BRAD

A photographer is put into an action thriller mystery where he does an excellent job of unweaving a very complex crime conspiracy. This book has been out of print for a number of years by an author that was quite popular in his day. William Bayer writes very dark novels. This is true Noir at its very best. Let's not ruin it by saying much more than the story unfolds at a very fast pace and is highly interesting and compelling. It has a breath-taking ending. Finally, there is some nice inside information on professional photography art and technique that enriched the story.

Hard to say, all of the characters are richly drawn, but Kimberly stands out. She is not what she appears...let's leave it at that.

Yes. This compares very favorably. Dick Hill is one of the top three or so best narrators. His voice just pulls you along. You want to listen to him.

Yes, but I can't spoil it for you. Let's just say that futility comes to life.

Takes you into the bureaucracy of state government and game wardens in the state of Wyoming where hunting is big business. Character development was terrific. And finally, there is a relentless, exciting plot.

Very original villian committing crimes under another pretext.

Great voice for the western voices in the Novel.

Yes, unfortunately, I do not have 8 straight hours.

Yes, the performance made the characters come alive. The voices for each character were individual and nuanced. The accents were nicely done.

This plot is relentless and breath-taking. It surges from page to page and chapter to chapter. The author writes in a very action-oriented style. He adds some interesting science, history and lore to blend a really exciting story. His characters are risk-taking, interesting and attractive. This is probably the best of the Jame Rollins novels.

Final, long scene in underground Ubar. No spoilers.

Perhaps, the confession of love and proposal in the midst of a major and dangerous crisis. A marriage proposal facing death, how much better does it get than that?

This is a fairly long performance and novel. It delivers on a complex plot, many characters and an amazing secret or should I say secrets. Well worth your time if you enjoy the Clive Cussler type of novel where historical events, persons and contemporary hero-types chase a mystery rooted in the past. I was disappointed when it ended. I believe this book became the genisis for the author's Sigma Force novels that followed.

This is true noir at its very, very best.

A confrontation scene in the desert near Las Vegas near the end of the novel; sorry can't be a spoiler.

This is very difficult to say. This short noir novel is stunning. The narrator/performer has a very mature and gravelly voice. For some characters, it was good, or maybe okay. For the female characters it was horrifying and creepy to listen to. Robert Keiper delivered much of the lines as shouts and they hit like blows. It would have been doubtful that dialogue bewtween friends would sound so loud and angry. This is a very artful crime novel and I wonder if the narrator was selected to give it an unworldly edge. I suspended disbelief and went with it.

Fatal Obsessions

This is well worth your time and money. I highly recommend this very exciting and interesting noir novel. It's short, just over 4 hours of constant movement and action. The character development is very solid, no cartoon characters in this novel.

This is a stupendous production of a small fiction work by L Ron Hubbard. The entire book is barely two (2) hours long. It has excellent sound effects, a cast of multiple voices, transitional music like any real cliff hanger. For a small book, this recording shows true pride and mastery of recording and producing a high quality performance. Frankly, I have never seen such an excellent job done in any Audible book. It sounds like a quality radio drama, only better and with much more texture.

There is much to like about The Spy Killer. It is a high speed action yarn that is relentless in its pace. The setting in Pre-World War II China is amazing. L Ron Hubbard spent a great deal of his youth in the Orient and his descriptions are highly nuanced and his characters and scenes written large. This is the original start listening and two hours later you are breathless with the outcome.This is somewhat of an inside comment, but L Ron Hubbard was the founder of Scientology. He wrote a great body of work on his theories of human thoughts and mental behaviors. I am not a Scientologist, but I have read some of the major works and there is a duality to certain of the key characters. Hubbard's theories of the mind are based on this duality. So you have characters that very much are either living lies or consciously living two lives or personas. This is really fresh and amazing in a thriller novel to have such complex characters. Further, like his religion teaches, those with the most positive attitudes tend to win out big. Note: Like some of the detective novels of this age, there are unfortunate stereotypes about Asians in general and Chinese and Japanese in particular. This is a very entertaining period piece of excellent thriller fiction. The plot is complex but fair and it all holds together at the end.L Ron Hubbard has a gift for gritty dialogue that rings true for men and women of adventure in exotic locales and in wartime (Japanese Invasion of the late 1930's of China).When you add all of the production and effects added lovingly to this work, you have something very engaging and entertaining.

The final confrontation. I don't want to spoil by adding more.

This was intensely entertaining and so well done. The performances were quite excellent.

I will try some more of L Ron Hubbard's crime and thriller novels. This was a free and very generous gift from either the Church of Scientology (which I believe holds all of the L Ron Hubbard copyrights) and/or Audible. Thank you!

I recommend this book highly. I am a fan of Clive Cussler novels, however recently they seemed to fall into self-parody with characters that have been through it all and are showing their age. This book is vastly superior due to two reasons: (1) The co-author and I believe the true author is Grant Blackwood. He has a large body of his own work that is under-appreciated and really quite excellent. So you have a fresh author with fresh dialogue and fresh ideas. (2) You have a married couple, the Fargos. They are young (read not middle-aged like the Dirk Pitt series) and funny, loving, cute and very smart.

The plot involves a race around Europe to stay ahead of a real nasty villian and to find an unknown treasure. The plot device of a treasure hunt with clues at each waypoint reminds you a little of the Da Vinci Code, with hidden meanings, codes and geography to understand. It has that nice device of a cliff-hanger on many chapter ends and the book is seamless in the story-telling.

The plot focuses on the Fargo's activities and you find tagging along on their adventure fun and surprisingly become able to suspend disbelief.

This book is a huge step above the current Cussler mega-complex of at least four series entries. It does make me sad that a fine author like Grant Blackwood has to join the Cussler franchise to reach an appropriately large audience.

Da Vinci Code, smart intellectuals chasing clues against a fierce villian nipping at their heels.

Both of the Fargos. Scott Brick is a world class performer. His renditions are always something special. I like his voice and he can do both masculine and feminine characters well. He delivers the Fargo's humor very well.

Spartan Gold. The book's title is excellent as I see it.

Well worth your time and money. For me, this was excellent entertainment.

Jay Kay, the indian computer genius steals the show with her involvement and self-confident air that is very entertaining. She has a very big role that evolves throughout the book.

Cam Richter was voiced perfectly. Cam is the protagonist detective caught in a web that he neither understands or can disentangle himself. Dick Hill is my favorite performer for adventure thrillers, mysteries and the like. He is really quite incredibly talented. I have never failed to totally enjoy one of his works regardless of the author.

It is superbly entertaining, loaded with action and drama. It zooms along at a fast pace. This book is loaded with computer processing details, small town police department politics, love stories, loyal German Shepherd dogs, great North Carolina woods winter adventures and a vigilante force or two. Oh and mountain lions too. Wow!

I did not read the book. This is a large work and the Audible version was interesting, entertaining and hard to take a pause.

The author Patrick Robinson does spectacular character development. All to often in these types of thrillers the characters are like cardboard with no depth and simply carictures. These are living, breathing real people that come to life. The story is very interesting and the action well-paced and yes thrilling.

This is a very well written novel by a very accomplished and successful author. There are excellent details on a sniper kill, covert travel and stalking a target. This book has an excellent pace and structure that propels the listener at a fast, but not out of control pace. The plot is very creative and the action is uniquely interesting.

The narrator did a fine job.

A Relentless Revenge Thriller

Yes, this story is a little/lot dated and the performance seems to make it more real, kind of like a retrospective spy novel, set in the late 1950's.

Yes and no. I read this book nearly 40 years ago, and most of us have seen the movie, which somewhat follows the book and in many ways does not. So there was a missing element of suspense for me personally. I really loved reading these James Bond novels in my junior high school and high school years. It was good to relive this work as an older adult and find the book still interesting and the characters, locales and action compelling. This is one of the better James Bond entries and set the stage for many fun movies and future novels bases on the premise of the Spector criminal organization. Fleming seems to delight in putting you into beautiful locales with lavish yachts, casinos and mansions. It's all good fun and entertaining.

Simon Vance did an excellent job narrating this spy novel.

Yes, it is realively short in length so it is possible. The book has a certain flow that you will enjoy letting the story unfold. Ian Fleming was an excellent storyteller, so you are never stuck with a dull chapter. Fleming wrote in a sparse number of pages with a large numbers of chapters so each becomes it own little cliffhanger. You are teased into needing to listen to the next chapter and the next and so on.

This is an excellent entry in the Bond series and well worth the time and expense to enjoy. All that said, it is a product of the 1950's so much of it may ring quaint or even a little campy.

Oh yes. 100% yes with no qualifications. This was written in a fast-paced, exciting manner punctuated with some particularly gruesome torture murders. This novel handles the parallel existence of the protagonist and the serial killer and then throws them together as they are drawn to each other so well. The dialogue rings true for all characters and the story is vastly dark and interesting.The means of murder is unique and alarmingly evil. The killer is a true psychopath believable and relentless in his uncontrollable desires. The book just leaps from one acton scene to another at a blistering pace, holding attention to the incredible ending.It is so very rewarding to be able to write a review with zero negatives; it is just that kind of perfect book.

More than any book in a long, long time. This book edges victims and the killer closer and closer together in an almost unbearable inevitability. You want to shout out to save the innocents. It all seems alarmingly real as you slip into the writer's work and the characters become real, human and so complex. The pace of the novel is fast and I like it. Each word moves you closer to the final confrontation with a roller coaster-like momentum.Finally, there are three significant characters in this book and they are fully developed as people and as persons caught in the web. These are real, people that you never lose interest and become emotionally engaged with.

I have never heard this narrator's work before. She does male and female voices exceptionally well with each voice seeming unique and ringing true. Christiana Traister has a naturally beautiful voice that makes the listening compelling. This is a real work of art in the world of Audible narration and worthly of the term performance.This is not some simple read-through, it is a live performance with perfect tones of weariness, anger, fear, etc. The narrator is spot on in each and every line. Of course, having a very well written plot that zooms along is a great basis for such an excellent performance.

Yes, unfortunately I do not have that kind of time block. You find yourself listening to extra chapters which is a way of saying that you don't want to put it down (shut it off). This book comes highly recommended in book format and in a variety of reviews. It is an excellent thriller.