Tanner's Twelve Swingers

By: Lawrence Block

Narrated by: Theo Holland

Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

Presenting Evan Tanner - the first series character created by Lawrence Block, best-selling author of A Walk Among the Tombstones...

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most importantly, time to do his dreaming while he's wide awake.

Karlis, Tanner's comrade in the Latvian Army in Exile, is pining for his true love, a gymnast who can't get out of the Soviet Union. So Tanner sneaks through a hole in the Iron Curtain, meets the child he unwittingly fathered on an earlier trip to Macedonia, smuggles a dissident intellectual out of Yugoslavia, adds to his retinue a six-year-old Lithuanian girl, who'd be the rightful heir to the Lithuanian throne if there ever were one, and winds up not with one Latvian gymnast but with a whole company of them. (Collect them all! Win valuable prizes!)

And he does all this without a passport. Oh, he had one, but he gave it away...

©2016 Lawrence Block (P)2017 Lawrence Block

Typical "Tanner" Novel Read Well

At the outset I must state that even though I consider myself a huge fan of Lawrence Block, but with that comes the embarrassment that I am not a fan of his Tanner series.

This Tanner tale has all of the elements of the series. The spy who never sleeps goes hither and yon on a fast moving adventure. The one element I like about the series, and will lift up in this work is the humor. Sometimes it is slight, and at other times boldly proclaimed, but the author writes in wry comments and observations throughout.

Where an audiobook can sink or swim is upon the back of the narrator, and I am always delighted when Theo Holland is on board, especially for a Block book. Mr. Holland clearly gets the intricacies within the written text and thus the aforementioned humor and more come out wonderfully in his reading of the material.

If you are a Block fan, then this is probably for you. If you want to hear a narrator who is not one of the overused usual folk then I commend you to listen to this work and hear Theo Holland presenting his typical good work.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Unexpected family.

Would you listen to Tanner's Twelve Swingers again? Why?

Already have several times. I enjoyed it very much.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Tanner's Twelve Swingers?

Near the end when Minna announces her intentions to stay with Evan forever.

Which character – as performed by Theo Holland – was your favorite?

Butec, always whining without exactly whining. Plus, I enjoyed the accent Theo provided.

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

Sure thing.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful