Christopher

The decision to have two narrators -- one male, one female -- read this book seems to me a bad production call. The guy says something, then the woman reader interjects (in her simpering delivery) "...he said. Then he sighed..." and the guy continues to read the male part. The material seems trite enough to begin with, but this tradeoff between dueling narrators -- in the course of a single *sentence* for crying out loud -- made this unlistenable for me. I remember enjoying several of Catherine Coulter's earlier novels so I gave this one a try. Maybe if it had been more professionally produced I would have liked this one too. But I'll never know. I deleted it after 30 minutes of "...he said..." alternate-reader interruptions.

Maybe it's great writing, though I doubt it; some of the lines were so hackneyed they made me laugh. This wasn't helped by Jim Frangione's melodramatic lilt, which made it all sound like a very bad SNL sendup. Maybe I'd have been able to take it seriously with another narrator, but not with this one.

Sanford is one of the few American mystery writers who can actually write. Crais, Lehane, a few others maybe, but too many seem to be putting their names on stuff written by aspiring English majors who went to too many writing workshops. Rant off, sorry.

But Virgil is always fun, ever ready with a felicitous turn of phrase, like "she had a fondness for little white truck driver pills she bought from little white truck drivers." And later, over a cheeseburger and fries after being on the receiving end of a major asskicking, he feels guilty: "When you get released from a hospital, shouldn't you eat something healthy? Lettuce or something?" ROFL

Eric Conger's narration is pitch perfect -- one of those magic books (in this case, a whole series) where the audio version is way better than reading it yourself.

maybe it's just me, but I can't stand narrators who embellish what they're reading as if to give themselves a self-important air. it's hard to explain, but this guy does it bigtime. on a more concrete note, there are all kinds of YouTube examples one could listen to -- if one were a supposedly professional narrator -- and an online dictionary even gives a clickable audio pronunciation, so why does Peter Berkrot continually say OlduVAY? Here's a free tip, Pete: if you want to sound self-important and super-knowledgeable, don't telegraph your ignorance like that. Olduvai Gorge isn't just any old place. It's the "The Cradle of Mankind.” You could look it up. Maybe this seems like a nit, but when a narrator clearly -- and literally -- doesn't know what he's talking about, the credibility of the book as a whole takes a serious hit. That may be subjective, but hey, these are AUDIObooks, and the experience of listening *is* subjective.

...and one of the best books on Audible. Brilliantly narrated -- and this is a difficult book to get all brilliant with, trust me -- The Cold Six Thousand will rearrange your sense of second-half 20th century American history. James Ellroy writes like an avenging angel on meth. And in this case, that's a good thing. Can't recommend this one highly enough.

"Broome looked at the remains of what had been a furnace two hundred years ago." Only Scott Brick's overwrought elegiac delivery could make that sound like the saddest thing in the world. Of course, it's not. It's just a physical detail of a crime scene. Brick constantly skews the sense of the sentences he reads, spinning them with a histrionic emotional english that distorts whatever it was the author intended them to mean -- and you're left to figure out what that might have been. But while you're figuring, he's off to bemoaning the cracks in the sidewalk or some x-random character's party dress as if it were the biggest tragedy ever to befall humankind. I thought maybe he'd gotten the message from readers to tone it down, but apparently not.

As to the book, if strip-mall philosophy stops you in your tracks and re-calibrates your sense of self, this is deep stuff indeed. Otherwise, it's all rather pedestrian -- except for the torture and psychosexual depravity, which I guess is to take the embarrassingly bourgeois edge off. Look, I love mysteries and thrillers and my standards aren't all that high, really, but whoever writes the treacly mainstream reviews for stuff like this are either tone-deaf or on the take. Other than that, I really enjoyed the book.

There were so many points at which this book could have gone horribly, crashingly wrong. To my amazement, it never did, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Literature for the ages, this is not. But it's ontologically whacked, it's crazy fun, it's bite-your-nails exciting! And Luke Daniels does a fine job with the narration. Definitely recommended to take the edge off the the pain of the current political primaries.

I downloaded this book some time ago, but had forgotten to listen to it for some weird reason. I just went back and grabbed it out of my Audible Library... and OMG! this is a GREAT book. I can't wait for the next one, Wild Thing -- though I don't think I'll have to wait long, as it's coming next month. Also, this is one of those books where the audio version is far better than reading the text yourself -- the narrator adds a dimension that would otherwise be missing. Kudos all around.

This is an excellent unpacking of one of America's foremost cultural train wrecks. I hope it's true that the power and reach of this twisted organization are on the wane, but I'm not holding my breath. I knew about some of the material in this book, but a lot less than I thought I did. The chapters on the murder of Lisa McPherson are especially gripping - and tragic. btw, the narrator also read The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy, which leant this an extra measure of creepiness for me.

I've read almost all of his stuff, and was a big fan of his early work, but some of his recent efforts left me cold. However, I thoroughly enjoyed The Fifth Witness. The courtroom strategizing seemed smart and well informed, and the characters were fleshed out and believable - even Haller's despicable client. Feels like Connelly's got his mojo back.