The Andalucian Friend

A Novel

By: Alexander Söderberg

Narrated by: Gildart Jackson

Enemies are everywhere.

When Sophie Brinkmann - nurse, widow, single mother - meets Hector Guzman, her life is uneventful. She likes his quiet charm and easy smile; she likes the way he welcomes her into his family. She quickly learns, though, that his smooth facade masks something much more sinister.

Guzman is the head of a powerful international crime ring with a reach into drugs and weapons that extends from Europe to South America. His interests are under siege by a ruthless German syndicate who will stop at nothing to stake their claim. But the Guzmans are fighters and will go to war to protect what’s rightfully theirs. The conflict quickly escalates to become a deadly turf war between the rival organizations that includes an itinerant arms dealer, a deeply disturbed detective, a vicious hit man, and a wily police chief. Sophie, too, is unwittingly caught in the middle. She must summon everything within her to navigate this intricate web of moral ambiguity, deadly obsession, and craven gamesmanship.

The Andalucian Friend is a powerhouse of a novel - turbo-charged, action-packed, highly sophisticated, and epic in scope - and announces Alexander Söderberg as the most exciting new voice in thrillers in a generation.

©2013 Alexander Soderberg (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Söderberg is masterful." (Kirkus Reviews)

"[An]...excellent debut." (Publishers Weekly)

"The international cast is packed with compelling bad guys, the plot is intricate and urgent, and the dialogue is tense and true and sometimes even funny. A joyride of a read." (Chris Pavone, author of The Expats)

Too long and complicated. Average narrator

Just an ok story. Confusing and not well edited. Half the male voices sounded prissy and officious, which doesn’t match the tough guy gangsters they were supposed to be.

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Normally I don't review before I finish a book but I could not bring myself to listen to any more of it. The narrator doesn't help this book at all. And it needs a lot of help. The characters are disconnected. The plot is disconnected (or maybe it pulls together at some point but I never got there). Supposedly this is part of a three-part series, but it's the only one from the series I'll be accessing.

The reviews are all over the place. There are people who love it (and I'm glad for them) but it was not worth listening to and I wasn't going to waste time on the second half. There are hundreds of thousands of good books. I've switched over to one of those now.