David

Just finishing this first of three of the series of novels by Philip Kerr - can't wait to dig into the next installment.. notwithstanding that these are rather dark but funny (but only in that 1930's bleak prewar Germany kind of funny) novels.

If you want to get to know "Russia" and Arkady Renko, don't start here - go directly to Gorky Park and then especially through Wolves Eat Dogs (one of the most captivating novels I've listened to in awhile - the section on the how and why of Chernobyl? Compelling and frightening...) and then there's this. Just a blip in the 3/5 category, I hope, until the next one. It's still good only because it is Renko: the life and times of the top five best detective series out there (inc. Dave Robicheaux, etc). Too much sideline, not enough Arakady, though, and what makes Moscow really tick. I am hoping for more and remain optimistic of better from Martin Cruz Smith.....a great reader is provided in this series, but not a great manuscript.

This is a audiobook where most of the characters are so humble, you want them to be given the best outcomes considering the circumstances around them, but after awhile, you stop hoping this, and instead are just grateful everyone isn't dead or nearly so by the plot's end.

Well read, however - and in audiobooks, notwithstanding, that's pretty much the key to a good listen.

Continuing off from where March Violets trails away from a few years before, Philip Kerr continues to exploit Bernie Gunther's sardonic wit, his continued cynicism of most things bureaucratic, and his dislike all things criminal. A great listen - really liking John Lee's version of Gunther - a no holds barred reading here.

I have very much appreciated most of the Lincoln Rhyme novels over the years -- but this one seems a bit tired...and for the first time in a long time with audible.com, wished I'd listened to the abridged version of the novel .. not a good thought.

Outstanding, outstanding -- did I say outstanding? Could this novel be James Lee Burke's last in the whole of the Dave Robicheux series? Would that there is at least one more to come...Burke's most existential - yet strangely redemptive - novel yet.

I gave it my best shot -- and have previously appreciated Pressfield's novels --- but I am struggling to get through this one. Almost too much personality, and not enough history...and a slow go at that..

I don't know Pressfield so easily carries this book off - bringing a ancient character such as Alexander the Great" so long in grave once again to "life" - and extraordinarily so through this exploration in first person no less is not mean feat. And this is an outstanding read by a very fine reader. A must for those of us, especially, who "read" Bernard Cornwell, etc!

A well narrated book, the writer has attempted to leave his personal politics at the door as he provides an insightful and often suprising perspective of the events leading to the Irag invasion. There were times, however, that he gave governmental organizations, and characters - such as Donald Rumsfeld - way too much respect and without enough honest retrospect.

An outstanding narration of a fascinating but depressingly predictable service of a segment of the British Army in Iraq. Yet, Hunter writes in a fetchingly personal style, presenting with intelligence the reality of life in a foreign army placed in a relatively friendless land. The final chapter of all of our post-9/11 realities is yet to be written, and, likewise, this book doesn't even attempt to assign a positive outcome to the whole bloody mess, either. Pity.