The American: Ryan Kealey #1

A wonderful chase story with many twists and turns. Great characters, but the detail in the book goes on and on. The author explains many situations to a degree that I found frustrating. It is a great book, with surprise? ending.

Ryan Kealey is the classic spy hero. He is a bit of a bad boy, extremely skilled at almost EVERYTHING, smarter than everyone else, is a tough guy, anti-bureaucracy, all the ladies immediately are attracted to him, and several other clichés. Only in his early thirties, he has to come out of retirement to track his terrorist nemesis. In all of the government, Ryan is the only one having success in the hunt and his success is primarily through hunches and bit of information gleaned when killing and torturing. I spent the last 3 hours of the book trying to decide how the author was going to handle two key telegraphed plot twists that were going to set up the remainder of the series. Sure enough, I guessed the ending.
Being predictable and cliché does not have to prevent a book from being entertaining and exciting. Heck, I like Clive Cussler books. The American is OK in that respect. The specific terrorist hunt and chase are good. I was not buying the villain and terrorist conspiracy, but it is no worse than many other novels. I can see this book would be great for those that like a macho hero and they will enjoy it. I was not a fan of the narrator who worked hard to give recognizable voices to the individual characters. While I give him credit for this, many of the accents and speech cadences did not work for me.
A word of caution are about the female characters. Heck, I am a guy and they were still written way too much from a guy’s perspective. The girls all attracted to the moody Kealey. We hear about how stylish the women are dressed with perfectly coiffed (impractically so) and later Kealey says that one of the things he loves about his fiancee is that she never thinks about her appearance or spends any time looking in the mirror, but she is totally beautiful.
Finally, the book ends the immediate threat, but more than sets itself up for the next chapter. I meant chapter because this feels like an episode of a themed television show. It is a book that I would not feel bad reading on a long flight, but think there are way better series to get connected with for the long term.

I am willing to recommend the author. I wish I had read the paper version first because the narration ruined it for me.

Same as above. Production is also awful. Some added "effects" such as phone and radio dialog and listening to someone shout in another room are just plain poor and amateurish attempts to make this title better. That coupled with the terrible narration makes me want to tell readers not to waste your money on the audio book without first sampling. Buy the paper version or get a different narrator. I will not be purchasing any more of Britton's audio books without a change in narrator and production expertise.

Absolutely not. He is nasal, his voice sounds mucousy and cracks and pitches at odd places.

Again the story is entertaining but the narration is too painful to bother with.

Someone give Christopher Lane some Mucinex and a box of tissues.

It took me a while to get used to not falling asleep while driving due to the lack of inflection from the narrator. My first audio book by this narrator. Towards the end, I found it easier to stay engaged with the story and not be lulled into a hypnotic state. Going to go for the sequel.

can't compare. I haven't read print version

Certainly kept me interested enough to want to keep coming back until finished

change in inflection as related to different characters. Seemed to get better as he went along.

The storyline was good, character development good but I thought the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying

I liked the book in general. Although most of these types of book are fairly predictable, but still not too bad for a 1st release. Especially since the author was just 23 when released. Sad that he died so suddenly.

So so

I really didn't care for the narrator. He does a better job with female voices than male and he too monotone in most of it like he was just reading it and not acting.

Perhaps ... no clue

I'm pretty good and forcing myself to finish a book no matter how bad the book/narrator. Mr. Lane much, much better in the second book in the series. If you can make it through this one, you'll be pleased with the second one.