Red Cell

A Novel

By: Mark Henshaw

Narrated by: Rob Patterson

Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Red Cell follows Kyra Stryker and Jonathan Burke, two outcasts in the Agency who are brought together in the Red Cell, the agency’s out-of-the-box think tank. Stryker is a young and beautiful agent who’s struggling to recover from a job gone bad during her first assignment in Venezuela, while Burke is a straight-laced analyst who’s pissed off all his colleagues with his knack for always being right, political consequences be damned.

When a raid on Chinese spies in Taiwan ends in a shootout, CIA Director Cooke turns to the Red Cell to figure out why China is ready to invade the island nation without any fear of reprisal from the U.S. Navy. Stryker and Burke’s only lead is the top CIA informant in China, codenamed Pioneer, and they’re tasked with extracting him before the Chinese can get to him.

From the White House to a Navy battleship in the South China Sea, Henshaw takes listeners on a whirlwind race against time as Stryker and Burke try to save Pioneer and discover the hidden threat to America’s power and keeping the peace: China’s top secret weapon, the Assassin’s Mace.

©2012 Mark Henshaw (P)2012 Simon & Schuster

Story good. Performance and editing awful

Maybe even the worst performance ever. No voice characterization in dialogue and heaven forbid multi person conversations: you’ll have no idea who is saying what. Many little editing issues too

Good story.

Limited Appeal

The narration was good. The character development was done well. While you would not necessarily choose one as a friend, they were interesting. Plot was believable to those of us who have worked and/or lived overseas. But the general reader should be able to identify with the plot by having to relatable life experiences, such as finding your way around in a strange city or feeling nervous as a result of the behavior of strangers. Even if the reader has flown a plane but has no specialized military training, the book went on and on describing numerous planes of different types from different bases flying different patterns in unique conditions that made it extremely difficult for people to visualize and thus experience or understand the action. To me a novel is the chance to experience something in life vicariously and this failed in parts.

not enough for me

I stopped after giving this a good try. The moment I realized that the narrator was not even attempting to change his voice for the different characters, I'd had enough. The story seemed adequate, but not enough to override the 'reading' rather than 'acting' of the narrator. Makes me appreciate even more the excellence of so many narrators. When I first started audiobooks, I was surprised to hear the words 'performed' used to what I thought was just being 'read'. But I see the better ones truly are doing exactly that and making the audio experience as good as or better than reading the same book yourself.

Boring and Disjointed

What would have made Red Cell better?

Burning

What do you think your next listen will be?

The Gray Man

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The writing didn't let the performer to perform

What character would you cut from Red Cell?

All

Any additional comments?

Maybe I'm unfair since I couldn't get passed the first hour.

Narrator Made It Impossible to Continue

I really tried to stick with this book because I listened to Cold Shot first and really liked the story and narrator. But this narrator had me pounding the steering wheel and yelling "Stop reading like you're giving an oral report in FOURTH GRADE."

I thought it might get better - it didn't. I thought I could get used to it - I couldn't. So now I'm frustrated that I wasted my time and a book credit. UGH

The story lacked any verve or spark...and the narration sounded computer-generated.

I struggled to get through this book, whose characters are so woefully under-developed that I really did not care what happened to them in the end.
The narration was so bland and lifeless, I wondered whether it was actually computer-generated. Was it?

Very disappointing.