David

After about a half dozen books, John Corey is finally losing his charm. In previous books, his caustic, sarcastic comments have been witty in the hardboiled gumshoe tradition. He's never been politically correct, but in this book he comes off as oafish, and in a very bigoted way. After he calls Yemen a shithole for about the 20th time, it made me stop to wonder if DeMille was intentionally making his character alot less likable.

Maybe the narration has something to do with it. Scott Brick tries to make almost every line sound facetious so he has nowhere to bring up his level of irony when Corey comes up with one of his zingers. Maybe it's because this is the first of DeMille's books that I've listened to or read, but the combination of Corey's character and the narration just isn't working for me.

The plot is pretty good, and DeMille seems to be writing the book to give us a history tour of Yemen, kind of like he took us for a tour of current day Vietnam in Up Country. And that's pretty interesting

So I keep listening, and I'm looking forward to my drive to work to hear what comes next. But I'm not really looking forward to the next John Corey book.

Gerard Doyle is just about the best narrator there is for audio books. His characters, timing and sense of emotions are just amazing. Compare his reads to the Eragon movie (OK, not a fair comparison). Almost every character is soooo much better than the live actors.