Renditions

By: Ron Lealos

Narrated by: David Stifel

Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

When listeners first meet the three rough CIA Black Ops agents at the heart of this novel, they’re on an unlisted mission to the Liman Abu Zaabal prison, a special rendition site in Egypt, north of Cairo, “the perfect environment for creativity in torture”. The three operatives, Delta Force titan Washington, dangerous ex-Irish Republican Army drunk Finnen, and small-town Kansas boy (and the book’s narrator) Morgan, have been dispatched to Liman Abu Zaabal in a kind of response to their having gone off-script in an earlier undertaking. During that adventure, they killed a degenerate villain they’d only been assigned to contact (“We had been found guilty of having consciences,” as Morgan puts it).

At the prison, they’re to meet torture master Ashraf Azziz and take charge of the interrogation of Nasir Kabir, who’s been rumored to have led “the Al Qaeda infiltration of Basra” and looked “more like Antonio Banderas than Omar Sharif”. The three agents have a smooth, well-practiced professional relationship characterized by both obscene banter and sincere respect for each other’s lethal capabilities, while they bond over Jameson and beer. But what they find at Abu Zaabal shocks even their jaded sensibilities (“It was as if light had vanished from the earth and humanity had been replaced by something from a black dimension”).

The hard-edged book’s plot hits the ground running and immediately increases its momentum by having the three friends summarily kill both Kabir and Azziz in disgust and successfully make their escape before local authorities can apprehend them. The trio boards a jet to Yemen to facilitate a swap of high-value detainees, meeting a tough-as-nails operative there named Smith, whose beauty matches her competence in the field. Lealos also wrote Don’t Mean Nuthin’, a military thriller set in Vietnam during that incursion.

©2016 Ron Lealos (P)2018 Ron Lealos

Narrator and lack of plot

I couldn't stand the narration of this story. It's supposedly a CIA thriller, but the narrator has a somewhat weak tone, and also sounds much older than I would have visualized the character. After the initial action takes place, the book goes down hill. I kept waiting for the plot or some hint as to what was to come in the rest of the book, but after 9 hours of listening, I couldn't keep going. The action never picked up again to where it could recapture my interest. It felt like a waste of time, and the narration was irritating.

Ok not terrible

I bought it, I feel bleh about it the chars argue too much and all they do is pick up prisoners over and over and over and over. Some action but mostly Finnen and Washington arguing. Ok to pass the time but not top tier stuff. Narrator needs a latte or something he sounds high/lazy.