Ratcatcher

By: Tim Stevens

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

RATCATCHER Book One of the acclaimed John Purkiss Spy Action Thriller series. When spies go rogue, they need to be stopped. That's where John Purkiss - the Ratcatcher - comes in. Purkiss's job is straightforward. Track down members of the intelligence services who are taking kickbacks, engaging in criminal activity, or otherwise abusing their positions, and bring them to justice. Straightforward doesn't mean easy... After a renegade British former intelligence agent, Fallon, is sighted in the Baltic city of Tallinn on the eve of a historic summit meeting between the Russian and Estonian presidents, Purkiss is despatched to investigate, and uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to tear Europe, and the world, apart. But Purkiss has personal reasons for going after Fallon. Four years ago, Fallon was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Purkiss's fiancée, a murder Purkiss himself witnessed. Now, in an atmosphere of ratcheting suspense and sudden violence, as the countdown begins to a potentially catastrophic conflict between Russia and the West, Purkiss must keep his desire for revenge under control for the sake of the world's - and his own - survival. Described in Amazon reviews as a "cracker of a spy thriller" with "superbly choreographed action scenes" that "leave you feeling almost dizzy", RATCATCHER is both an adrenaline-fuelled action adventure novel and a spy thriller which exposes the world of the secret agent, in which few motives and actions are purely black or white.

Terrible, horrible AI narration

AI narration sounds, feels truncated, artificial, inappropriate, unnatural. As if a foreigner is reading the words and has no understanding of the sentence or the paragraph and has no idea how to use their voice to convey meaning. Really a bad job I couldn’t get into the story and it could be a very good story. – – But I couldn’t get into the story because the AI narration was so horrible.. So I feel cheated out of a possibly great story.

mediocre story with poor narration

Plot was adequate but too many instances of the main character escaping by impossible means

the automated narration needs a great deal of work. the inflections etc. made it sound like a children's story and didn't match the tone of the book. plus pronouncing of punctuating (saying 'dash' at every hyphen) became very annoying.