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Hidden River  By  cover art

Hidden River

By: Adrian McKinty
Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
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Publisher's summary

Alexander Lawson is a former detective for Northern Ireland's police force. After a disastrous six-month stint in the drug squad, he became addicted to heroin and resigned in disgrace. Now 24, sickly, and on the dole, Alex learns that his high-school love, Victoria Patawasti, has been murdered in America. Victoria's wealthy family sends Alex to Colorado to investigate the case, and he seizes the opportunity for a chance at redemption.

But things don't go as planned. Plagued by a heroin habit, forced to go on the run after the only credible witness to Victoria's murder is accidentally killed, wanted by both the Colorado cops and the Ulster police, Alex struggles just to stay alive.

Gritty, with spot-on dialogue and black humor, Hidden River is a dynamic thriller.

©2004 Adrian McKinty (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

  • 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Mystery

"This is not only an expertly crafted suspense novel but also a revealing study of addiction." (Publishers Weekly)
"A storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."(Kirkus Reviews)

What listeners say about Hidden River

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Gerard Doyle Is Terrific!

This pairing of author and reader is so good! The basic outline of the story is very similar to Dead I Well May Be: young, down-and-out Irishman comes to the US only to find greater troubles there. This is more complex in that herion-addicted Alex proves to be his own worst enemy and the troubles just keep snowballing. Part of the suspense is waiting for Alex to just wake up and see what the rest of us have already figured out. What makes audiobook really special, though, is Gerard Doyle. His style is so natural and conversational you'd never know he had written material in front of him. He simply becomes Alex and tells us his story. He's a remarkable reader. Highly recommended listening.

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79 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

My favorite McKinty novel

Apart from the Lighthouse series, I have read all the McKinty novels on audible.com. I enjoyed immensely each one as I read them one after the other. However, Hidden River is my favorite. Exciting story with many unusual twists especially towards and at the end. Gerard Doyle does an extraordinary job as narrator making each character come to life. I am from Newfoundland (Canada) and I particularly enjoy the Irish humor which is abundant despite the nature of the novel.
This is undoubtedly a "must-read'.

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69 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Edged with tension, revealed in great dialog

McKinty can take you into a seedy dangerous community and make you feel comfortable. The realism, the feeling of normalcy inside of disfunction that McKinty portrays is what puts the edge to his stories. The dialog is written with beauty and the narrator is fantastic. If you like edgy tension filled suspense written with skill and an eye for the eccentric then McKinty is an author you should explore. This is a book I do recommend with the caveat that the story moves in a very seedy world where drug use and sex are a part of the story.

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35 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

90% McKinty On H... 10% Cop Story... Meh!

Alex Lawson ain't Michael Forsyth or Sean Duffy.Those dark denizens of McKinty's greater epics know about story telling as opposed to drug levered mystical introspection. The 70s are over Adrian. Magical mystery tours are dead'er than Lennon... Both of them. The drug addled Irish author is a cliché that smears my ancestry. Worse yet, endless hours of self examination pissed through a heroin filter are tedious. If this was the point, hell, just tell us that in the first sentences and get on with a story.

As for challenge, this one's obvious to every listener about half an hour in (which seems like ten times as long). Even Gerard Doyle can't toss the druggie embellishments over the side to let a plot emerge. And then all the good stuff's crammed into an epilogue? If by good stuff, one means plot and story line. Otherwise Hidden River's about a jerk endlessly acting like... a jerk.

Increasingly McKinty sounds like an English-Lit major who needed a job. Apparently I'm through giving Adrian McKinty books 12 to 15 stars. This one deserves a black hole.

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33 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

It was okay

It was okay, but I thought it to be a bit boring - unlike the Michael Forsyth character in the author's other books. Not sure why I felt this way, but listening to the number of times this guy would shoot up his dope may be the reason. I found nothing interesting about how a junkie feels while on a high.

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31 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Another winner

Actually, the mystery of this book is not hard to figure out but it is the journey you take with the main character of revealing the raw complexities of human nature and overcoming his personal tragedies and flaws that make this novel so refreshing. Wonderfully complex and realistic, you won't regret listening to this one. This author/narrator combination is easily among the best on Audible. One caveat: the language is pretty strong so don't listen with the kids.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Not Worth the Money

I didn't like the story, some of the content is irresponsible and unnecessary. Wow, the lead is superman, can't be killed even when he is being fired at by 3 men with assault rifles. So farfetched it was not entertaining. The narrator is easy to listen to, but the story is junk.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

I love this narrator

I love this narrator. he has narrated other books by this author and I really liked all of them. The deep Irish lilt of the narrator makes the main character very easy to like. I also like that his main characters seem to all be flawed heros. They are not even very good people sometimes but you love them anyways

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not Mc Kinty's Best.

Let me start by saying that yet again Gerard Doyle did a masterful job narrating this book. I can't imagine a better narrator for McKinty's characters.

The story was excellent is places, however as a whole the story left me cold, the ending was particularly annoying. It seemed like the author did not have a good plan and was spending a lot of time building some excellent characters, like the native Indian detective only to just give him a very trivial role toward the end.

I don't regret buying this recording, however I think this book could have been so much more.

Mc Kinty is an excellent author and I would urge anyone to start with the Cold Cold Ground or The Falling Glass series.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

A simple story, richly told...

An abridgement of this book would be an absolute sin. This very personal, intimate story of a young and brilliant man in over his head before the book even opens, is wonderfully written and warmly and plaintively read. Rich, ample literary and historical references are inserted with grace and style, and Alexander Lawson may well be the most-hapless anti-hero in modern fiction. A very suitable place for a Jewish ex-cop from Belfast. McGinty has captured the seamy side of Denver and the air of American politics with astonishing aplomb. I'll be looking for any more books from this author, and I hope that Gerard Doyle will be reading them.

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22 people found this helpful