Hazardous Duty

Presidential Agent Series, Book 8

By: W.E.B. Griffin, William E. Butterworth IV

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

The Presidential Agent adventures return, in the most surprising novel yet in the #1 Wall Street Journal – and New York Times–bestselling series.

Mexican drug cartels are shooting up the streets of Laredo and El Paso. Somali pirates are holding three U.S. tankers for ransom. The President of the United States is fed up and, as Commander in Chief, has what he thinks is a pretty bright idea — to get hold of Colonel Charley Castillo and his merry band and get them on the case.

Unfortunately, that will be difficult. Everybody knows that the President hates Castillo’s guts, and has just had him forcibly retired from the military, and now Castillo’s men are scattered far and wide, many of them in hiding. There are also whispers that the President himself is unstable — the word “nutcake” has been mentioned.

How will it all play out? No one knows for sure, but for Castillo and company, only one thing is definite: This is going to be hazardous duty.

©2013 W.E.B. Griffin (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Critic reviews

"Tough-fisted . . . hard-edged . . . Griffin’s formula is straightforward: Set up a bunch of obstacles, and let us watch Charley Castillo knock them down one at a time. His novels promise action, suspense, and rousing entertainment, and they never fail to deliver." ( Booklist)

In my opinion, good book

This is a very good book. I enjoyed it. In fact, I’ve read it twice story is great. The performance is excellent and some of the listeners were worth sitting down with. It’s a good read.

Enjoy this series but…….

I really enjoy the series. I love the way it’s narrated, but as I get deeper into the series, I’m getting tired of the continual padding of the story and rehashing instances that take forever.
I think it’s fair to say if you’re on book 6 or seven you’re pretty much know the history of the characters and it’s just a little annoying that they keep going back to it. It’s obviously just padding to make the words longer.

To much review

I had great hopes for this book but it turned out the worst of this series. You explain everything then re-explain it then do it again. I Honestly feel I wasted my money. The last 25% was ok

Entertaining

I have purchased almost all of Griffins books that are narrated by Dick Hill ( he is my favorite male narrator) and found them to be addicting. The Presidential series was the beginning of my adventure with his books and I looked forward to this one.

What a hoot!!! I truly did not expect it to be a comedy but found myself laughing out loud to the amusement of my spouse and children.

Outside of his use of a few words that I know my mom would not approve of most anyone would enjoy this book. Two thumbs up.

review of the book

the recording had several breaks but was able to get through those braids quickly. This story was good it struggled in the middle end don't believe that the end was good to the last book in the series I still like the series but felt it was incomplete

Not what i expected.

While the book was enjoyable enough, I was expecting another spy/thriller involving the Castillo clan. What I got was a spy/comedy. The author does explain himself at the end of the book but i think it would have been better to write a book like this as its own story instead of ending a great series with a different writing style that detracted from the book and the series. Hopefully he writes another Real book to truly end the series but im not going to hold my breath. A side note Dick Hill as usual does a fantastic job as a reader!!!

Where was the storyline?

What did you like best about Hazardous Duty? What did you like least?

The performance by Dick Hill was outstanding as expected from Dick.
But the storyline was missing. No beginning and no end. The first half of the book was reviewing the charters from the previous book. This took too long. And then several minor plots were never finished. Did they get rid of the President? Did anyone get married? What happened to the SEALs? The whole book seemed to be a running narrative of a short period of time with no real plot. This was not what I expected from a Griffin book based on the many previous books I have read. Very disappointing.

Which character – as performed by Dick Hill – was your favorite?

They all were very well done.

Did Hazardous Duty inspire you to do anything?

Maybe to hesitate at reading the next W.E.B. Griffin book.

Good story

I liked the story. It's written like other Griffin books in that if you have read others in the series, there is a significant amount of time reintroducing characters that we already know well.

Overall an enjoyable story

Certainly different

Written with a little too much tongue in cheek and way too much recounting of prior events in a foolish way

Too much time spent on irrelevant details

The author goes into details that serve no other purpose than to drag down the performance to a crawl. Dick Hill, as usual, provides a great performance.