Incel

Walker & Arruda, Book 1

By: Lori A. Witt

Narrated by: Ian Walker

Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

Detective Damian Arruda thought his partner was just too distraught to accept his wife’s murder as a random act of violence. Then the devastated widower got too close to the truth, and now Damian is grieving his best friend. As his conscience threatens to eat him alive, he’ll stop at nothing to find the killer.

Special Agent Melissa Walker’s partner met a violent end as well, and his death is almost certainly connected. When she joins forces with Damian, the investigation takes them into the vile underbelly of the Internet: The incel community and its toxic forums full of misogynists who consider themselves “involuntarily celibate” and feed off each other’s vitriol and hatred.

As the pieces come together, there’s no denying the three deaths and the poisonous, cultlike community are part of a wave of murders, grisly assaults, and bombings. Damian and Melissa are running out of time to take the killers down before more innocent people fall victim - and before someone decides that one victim at a time isn’t enough.

©2019 Lori A. Witt (P)2019 Lori A. Witt

LA Witt + Michael Ferraiuolo* = EPIC RIDE

Would I listen to it again: yes ✔
Did the story keep me engaged: yes ✔
Was I invested in the characters: yes ✔

📖 Story comment: good pace, great characters (good good-guys / bad bad-guys), intriguing story.
I really enjoyed Incel, even if the reality behind the Incel's subculture in this day and age is terrifying.
I especially enjoyed the dynamic between Detective Arruda and FBI Agent Walker as they work to solve their case, their partnership and friendship is built on grief at the loss of their respective partners, but develops into something much deeper and stronger - it's great to see a well developed, strong female lead, and a male detective with the respect to not try and take over the investigation.

The minute I finished I immediately went looking for more !.

🎧 Narrator comment: There are so many "ticks" on the narration of this title. The chemistry between Arruda and Walker comes through, the "unhinged" nature of the Incel's, the number of different voices and accents, the life in the dialog of the online forum's. Melissa's voice was incredibly well done, suited her personality and was consistently voiced throughout,
Ian Walker (aka Michael Ferraiuolo*) has done a great performance on Incel. He suits the characters, has good pace, inflections and intonations, builds tension in all the right places, conveys all the right emotions, builds the connection between the two MC's and brings life to every scene, at no time did I have any trouble distinguishing who was speaking. 👍 👍

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📌 Where does it fall on my personal scale? (solid) 8.5 ... this book is slightly disturbing !!!!
• 1 not my thing • 2 didn't like the narration • 3 didn't keep my attention • 4 was good, but once was enough • 5 enjoyed it • 6 will listen again if i'm in the mood for the narrator • 7 goes on the "re-listen" list [4⭐] • 8 kept me up past bed-time [4.5⭐] • 9 recommended to family/friends [4.75⭐] • 10 own it in multiple formats [5⭐] • 11 keep a copy with me at all times [5⭐]
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* Permission was obtained from the narrator to use is "regular" name in this review.

Intriguing, Gripping and Outstanding!

I am a huge fan of this author, who is also known by several other pennames, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this story. My husband and I started listening to it during a 3-hour drive on our way to a cruise. It's a 13-hour book so I knew we wouldn't get to finish it but I didn't expect to wait 3 more months before picking it up again.

This time we started it on our return home from a book con, 4-hour drive. Of course, that wasn't enough time to finish it, but this time we immediately began listening again once we unloaded our car. We literally didn't do anything else except for listening to this book until it was finished. It grabbed hold of both of us so hard that we HAD to finish it.

OMG, the audio performance of this story is outstanding and deserves at least 10 stars. It's a very dark book having to do with the dark web and a group of men who consider themselves involuntarily celibate (Incels). These men hate beautiful men and women and have all kinds of nasty names for them. They want to do them harm and this book deals with the investigation into this group and the crimes they have committed.

A fair amount of the dialogue in this book are messages from forums on the dark web. I mention this because I almost couldn't believe the fantastic job that Ian Walker did voicing these exchanges. The various accents and voices he used for the many different characters just blew me and my husband away.

I'm sure that an enormous amount of research was done before the author wrote this story. Since I have no personal knowledge of law enforcement, I can only say that the book was very believable to me.

If you're looking for a romance there's only the tiniest bit of it in this story but that didn't matter at all to me and about 99% of what I read is romance. Incel is shown as book one in the Walker & Arruda series and I really hope that there will be more in this series.