Justin G

Interesting Premise, Awful Narration

Revisado: 02-27-25

The title basically says everything. The premise wasn’t bad, not PKDs best not his worst. But the narrator, good god man… I don’t know where to begin in describing how bad this guy is, he’s bad all over lol. Why does he whisper 50% of book for no reason? Stuff like that. Just my opinion though, take with a large grain of salt, or many grains of salt, whichever you prefer : )

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Wow

Revisado: 01-23-25

Great story & maybe even better narration. And much funnier than I expected. For what that’s worth.

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OG of the International Espionage Thriller

Revisado: 01-01-25

Wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when I first started it, I just knew I loved the title lol, but I’m glad I gave it a shot. For what’s essentially just a spy/espionage story the subject matter is very interesting & entertaining, especially when one considers it was written back in the 1930s (at least I think that’s right…). I also really like the prose style, efficient & to the point. Anyway, people that enjoy John Le Carre, Graham Greene, or even police and p.i. stories, of a certain type at least, should find plenty to like here. All & all an interesting 8 hr listen, in the humble opinion of this narrator ; )

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Pretty Good Book & Amazing Narrator

Revisado: 12-19-24

First, the book itself. I was completely new to the author & series but I stumbled upon it the other day and thought it sounded interesting, especially the setting. Having just finished it I can say that it’s a solid mystery/detective story, though the first 3 hours or so jumped around a little too much IMO, so it took the book a little while to get moving, but once it does it’s a pretty cool story. I especially dug it’s exotic primary locale of Ghana, a country I knew very little about before listening to this and now I think I’ll be staying away from Ghana lol jk 😅 Okay, one last thing and that would be the narrator, Miss Robin Miles, who I thought pretty much crushed it. Her narration is fine, but for her me it’s her characterizations, the way she really brings the dialogue to life, but does so without ever calling attention to herself & what she’s doing. Just terrific work by her from start to finish. And that’s 2 cents on this topic.

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Wonderful Louisiana Noir

Revisado: 06-06-24

The Neon Rain was my first exposure to the writing of James Lee Burke and I was extremely impressed. The plot of the book is very solid, even if it does traffic in some fairly familiar territory for a detective novel, but it’s the prose style of Mr. Lee Burke that really separates the writing here from most other mystery novels. The language of the narration is very expressive, even poetic at times, and was captivating to me from the very beginning. The other thing this audiobook really has going for it is that actor Will Patton handles the narration and is absolutely terrific in that role. His tone of voice is a great natural fit for the material, then he takes that material up another notch or two through his wide assortment of voices he uses throughout the book. He doesn’t just have 1 southern accent & 1 mob guy accent & 1 scary guy voice, no no no, he does different inflections and tone for every character, it’s really one of the very best efforts I’ve had the pleasure of listening to from a narrator. In closing, I loved this book & can not recommend it enough to both fans of the genre as well fans of good writing in general. 5 ⭐️s for both the writing and the narrator. Thank you for reading. Godspeed.

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A Fascinating & Ultimately Tragic Story

Revisado: 05-14-24

I loved this book. I knew nothing about the particulars of this story, so it was all news to me and very compelling stuff. I hated to see how things turned out in the end for Mike Lacey and his partner Jim Larkin though, and how the people most effected by the legal and political circus that ended backpage.com were sex workers whose lives were made even harder. But politicians doing anything but demonizing sex workers is highly unlikely because the poor girls make such easy targets, for liberals & conservatives both, but I digress. Great listen, one that I highly recommend 😄👍

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It’s satire you fools! (Great satire at that)

Revisado: 05-08-24

I absolutely loved this book. It was the first of Tom Wolfes I’ve checked out and definitely plan to listen to some of his more famous non-fiction stuff. It’s too bad he doesn’t/hasn’t written fiction very often because there were chapters of this book that I wished would’ve gone on forever as I was listening to them. And to critics who think the book is racist I would just like to point out that just because someone writs about racists, racism, etc, that doesn’t necessarily make the writer or his work racist. You can’t write about sorry people without writing about the ways in which they’re sorry people, or am I wrong? Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Oh, and the narrator was amazing, he nails every important character in the book and his portrayal of the judge was a real highlight for me personally. That’s all.

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Should be required reading

Revisado: 04-01-24

This book really blew me away. I’d known of it and it’s author for awhile, in fact I’d seen a movie called Animal Factory several years ago that was based on another of his novels, one about life inside prison, and it was okay but this was storytelling on a whole other level IMO. In terms of its plot it isn’t anything all that exceptional I suppose, but the magic of this book in just in the way the author writes prose and the incredible depth of emotion his words convey. It was impossible for me not to feel the authenticity of the characters, their dreams, and their dilemmas. No one comes off like a caricature or some token, stock genre archetype, everybody acts like actual people, which just gives the book that much more credibility. As someone who has lived on the streets at various times in my life I really can not recommend this enough.

Mad Dog 2o2o gives “No Beast So Fierce” 5 out of 5 ⭐️’s

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Raw, Challenging Final Act Needed Better Narrator

Revisado: 02-06-24

I’ve been a fan of James Ellroy for 25 years now but I only started listening to the audiobook versions of his work. It took me about 2 years to get around to all of them but I recently finished listening to his entire body of work, and White Jazz was the only one that featured a narrator that either just isn’t very good ior was at least wrong for this. Personally I’m leaning toward the former but this is the only thing I’ve heard him read so maybe he does a better job elsewhere, but he nearly ruins this. It’s too bad because White Jazz is a really great novel that features some of the best and boldest writing stylistically that Ellroy has ever done, and features a pretty insane plot that’s a worthy conclusion to the famed LA Quartet.

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Good thriller/mystery novel, with one sorta trivial but still pretty damn insulting flaw

Revisado: 02-03-24

Here’s what I thought of the book Tripwire on the whole as a novel….

Good story, the Jack Reacher character is terrific & is the best thing about this series of books so far, and I thought this book had a much more interesting bad guy than the fat a** with the really high voice from previous entry in the series. The villain in this one was the coolest & the scariest villain in the series to this point. Those were the nice things I’ll say about this book and it’s writer, but now it’s time for me to do some complaining haha 😂 and thruthfully I don’t have much to talk about in terms of the number of things I think are worth bitching about but there is one thing definitely worth a mention, and it was how on like 2 or 3 different occasions, including during the climatic confrontation, the writer has his hero basically deliver a condescending yelp review of short barrel 38 revolvers during his internal monologues, which is pretty absurd, and in more ways than just the most obvious ones. But let’s start with the fact that there is a reason why so many law enforcement officers & police officers especially still favor carrying either the 2” or 4” S&W 38 revolver, and it’s because mechanically revolvers are about as simple a mechanical design as a gun can get which is why revolver will never misfire in the way that so many modern automatics can and will because they use a firing pin to strike the primer on the bullet instead of a hammer like on a revolver. 38 revolvers will also never jam on you in the middle of a gunfight because there’s nothing to get jammed up with revolvers, which to my way of thinking would certainly make them more reliable than automatic pistols. And I know some people will bring up how 38s only have a 6 shot capacity which is definitely fewer bullets you can have in the gun at one time no doubt, but how many times have you ever been in a situation where you said to yourself “I knew I should’ve brought my 9mm Beretta with its 15 shot magazine just case I need to shoot 5 or 6 people in their ass tonight lol. If you can’t kill whatever you’re shooting at with 6 well placed hollow point slugs from a S&W 38 then you need to find a different 3rd world war zone to move to 😅👍 But I think the absolute dumbest thing about the verbal hit pieces Reacher does on 38 revolvers in this book is the idiotic assertion that a 38 caliber firearm doesn’t have any stopping power, even less than a slug from a 9mm, which is pretty laughable really, and also served as reminder that the author of the Jack Reacher novels Lee Child is from England where basically nobody is allowed to possess guns so maybe it should’t be that surprising he doesn’t really know anything practical about firearms haha. Anyway, I’m done complaining about that now. It was dumb, really dumb, and insulting, but it’s over now. And I won’t let that cloud what was a pretty cool story otherwise. Just don’t write any whack s**t like that again Mr. Child, okie dokie? 😅🔫✌️

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