All Cry Chaos

The Henri Poincaré Series, Book 1

By: Leonard Rosen

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

All Cry Chaos, a debut thriller by the immensely gifted Leonard Rosen, is a masterful and gripping tale that literally reaches for the heavens.

The action begins when mathematician James Fenster is assassinated on the eve of a long-scheduled speech at a World Trade Organization meeting. The hit is as elegant as it is bizarre. Fenster’s Amsterdam hotel room is incinerated, yet the rest of the building remains intact. The murder trail leads veteran Interpol agent Henri Poincaré on a high-stakes, world-crossing quest for answers.

Together with his chain-smoking, bon vivant colleague, Serge Laurent, Poincaré pursues a long list of suspects: the Peruvian leader of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Rapture-crazed militants, a hedge-fund director, Fenster’s elusive ex-fiancée, and a graduate student in mathematics. Poincaré begins to make progress in America, but there is a prodigious hatred trained on him—some unfinished business from a terrifying former genocide case—and he is called back to Europe to face the unfathomable. Stripped down and in despair, tested like Job, he realizes the two cases might be connected—and he might be the link.

This first installment in the Henri Poincaré series marries sharp, smart mystery to deep religious themes that will keep both agnostics and believers turning pages until the shattering, revelatory end. Anyone who enjoys the work of John le Carré, Scott Turow, Dan Brown, and Stieg Larsson will relish Rosen’s storytelling and his resourceful, haunted protagonist. Others will appreciate his dazzling prose. Still others, the way he bends the thriller form in unconventional ways toward a higher cause, in the vein of Henning Mankell in The Man from Beijing. In short, All Cry Chaos promises to become a critical success that garners a broad readership throughout the nation and across the globe.

©2011 Leonard Rosen (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Only the very best of writers can weave a compelling story from a maze of complicated ideas, and with this deftly crafted novel, Len Rosen has proven himself to be one of them.” (Arthur Golden, New York Times best-selling author of Memoirs of a Geisha)

Good for right audience

What made the experience of listening to All Cry Chaos the most enjoyable?

Unique writing style. The author and characters were previously unknown to me.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Decisions made by main character and why

Did Grover Gardner do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Yes. Set voice inflection early and maintained same throughout book

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Reaction to loss of family members and eventual re healing

Any additional comments?

Good book, probably better for someone to whom author and character are known

Great narrator reading the wrong book

I didn't finish listening to All Cry Chaos because, although Grover Gardener is a fine narrator, he's the wrong narrator for this book. Or the book is wrong for him. Or both.

This is an international mystery set all over the world. The protagonist is French. There are a few reasonable accents in the piece -- a nice moderate Italian accent for the sidekick -- but the protagonist sounds as if he's from Illinois. The phrasing is suited to a french-speaking character, and sounds stilted without the proper cadence. I just couldn't get past it to enjoy the story.

Decent Story, Narration needs help

All Cry Chaos has an intriguing plot: a mathematician is executed by a bomb so exact that it only takes out the hotel room where he is staying. Henri Poincaré, a Sr. Investigator, at Interpol is assigned to investigate. He is joined by an Italian Investigator with questionable ethics. The story seemed a bit far-fetched which I really didn't mind. The biggest drawback was the narrator. Grover Gardner's narration is just dry. I couldn't tell one character from the other. I really did not get a sense that Poincaré was French except for his name. Most of the characters were European but with no accents, you really couldn't tell. He might do well with other books but this series needs a new narrator.

Well written

Would you consider the audio edition of All Cry Chaos to be better than the print version?

Grover Gardner is an outstanding narrator. I have yet to get a bad read by him.

Fascinating story, fascinating character

The danger faced by law enforcement officials isn't news. What rarely gets addressed, however, is the danger to their families. Too many thriller writers cheat by making their protagonists single, or by having families in jeopardy rescued with little harm done. Mr. Rosen chooses to confront the issue head on, and does so superbly. Henri Poincare is a beautifully wrought character, and his grief and rage are so very human it's impossible not to feel as if we know him personally.

I rarely give any book, audio or otherwise, a perfect score, but for this one, nothing less will do.

A mystery that teaches about fractals.

From this mystery, I learned a lot about fractals and math. Overall, I enjoyed the story but found it difficult to believe all the convenient coincidences, that Interpol could not prevent the attacks on Poincare's family, that the chief would look the other way, or that everything would end so positively.

An intelligent, witty, engaging and touching debut

The murder mystery begins with a bang. In his room at the corner of the top floor of an Amsterdam hotel, mathematics genius James Fenster is killed in a most unusual way. He's practically vaporized by a bomb made from highly volatile––and extremely hard to come by––rocket fuel. The hotel winds up looking like a giant took a bite out of the corner of the building. Because of the complexity and high profile of the case, Interpol's senior detective, Henri Poincaré, is assigned to the case. Poincaré's great-grandfather, Jules Henri Poincaré, was a celebrated mathematician and, while Henri is not similarly gifted, he has an appreciation of the beauty and mystery of mathematics.

James Fenster was a Harvard professor and had been about to give a speech at a World Trade Organization meeting about the inevitability of a global economy. This expands the field of possible suspects from those who know him, and possibly other mathematicians, to opponents of globalism––you know, all those people who run amok during WTO meetings. As Poincaré investigates, he must also include the head of a fabulously successful Boston mutual fund company; a man who funded much of Fenster's work, but who seems to have a ravenous greed for access to work that he believes Fenster has left behind on a computer hard drive.

While Poincaré is investigating the Fenster murder, he has other matters on his mind as well. Stipo Banovich, a Serbian Poincaré had arrested for the horrifying murder of 70 Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian conflict, is about to be tried for war crimes and he has issued dire threats against Poincaré's family. Poincaré is a devoted husband to Claire, father to architect Etienne, father-in-law to Lucille, and doting grandfather to twin boys and to Chloe, who has completely captured his heart.

As the two plots heat up, more fuel is added to the fire by a worldwide apocalyptic Christian cult whose members believe the Rapture will arrive soon (August, 2012, in case you want to make plans). Some of the "schismatic" members of the cult want to hurry along the chaos that is supposed to precede the rapture by suicide bombings. Poincaré's team must investigate the bombings and try to prevent more of them, along with their Fenster investigation and the Banovich threat.

Despite its complexity, the plot is lively and compelling. Chaos theory and fractals are part of the story, and author Leonard Rosen makes them fascinating. Even math-phobes are likely to think so. The tackles political, social and religious issues and respects its readers' intelligence. All the characters are well-drawn, especially Poincaré. A dogged investigator and a deeply moral man, he reminds me of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache. It's refreshing to have mystery protagonists with family lives and no substance abuse problems. (Psst: they're still interesting without all that baggage, brooding and booze.)

Since All Cry Chaos is subtitled "An Henri Poincaré Mystery," I'm thinking––hoping is more like it––that this is the start of a series. I see no evidence of a second book yet, but I'll be on the lookout for it.

Grover Gardner was a C+/B- reader for me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his reading or pronunciation, but I didn't feel like his voice matched the material well. His voice is a little harsh. This book would have been better served by somebody like Ralph Cosham or someone with a bit of a European accent, since Poincaré and many of the other characters are French.

Breathtaking mystery

It was so engrossing I had to put off doing things so I could continue to listen. I had to find out the answers - loved every minute of it.

A complex noir story with a human main character.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this book up, but it was actually much better than anticipated. It has quite a noir feel to it: with a troubled main character facing off against great challenges, by himself for the most part. There is a very strong mystery in here, and a great emotional component to top it off.

You'll root for Henri to solve the crime, fix his troubles, and save himself, but you won't know for sure, until the end, whether he suceeds or not. He is a very likeable and relatable main character, and his motivation to solve the mystery stems from a very human place. There is a thread of 'mathematics as the underpinning of reality' (i.e. the existence/origin of everything can be calculated) which could be heavy if you really thought about it, but you're not forced to do so in order to follow the plot - and it does add another little dimension to the story.

All in all, it was a great, suspenseful and compelling crime-mystery novel with a noir-ish setting and a likeable but troubled main character. I am looking forward to the next book to be released in this series (even though this one had no cliff-hanger at all.). The narrator has a distinctive voice which takes time to get used to, but he's very good once you do. The violence isn't gory, there is no sex and not much foul language.

Worth ever penny and more!

This book is beautifully written, fast moving, funny and sad at times- I hope to read many more from this author.