Blown

By: Chuck Barrett

Narrated by: Marc Vietor

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

Gregg Kaplan is not an ordinary man, but a man with special skills, courtesy of the United States Government. His assignment is to stay off the grid when he innocently stumbles into a blown witness protection detail in Little Rock, Arkansas. He simply could not walk away from the impending mayhem. After the dust settles, a mortally wounded Deputy U.S. Marshal makes him promise to personally deliver the witness to a U.S. Marshals Service safe site. Not just a promise, an oath.

A pledge between ex-Army Delta Force comrades. A trust that could not be broken - once in, never out. Kaplan soon suspects the witness he vowed to protect has secrets of his own; secrets that go beyond his testimony for the U.S. government. When he discovers the witness is being tracked, Kaplan teams with a WitSec Deputy U.S. Marshal assigned to recover the witness, but soon realizes some merciless people are dead set on preventing the witness from reaching the safe site. But the witness has a hidden agenda - one that could cost Kaplan his life.

©2015 Chuck Barrett (P)2015 Audible Inc.

Interesting story, non-stop action, but...

BLOWN is the first (audio)book in the Gregg Kaplan series by Chuck Barrett and it’s narrated by Marc Vietor.

Lately I’ve been in the thriller mood; when I read -the very explicit- blurb for this audiobook I thought I have found a perfect listen, but soon after I started this audiobook I started to have problems with it. First, the story is told by many different POVs and every time there was a change of character I was lost. I had to go back and re-listen 20 seconds or sometimes more to see when the change of character occurred. That happened many times and it seriously disrupted my enjoyment of the story.

Secondly, the characters felt a bit too flat and very similar. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t notice the change of characters exactly at the moment when they occurred, but much later. And I don’t know how many times Gregg Kaplan reminded us of the promise he made to the Deputy U.S. Marshal, but it was one or two or three too many, that’s for sure.

Apart for that, the story is interesting and it has non-stop action. The fighting scenes are well coordinated and there were couple of twists and turns that I really liked.

One thing I noticed is that people who read this book loved it, while people who listened to this audiobook didn’t like it much. I don’t know, although the voices of the characters were very similar, I thought Marc Vietor did a decent job, but now I can’t help but wonder if I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it instead of listening to the audio.
Will I listen to next book in the series? I’m not sure; I think I’ll wait for some (audiobook) reviews to then decide.

WOW! Constant action and suspense.

Blown is a stand alone novel, not a book in Chuck Barrett's Jake Pendleton series. The story starts in Little Rock where Gregg Kaplan makes a promise to a dying US Marshall to deliver a man in witness protection to DC. Both Kaplan and the dying Marshall are ex-Delta Force, so Kaplan considers his promise to be an oath of honor. From that point on the action and suspense never abate.

I very highly recommend this novel to all lovers of thrillers.

Great thriller.

Gregg Kaplan has some tough competition on the market. But I look forward to the next adventure by Chuck Barrett. He has the talent to put Gregg in a realm of hie own.

Forgot how bad this was

Started listening awhile ago and stopped. Forgot why until I started listening again. Mind numbing details about surroundings. Unrealistic attitude and actions from characters. And so on.

great read

I enjoyed listened to this audio. Thanks for another entertaining book. l look forward to the next one.

Great read and barely okay narration..

Any time I can read and/or listen to a book and I don’t skim past even one page or roll my eyes it’s a very good story, and I really enjoyed this one.

Gregg Kaplan is an assassin for the CIA and he stumbles in to an attempted assassination in a restaurant where a United States Marshall is killed, but before he dies he makes Kaplan promise to get his witness, Tony, to a WitSec safe house. The rest of the story is about that happening, while leaving breadcrumbs for Marshall Pete Moss to follow along the way.

This was exciting from beginning to end, just how I like my books. The ONLY thing I found unbelievable was this book was about the Mafia and the F-bomb wasn’t used even once? Yeah, that wouldn’t happen so that part wasn’t true-to-life and that’s what I look for in a book about the assassins, cops, BAD GUYS IN THE MAFIA. So, as good as this was I won’t be reading anymore of this PC author. He was too worried about offending those that don’t swear to make it real. Sorry..

No sex and no F-bomb.

As to the narration: Marc Vietor was barely okay for me. His women’s voices need work and, as I’m always saying, when you’re sneaking up on someone and you’re not whispering you ruin the moment in that book.

well researched, characters well developed

author did an excellent job in building unique charactors and delivering an ever evolving story. The research undertaken places the charactors close to real situations in the field.

Truly enjoyed the quality of the book and the content.

Completly entertaining

This detailed story guides the listener through three or four complex yet seemingly unrelated but intertwined stories that rivet the listener to their seat. So nice to be "completely entertained". Great listen.

Child like storyline and hollow B-movie characters

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

This book seems written for and by pre-pubescent teen boys. I have never written a review before, this audio book made me. I have to make sure no one else endures this as I have. I suffer from the need to finish a book/movie/audiobook no matter how bad they are once I've started.

Has Blown turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

Have you listened to any of Marc Vietor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I have not, but the narrator did his best. He was fine.

What character would you cut from Blown?

All the characters and everything they said was ridiculously simple. No depth or development of any significance. The characters all seems to have the same voice, it was all vey flat.

Any additional comments?

This book is no pizza. Even bad pizza is still pretty good.

Vehicle for PC Propaganda

If you can get past all the PC propaganda awkwardly crammed into the first 8 chapters its a mediocre book. The narrator does fine, but the book is weak. The main character is likeable, but there are a lot of things that just seem disjointed, not quite fitting together.
I stopped listening the first time I tried it, but finally made it through. In this book they have a weak story line that they go back into after having written it and see how much propaganda they can shoehorn in or glue on to it. Or perhaps they simply had 10 or so things they felt they needed to force onto the reader and decided to write a weak story in an unsuccessful attempt to blend them in.
In the book, Black people and women are victims and their lives have been made unbearable by white men (never mind the fact that the woman is a murderer). All people who live in the south, particularly Little Rock, AR, are uneducated hicks with nazi and confederate flag tattoos dressed in camouflage pants and wife-beater t-shirts. it's OK to paint everyone in Arkansas as stupid and even, apparently, all white males under 5' 5". That's OK too. According to this author, men under 5' 5" tall have "Napoleonic" complex. He felt it was so important to convey this message that he even named a short white male character "Richard Small" and said how "everyone" hated him. So, "OK" to make assumptions about entire groups of some people, but, of course, they have to be the "approved" groups to trash. I guess, if you can't write, you have to fill the pages with something.