The Savannah Project

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.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

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.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

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!

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

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.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

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.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

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.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Decent book but pretty terrible narration..

Overall, this was a good mystery with a bit of romance but it was very wordy and there was a lot of the parts about the IRA and Ireland that was pretty interesting but there was just too much history given.

I did like Jake and Beth but the author left you hanging at the end, but not so much you couldn’t figure out what happened, which I think I hated. I liked Gregg Kaplan, too. His girlfriend, not so much.

Laurence O’Rourke and his brother and Nasiri got exactly what they deserved, But the real bad guy got away so I guess Jake will be going after Shamrock in the next book. Which I will NOT be listening to.

No sex and no F-bomb, other swearing though.

As to the narration: I absolutely love Scott Brick BUT not in this book. He was just so awful I can’t tell you. Every single woman sounded exactly like a man and he didn’t whisper when he absolutely should have been. Didn’t laugh, didn’t do much of anything except read the book. Sorry Scott, but I think I’ll stay away from your older books.

Surprising!

Enjoyed this so much! Ups and downs, twists and turns, even when I figured out who was involved there was always more.

Flesh Wound to the Head

What disappointed you about The Savannah Project?

The book starts with a rape that has no particular relationship to the story, has the climax in the middle of the book, the anticlimax ending as the villain walks away from a gun shot to the head.

Well, that wasn't exactly the ending. The flesh wound to the head apparently scrambled his brain. In spite of being on the world's top ten most wanted list, a huge man with skunk-striped hair, head wound and odd colored eyes, he whizzes through international travel unnoticed and kills the protagonists girl friend who has no part in the plot but apparently serves to set up a sequel. The end.

I missed the news story where the IRA got sick and tired of Islamic extremists getting all of the terrorism credit and decided to make a come back, but The Savannah Project is apparently their coming out party in fiction.This book seemed like it has about 95/5 talk/action ratio, but it is hard to tell because so much of the talk has nothing to do with furthering the plot. It felt like someone gave the author a word quota and he filled it with passages from his descriptive writing classes on other topics.

What little action there is cartoonish. The former black ops sidekick gets easily captured, stumbles and bumps his shin, can't seem to hit his target with a gun, turns his back on a guy he is beating up who pulls a knife to fight anew unaffected from his pummeling, gets shot numerous times wile cracking wise all the way home.

Lots of people get shot -- two in the neck which the author must feel is so much easier to hit than center mass. One person gets shot in the leg, survives with a flesh wound only to be shot later in the same leg several times. However, she bravely declares that it hurts like hell, "but I'll live." Probably had some previously undisclosed medical training.

Implausible events, incompetent protagonists, aimless storyline, this book has it all including a flesh wound to the head.

Would you ever listen to anything by Chuck Barrett again?

Not likely.

What about Scott Brick’s performance did you like?

Scott Brick is the best narrator in the world and only his masterful skills made this tedious story bearable. Brick could read a Napa parts catalog and make it as interesting as this book.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

This book was a frustrating disappointment.