The Savannah Project

Jake Pendleton Series, Book 1

By: Chuck Barrett

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

The truth can be a dangerous thing.

Terrorism, duty, and personal safety collide when Jake Pendleton, an investigator for the NTSB, is called to investigate an aircraft accident in Savannah, Georgia during the St. Patrick's Day celebration. The accident, which at first appears to be quite run-of-the-mill, turns out to be anything but. Since Jake is not willing to pretend there are no suspicious circumstances and more than the usual share of rather unlikely "coincidences," he sets off a veritable avalanche of secrets, violence and treachery. Aided by an unlikely partner, Gregg Kaplan, the air traffic controller who was the last person in contact with the airplane that crashed, Jake sets out to untangle the webs of deceit and to find a vicious killer. Nothing is as it seems, nobody is who you thought them to be. Nothing is sacred. Nobody is safe.

©2010 Chuck Barrett (P)2013 Audible Inc.

Even Scott Brick couldn't save a story arc

It's not so much a bad story, as just badly told. Scott Brick does a fairly good job narrating it, but you can tell that even he has a really hard time figuring out where to build tension. The story reaches a sort of ending then stretches on into a different story. It's like the author had a few different story ideas and sort of munged them together. The level of coincidental path crossing is almost silly. I've never gotten this far through a book and abandoned it with just an hour or two left to go, but I found I just don't care about anyone or anything in it.

Great start to the Jake Pendleton series.

I found this author and this series looking through audiobooks narrated by Scott Brick. Also, I read this series two years ago and since I only began seriously writing reviews a few months ago after 7 years as a Audible member, I am now catching up with reviews of some of the best books in my Audible library (which is why I'm writing lots of reviews recently).

In The Savannah Project Jake Pendleton is an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board called to Savannah to investigate an airplane accident. He finds lots of criminal activity which involves both local and federal officials. With the help of Gregg Kaplan (who shows up as the hero in Barrett's 4th book BLOWN) and at great risk to himself Pendleton seeks to unravel the mysteries and bring the law breakers to justice.

The Pendleton series is three novels and although The Savannah Project is the weakest of the three, it is an excellent thriller. Scott Brick is the perfect narrator!

Hard to put it into words...

It's nowhere near the worst mystery to which I've listened. The plot line gets unnecessarily convoluted. It's much like "Mad Magazine's" Spy vs. Spy. Scott Brick made the listen tolerable.

Skip the first 6 min. for a better story.

What about Scott Brick’s performance did you like?

Great reader...

Any additional comments?

I will say this again. The First six minutes of the book tells you about a part that is 2/3 of the way through the book. It was very distracting to me to know that part was coming up. I enjoy the book but it would of been better not knowing where it was all going.. I will skip the pro-log on book 2.

Not Scott Brick's best

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

Overall, the story was good. One of those 'person seeks revenge and feels that a dozen deaths are a fair exchange for the wrong committed against them' stories.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Scott Brick?

I'm a fan of Scott Brick. I think he's amazing. This book, though, was made so hard to follow because the voices weren't distinctive enough. I kept getting lost in the story because I was associating voices with the wrong characters. I couldn't keep them straight.

Worth reading

The start was a little hard to get into as the narrator started off very monotone. This improves quickly and the story is excellent

Good thriller

The plot is interesting. The villains are ruthless and despicable. However. our heroes lack depth and dimension. The result is a good rather than great book.

Ending not so good

Good idea, novel character to start a series..I prefer an ending that is happy but the author decided to draw the story into further character development for book 2. I’m afraid book 2 will just be dragged into another atypical CIA chase the bad guys for revenge. Kill the bad guy eventually whilst being pissed off and angry at the loss suffered at the end of book 1.

Sometimes free isn’t worth it!

I was only a few hours into this and I just had to stop. I love Scott brick which is mainly why I chose this plus selection… But it was horrible! There were several Irish characters in this book but Scott brick couldn’t keep his character straight... all of a sudden a few hours in a female character who had never been introduced as Irish at all and had never been voiced that way suddenly became Irish when she was speaking! Jake Pendleton went in and out of his southern accent, it was ridiculously distracting. The storyline was full of holes... I just couldn’t take it anymore.I understand this is a series, and I’m sure the author got much better at it as he went along… But this one was the first pancake.

Starts off Slow but Great Ending

Story starts off slow but has a great ending. Very good series! Don't miss it.