. Writing a book set in Forties rural Virginia was a real challenge. But if a writer doesn’t stretch himself, he withers on the vine. If authors don’t scare themselves, they end up writing to a formula, and I have never wanted to do that. I want to be terrified each time I sit down at my desk. It’s got to feel like starting over every time.

THE CAMEL CLUB (2005)

We were right in the middle of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when I wrote The Camel Club. Despite the jokey title, this was a very serious book about a group of conspiracy theorists who run into a full-blown conspiracy involving a Muslim plot to kidnap the President. The way I portrayed Muslims as thoughtful and methodical and not as crazed jihadists ticked off a lot of people. I even got a serious death threat, which I reported to the FBI. People thought I was being unpatriotic by exposing what the CIA was up to. I expected some vitriol but this was a little more than I anticipated. On the other hand, if a book doesn’t make you feel an emotion, then I have failed.

MEMORY MAN (2015)

Amos Decker is a detective who’s suffered two tragedies in his life: first, when he was a professional footballer, a blow to his head left him with perfect memory. The second is when a murderer wipes out his family. When we meet him, he’s a great blob of a guy who could not sink any lower. He was such a different character for me to write – that’s why he’s memorable.

Now, having perfect recall sounds fun, but really it’s a nightmare. When I went out on tour with this book I asked people to raise their hand if they thought it would be cool to have total recall. Then I said: “Raise your hand if there’s something in your life you’d rather forget.” That’s the albatross around your neck. For Decker, time doesn’t heal all wounds – awful memories are as fresh as the moment they happened.

For more information on The Guilty, David Baldacci's latest novel, visit www.telegraph.co.uk/davidbaldacci