January Audiobooks

So many people have told me about Overdrive to check out audiobooks from the library that I finally downloaded the app and gave it a try this month. The price is right but my local library has a very limited selection of audiobooks. I think I'll be able to get new releases (on wait list) but there's not much to choose from in non-fiction or anything published more than a few years ago. Audible is not under thread of losing me as a customer that's for sure!
This month I read Deep Freeze (my favorite book of the month) and At The Water's Edge  on Overdrive so I saved a few dollars. My least favorite book this month was The Silent Sister but even that wasn't horrible. All-in-all it was a good month of listening.

First Strike
By Ben Coes, Narrated by Peter Hermann

There's no better way to kick off the New Year than with an action-packed thriller. Dewey Andreas  always delivers a lot of action.

In this 6th book Dewey is sent to Syria for an operation that ends up blown. Meanwhile the US has discovered a ship full of weapons on the way to ISIS and stops it. ISIS retaliates on US soil. Dewey and  his former colleagues are reunited in the US to help resolve things. 

That all sounds like a pretty simple description of the plot but, as with all of the other Andreas books, this one is action from beginning to end.

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Badlands
By Richard Montanari, Narrated by Scott Brick
This is the 4th book in the Byrne and Malzano series. These books all take place in Philadelphia where Byrne and Balzano are detectives. This case opens when the body of a young teenage runaway is found in an abandoned building the Badlands section of Philly. She was drowned but there's no water anywhere.

This begins a chase into the world of magic and puzzles and one demented protagonist. 

If Philadelphia is anything like these books then the city has a very high percentage of psychologically demented people. While, in one way, this series is kind of a typical crime investigation series; in another way, they are a little creepy. Montanari's bad guys like torturing and killing young people. They are really well written and very suspenseful but you need to know the underlying theme before you start this series. 

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Wrongful Death
By Robert Dugoni, Narrated by Dan John Miller

This is the second in the David Sloane series. Dugoni also writes the Tracy Crosswhite series. Both are set in the Seattle area.

David Sloan is an attorney and is approached by an Iraq war widow to sue the government for wrongful death. The Feres Doctrine generally makes this impossible but as Sloane starts to look into it he thinks there is more to the story of the soldier's death.

This is a good story and these books have to be read in order. There's too much reference to events in the previous book.  My main complaint with it is that it sort of reads like an abridged book. The story jumps quickly between events and tense situations wrap up pretty quickly. If you like a good thriller but not the ones that get your heart racing then this is the series, and author, for you. If you need to have nail-biting and bad dreams then you can skip this one.

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The Infidel Stain
By M.J. Carter, Narrated by Alex Wyndham

This is the second book in the Blake and Avery series. If you happen to be watching he Victoria series on PBS you might enjoy these stories that explore the seedier side of Victorian England. The first one took place in India but this one is back in London. They are hired to investigate a series of murders among the city's "gutter press". 

It's an enjoyable series.
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Cash City
By Jonathan Fredrick, Narrated by Ari Fliakos

This book fell about 15 minutes short of my self-imposed 10-hour minimum but it was a Deal of the Day book and the reviews convinced me to risk the $4. I'm glad I did.

This is the first novel by Jonathan Frederick and is set in the fictional town of Cain City, WV. The main character, Nick Malick, is a former police officer whose life fell apart when his son was kidnapped and murdered by a serial pedophile. The murderer is in jail on another crime and Nick is just waiting for him to get out so he can administer his own justice.

Now he's divorced and a private detective. His next client wants him to find his missing adult daughter. The search leads him into  a drug ring from Detroit and corruption in the police department.

It's a great first novel and it just begs for a series based on Malick and his young sidekick who lives in the same converted high schools as Malick. There are several really well-developed character in this book that would support a series. The narration was fantastic too.

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Deep Freeze
By John Sandford, Narrated by Eric Conger

We are big John Sandford fans in this family and Mom and Chris read this as soon as it came out. A week ago I decided to finally get a library card and try out Overdrive. My library system doesn't have a ton of audiobooks (and even less that I'd want to read) but they have some and it will save me a few bucks to get what I can out of the library. I had to wait about a week to get this book but once I had it on my phone I finished it off in about 2 days.

I love all John Sandford books and the Virgil Flowers series is really a lot of fun. This time Virgil is sent back to Trippton where he previously arrested the entire school board for corruption and murder. This time it's the dead of winter and a local woman, and bank owner, has been found dead in a block of ice in the river. He's also asked to assist a Los Angeles attorney in serving Cease and Desist orders to a local woman who is selling obscene Barbie dolls. There are lots of hilarious moments in this adventure.

If you've never read John Sandford I'd place him between Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch series and Carl Hiassen books. They are mystery with a great does of humor.​

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At the Water's Edge
By Sara Gruen, Narrated by Justine Eyre

I read Gruen's earlier novel, Water For Elephants, and I love historical fiction so this seemed like a good choice.
Not so much.
This is more like historical romance than historical fiction. It's set during WWII in Scotland. Madelyne and Ellis Hyde are part of Philadelphia society until they and their friend, Hank make total jerks of themselves at a society New Year's Eve party. Ellis' parents have had enough and kick them out. Hank still has his generous allowance so they decide to go to Scotland, in the middle of the war, to find the Loch Ness Monster. Ellis' father was disgraced years before on his own mission to find Nessie. 

They get to Scotland where Ellis and Hank continue to behave like the spoiled, arrogant pigs that they are. Maddy, meanwhile, has no backbone but eventually befriends the people working at the Inn where they are staying.

If you like lite stories you will love this. It's well written and things wrap up conveniently and neatly in the end. There's even a white knight of sorts. 

In reviews the narrator gets a lot of criticism. I didn't find her annoying at all but if you get the audionook of this one you might want to sample the audio first.

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The Silent Sister
By Diane Chamberlain, Narrated by Susan Bennett

Well, it started off strong. Riley MacPherson has arrived in New Bern, NC to settle her father's estate. She had already lost her mother to cancer and her older sister to suicide over 20 years ago. While settling the estate she discovers that her sister might be alive and that her family had a lot of secrets.

This story started strong and then it rolled pretty much every current event cliche (child abuse, PTSD, gender selection) into the mix and finished it off with a pretty unsatisfying ending. Everything wrapped up nice and tidy. 

The narration was good and the book wasn't awful but it was entirely predictable. The image on the cover of the book is  a bit confusing. While there is one scene with water, the water in that scene is a frozen river on a snowy day. 

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The Trespasser
By Tana French, Narrated By Hilda Fay

This is the 6th book in the Dublin Murder Squad series and the interesting thing about this series is that the characters are mostly new in each book. Because of that the books can easily be read out of order. I've read 1 - 4 and liked them but this one was a bit of a slog to get through.

Detectives Conway and Moran are called to a murder scene that looks like a simple lover's quarrel gone bad. They quickly go after the boyfriend although he claims he's never been in the victim's home. Other detectives are pushing her them to quickly arrest the boyfriend. 

Conway is getting a little paranoid over the pressure and other harassment that she is experiencing. She can't give up on a scene and other evidence that might be linked to the victim's missing father from years before.

This book spends a LOT of time on conspiracy and paranoia and it gets a little tedious. Things get much better near the end when everything starts to unravel. 

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