Barry

The narrator may be about the worst I have heard in my decades of books on tape/cd/mp3. He is not right for the lead character (but maybe for the surfbum burnout character- he seems to have that one down). The book itself is enjoyable but a small step down from the previous Lincoln Lawyer. My advice: buy the book, narrate it yourself.

This book is well written, has an excellent and consistently engaging plot and piles a few more layers of personality on the fictional portrait of Milo. While it does not, of course, have the behind-the-Wall Cold War ambiance of the author's books set in an unspecified Soviet Bloc country, the book brings its own lesser joys of time and place. The author's command of the China setting is not so masterly as is his knowledge of Soviet Bloc countries, perhaps expected inasmuch as he has not lived in China but has lived in a former Soviet Bloc nation.

The narrator is quite competent. My only complaint: the ending seemed to be tied up hastily with some all-too-convenient and not entirely satisfying twists.

Overall: certainly worthwhile. I just wish the author could find some means of defying chronology and writing a couple of more Soviet Bloc/1950's novels. But we must all move on, I suppose.