First to Kill

By: Andrew Peterson

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

When you're the best at what you do, it's not always easy to walk away. Nathan McBride was retired. The trained Marine sniper and covert CIA operative had put the violence of his former life behind him. But not anymore. A deep-cover FBI agent has disappeared along with one ton of powerful Semtex explosive, enough to unleash a disaster of international proportions.

The U.S. government has no choice but to coax Nathan out of retirement. He's the only man with the skills necessary to get the job done. But almost as soon as Nathan reluctantly accepts the assignment, he finds himself caught in the middle. On the one side is a ruthless adversary with a blood-chilling plan - and on the other are agents who will stop at nothing to see their own brand of justice done.

Also listen to the sequel, Forced to Kill.

©2008 Andrew Peterson (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A high-powered thriller from a magnum-force writer." (David Dun, author of The Black Silent)

Jack Reacher he's not

This is a blatant attempt to imitate Lee Childs' Jack Reacher character, with predictable results. Reacher is a bigger-than-life character, so this author has made his imitation bigger than Reacher. If I had a dollar for every time a character tells the protagonist 'you're not like anyone I've ever met,' I could buy a few cups of fancy coffee with foamed milk floating on top. Although McBride doesn't perform open heart surgery or hand-to-hand combat with a mountain lion, he stops just short of both. Despite all his multifarious skills, sensitivity and insights (and the concomitant fawning admiration of all those around him), he misses obvious clues that would have prevented this book from sprouting any chapters past page 70 or so, thereby doing us all a big favor. I'm not all that interested in trying to outguess the protagonist, but even I wondered how he could be missing all the obvious clues (even as the author points them out).

In short, this is a relatively harmless book, and won't hurt the Reacher franchise by being a hyperbolic though pale shadow if it. While predictable, it has some moments that maintained my interest; I listened to the end, right to the point where the sappy music began to play and I began to gag.

average

A Middle of the road thriller. The book has enough action but it has these weird breaks in it. At one point there is a long discussion between two of the main characters regarding their personal life but it doesn’t really add to the story and quite frankly it didn’t seem to fit in general. The author seems to know a lot about snipers as there is a lot of talk about the preparation and adjustments needed which really gets you close to the main character. Not sure if it’s interesting enough to keep going with the series for me.

Performance was very good. Couldn't have asked for a better reading.

Great writer been looking for someone like Vince

What did you love best about First to Kill?

Great story good characters and fast moving
Put Peterson next to Flynn and Clancy

What did you like best about this story?

I liked the integrity of the characters... Not very much swearing Thanks

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

Love to listen to this man read a book!!!

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

Yes, this book kept me very interested.

A Voice made for pictures

Fairly good story, reasonably good characters. Awful performance. Performer sounded like he had some sort of a problem with his nose, kept having to lick his lips. Very annoying. Terrible attempt at accents.

Old school good guy bad guy, fun and engaging

... Provided....that this done before countless times by countless authors is your thing. Nothing really original in that it's another story about a much larger than life protagonist who's been to hell and back but made it against the odds, is a loner except for his trusted friend (who he has been to hell and back with), super good guy despite the terrible things he was forced to do.. is the kind of guy you read about in fiction novels... (which is what this is..) then this is for you

I am a person who likes these kinds of books. Clear cut who's the good guy and who are the bad guys. The bad guys are so so bad you hate them and can't wait to see them dead. The good guys are so good heroic that you wish you had relatives like them. Lead character was awesome, lots of excitement, tense moments and tough to put down.

Another reason I enjoyed it is that typically with these types of stories the lead character is superhuman in everything. Including sexual dynamos. There's always a few pages dedicated to this but this book did not sport any of that. Romance was kept reasonable and nothing page skipping as is what I usually do for dumb sex scenes

The narrator was ok but I didn't love him.. Deep baritone voice, did a good job portraying the men. However I hated the way he would voice women. It sounded like a borderline between a disturbed serial killer and an overtly effeminate male. He also made the antagonists sound like they were stupid simpletons when based on what they pulled would qualify them for genius in many respects.

Either way I did very much enjoy the book it's just the narrator kind of dulled it for me

Decent Story but Predictable

I didn’t mind the story and I have heard the narrator in many other books I have listened to but I didn’t care for some of the improbability of the events nor the predictability of it.

As good as Jack Reacher

I love Dick Hill and this book is as good as any of Jack Reachers’. Very similar and as exciting. Hard to stop listening.

Good action story

Good hero, great action, really good narration (as always from Dick Hill). Can't wait listen to the rest of the books in the series.

Narration

Good story line, good plot. A lot of the time it was difficult to distinguish which character was speaking because they all sounded the same.

Narrator ads unexplained aspect

Nathan’s best friend, Harv, is represented with a speech impediment that is never referred to in the story. Clearly it’s part of the character, or the audio performance director would never have allowed it. But why is this part of the Harv character never mentioned in the book?