• All Cry Chaos

  • The Henri Poincaré Series, Book 1
  • By: Leonard Rosen
  • Narrated by: Grover Gardner
  • Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (564 ratings)

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All Cry Chaos  By  cover art

All Cry Chaos

By: Leonard Rosen
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
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Publisher's summary

All Cry Chaos, a debut thriller by the immensely gifted Leonard Rosen, is a masterful and gripping tale that literally reaches for the heavens.

The action begins when mathematician James Fenster is assassinated on the eve of a long-scheduled speech at a World Trade Organization meeting. The hit is as elegant as it is bizarre. Fenster’s Amsterdam hotel room is incinerated, yet the rest of the building remains intact. The murder trail leads veteran Interpol agent Henri Poincaré on a high-stakes, world-crossing quest for answers.

Together with his chain-smoking, bon vivant colleague, Serge Laurent, Poincaré pursues a long list of suspects: the Peruvian leader of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Rapture-crazed militants, a hedge-fund director, Fenster’s elusive ex-fiancée, and a graduate student in mathematics. Poincaré begins to make progress in America, but there is a prodigious hatred trained on him—some unfinished business from a terrifying former genocide case—and he is called back to Europe to face the unfathomable. Stripped down and in despair, tested like Job, he realizes the two cases might be connected—and he might be the link.

This first installment in the Henri Poincaré series marries sharp, smart mystery to deep religious themes that will keep both agnostics and believers turning pages until the shattering, revelatory end. Anyone who enjoys the work of John le Carré, Scott Turow, Dan Brown, and Stieg Larsson will relish Rosen’s storytelling and his resourceful, haunted protagonist. Others will appreciate his dazzling prose. Still others, the way he bends the thriller form in unconventional ways toward a higher cause, in the vein of Henning Mankell in The Man from Beijing. In short, All Cry Chaos promises to become a critical success that garners a broad readership throughout the nation and across the globe.

©2011 Leonard Rosen (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Only the very best of writers can weave a compelling story from a maze of complicated ideas, and with this deftly crafted novel, Len Rosen has proven himself to be one of them.” (Arthur Golden, New York Times best-selling author of Memoirs of a Geisha)

What listeners say about All Cry Chaos

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not bad.

An interesting plot that introduces an Interpol Investigator trying to locate the killer of an esteemed mathematician, whose elegant discoveries raise many questions.
For a 'new' writer, this is a not bad start to a series.
The Publishers summary is a bit overstated. This is not Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell or John Le Carre. Leave it at 'European in style' perhaps.
Grover Gardner reads well,as usual.
It considers the exploitation of people by capitalists, end of days fervour, greed, the effects of war, jusice and law, and a question. If there is an elegant design, does that imply a designer?
If you do enjoy mysteries, look at fractals and wonder and are willing to try a new author, you could well enjoy this one. I expect the stories will get better as the series progresses..

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

I wish there were more

This is a good book, if not a great one. Narration is excellent. I won't hold my breath, but I will look forward to the next Poincare mystery (hopefully narrated by Grover).

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Fizzled

End fell apart. Contrived? Uh-huh. Pity since the puzzle was intriguing, but I'm guessing that Rosen didn't have a solution so he kind of crammed one together. The trip to the end though is exciting and the characters are compelling. Can't recommend it though.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

not a book for the faint of heart.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I personally abandoned the book early in the story. Just too violent for my taste. I was looking for a John Le Carre type of story and clearly should have read critiques that might have alerted me as to its content.

Any additional comments?

Just too much violence for me.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Mixed feelings

An excellent start,well paced and controlling the listeners (readers') interest and attention.
Less well developed,but a good listen overall

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

An intelligent, witty, engaging and touching debut

The murder mystery begins with a bang. In his room at the corner of the top floor of an Amsterdam hotel, mathematics genius James Fenster is killed in a most unusual way. He's practically vaporized by a bomb made from highly volatile––and extremely hard to come by––rocket fuel. The hotel winds up looking like a giant took a bite out of the corner of the building. Because of the complexity and high profile of the case, Interpol's senior detective, Henri Poincaré, is assigned to the case. Poincaré's great-grandfather, Jules Henri Poincaré, was a celebrated mathematician and, while Henri is not similarly gifted, he has an appreciation of the beauty and mystery of mathematics.

James Fenster was a Harvard professor and had been about to give a speech at a World Trade Organization meeting about the inevitability of a global economy. This expands the field of possible suspects from those who know him, and possibly other mathematicians, to opponents of globalism––you know, all those people who run amok during WTO meetings. As Poincaré investigates, he must also include the head of a fabulously successful Boston mutual fund company; a man who funded much of Fenster's work, but who seems to have a ravenous greed for access to work that he believes Fenster has left behind on a computer hard drive.

While Poincaré is investigating the Fenster murder, he has other matters on his mind as well. Stipo Banovich, a Serbian Poincaré had arrested for the horrifying murder of 70 Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian conflict, is about to be tried for war crimes and he has issued dire threats against Poincaré's family. Poincaré is a devoted husband to Claire, father to architect Etienne, father-in-law to Lucille, and doting grandfather to twin boys and to Chloe, who has completely captured his heart.

As the two plots heat up, more fuel is added to the fire by a worldwide apocalyptic Christian cult whose members believe the Rapture will arrive soon (August, 2012, in case you want to make plans). Some of the "schismatic" members of the cult want to hurry along the chaos that is supposed to precede the rapture by suicide bombings. Poincaré's team must investigate the bombings and try to prevent more of them, along with their Fenster investigation and the Banovich threat.

Despite its complexity, the plot is lively and compelling. Chaos theory and fractals are part of the story, and author Leonard Rosen makes them fascinating. Even math-phobes are likely to think so. The tackles political, social and religious issues and respects its readers' intelligence. All the characters are well-drawn, especially Poincaré. A dogged investigator and a deeply moral man, he reminds me of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache. It's refreshing to have mystery protagonists with family lives and no substance abuse problems. (Psst: they're still interesting without all that baggage, brooding and booze.)

Since All Cry Chaos is subtitled "An Henri Poincaré Mystery," I'm thinking––hoping is more like it––that this is the start of a series. I see no evidence of a second book yet, but I'll be on the lookout for it.

Grover Gardner was a C+/B- reader for me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his reading or pronunciation, but I didn't feel like his voice matched the material well. His voice is a little harsh. This book would have been better served by somebody like Ralph Cosham or someone with a bit of a European accent, since Poincaré and many of the other characters are French.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Loved it!

Unfortunately, I suspect the appeal of this book will not be as broad based as it should be. The skillful weaving of science and theology into a tale of mystery and suspense that Rosen pulls off here may not be appreciated as fully by those looking for a plain vanilla mystery. I don’t know if the printed book came with illustrations as these would be helpful to those not previously exposed to chaos theory or fractals. Nevertheless, Rosen, I thought, was clear enough to have these concepts come through by listening to the reader alone. The ending, as some reviewers have mentioned, is a little on the deus ex machina side but regardless, with all that came before, Rosen has me looking forward to more from Henri Poincaré – particularly if some more science is included.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A complex noir story with a human main character.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this book up, but it was actually much better than anticipated. It has quite a noir feel to it: with a troubled main character facing off against great challenges, by himself for the most part. There is a very strong mystery in here, and a great emotional component to top it off.

You'll root for Henri to solve the crime, fix his troubles, and save himself, but you won't know for sure, until the end, whether he suceeds or not. He is a very likeable and relatable main character, and his motivation to solve the mystery stems from a very human place. There is a thread of 'mathematics as the underpinning of reality' (i.e. the existence/origin of everything can be calculated) which could be heavy if you really thought about it, but you're not forced to do so in order to follow the plot - and it does add another little dimension to the story.

All in all, it was a great, suspenseful and compelling crime-mystery novel with a noir-ish setting and a likeable but troubled main character. I am looking forward to the next book to be released in this series (even though this one had no cliff-hanger at all.). The narrator has a distinctive voice which takes time to get used to, but he's very good once you do. The violence isn't gory, there is no sex and not much foul language.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Breathtaking mystery

It was so engrossing I had to put off doing things so I could continue to listen. I had to find out the answers - loved every minute of it.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent narration. Wonderful characters!

Would you consider the audio edition of All Cry Chaos to be better than the print version?

Haven't 'read' the book, but the listen was wonderful. Beautifully narrated and I loved the main character, Poincare.

Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?

Poincare

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I listen in the car on my way to work and back home. Makes my trips so much easier - in fact, I look forward to these trips!

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