Robert Stetson

Blockbuster

Revisado: 12-05-21

A scathing indictment of the man and the medical-industrial complex that is transforming this country before our eyes into a totalitarian dystopia. No right-wing nut job by any measure, either. This is a must-read for anyone disturbed by the nonsensical edicts that are bedeviling this country. The narration is unfortunately flat, but it’s better than overwrought and you get used to it.
Download this book before it gets canceled as misinformation.

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God Awful

Revisado: 02-26-20

It's possible that this short story makes sense by the time you are done with it in two hours, but I couldn't listen to more than a half hour of what seemed like utter nonsense recorded in a train station' lavatory. I know it was free, but where do I go to get my half hour back?

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Much ado about nothing

Revisado: 03-15-19

I downloaded this book after listening to the two other Kardos books available and rather liking them. This book's premise, however, was ridiculous. Without giving away too much, I think I can reveal the basic plot, which is that three men "accidentally" kidnap a young woman and then spend way too much time trying to decide what to do with her. By the time they decide, it has cost them dearly. But they could have just let her go at any time with little or no consequence . Instead they spend the rest of the book trying to decide how to untangle what eventually becomes an actual kidnapping.
The fact is there is a fairly compelling backstory and a clever twist to the plot and it could have been a good listen. Instead I spent 7 hours muttering, "What's the matter with you chuckle-heads?"

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Two kinds of Narrators

Revisado: 11-17-17

I think Michael Connelly gets better with every book. This timely story encompassing the opioid crisis as well as the corruption of the law by unscrupulous lawyers provides a great platform for his characters to really develop and entertain. This extremely brief review as prompted by another reviewer who simply hated the narrator, Titus Welliver and I felt I had to come to his defense. I simply love this guy's voice and tempo. I feel he gives the series a distinctive and welcome tone.

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Just Wonderful

Revisado: 04-20-16

What made the experience of listening to Shady Cross the most enjoyable?

Not since running out of John Sandford's books to listen to have I enjoyed a thriller so much. How Hankins manages to make you care for his low-life criminal of a protagonist is a wonder to experience. It's not only "hard to put down" but it's impossible to listen to without alternately cringing and laughing out loud.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Shady Cross?

for some reason I still cringe when I think about Stokes getting his hand broken for looking at his watch. I think I actually said "Ow" aloud... and then was laughing a few seconds later.

Which scene was your favorite?

I think what happened when he broke into the antique dealers' home was just priceless.

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

It was. I generally just listen to books while driving or doing brainless chores. But I ended up just sitting and listening to this one for quite some time.

Any additional comments?

I don't want to give away the ending but it was unusually good. Poetic even.

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Possum Squeezin's it's not.

Revisado: 10-15-14

John Sandford is the most talented writer of this genre, Eric Conger is the best narrator in this medium, and Virgil Flowers is the most likable protagonist you're going to find in any novel.
Add to the above a thoroughly venal mid-west school board that would resort to murder to maintain their façade, a dog-napping ring and a rural meth lab, and you've got a story that doesn't so much unfold as spill out uncontrollably and delightfully from the first sentence to the last.
As for the possum squeezin's: it's just one of the many analogies and descriptions that Sandford scatters around his books (this one referring to a Bloody Mary) that keep the reader chuckling through some of the grisliest situations.
It's a great listen.

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Compelling story, poorly told

Revisado: 09-04-14

Donna Tartt should really stick to writing and leave the reading to others. It's not that there is anything annoying about her voice, but it is not suitable for impressions of young men in college, who come off sounding like adolescent twits rather than the young adults facing serious conundrums that she portrays in this book. Actually, I take that back. Her rendition of Bunny was annoying; so much so that I stopped listening after the first hour or so.
Fortunately, I later found myself on a long car trip with nothing else in the queue and I resumed the story with some reservations. My sufferance was rewarded with a compelling story concerning the apparent life of privilege at an exclusive New England college. A small group of students, from actually very different origins, find themselves snarled up in in a suspenseful tangle of debauchery, deceit, murder and blackmail.
I found the characters all quite believable if not actually likable and the story unfolded in a very realistic manner. At bottom, it's a warning that one never really gets away with murder. It's worth a listen.

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Unexpected joyride

Revisado: 08-05-13

Thomas Perry has an hysterically droll sense of humor that I did not find in either the Butcher Boy series or in Metzger's Dog (which I didn't find at all funny). However, Perry's fraud investigator in Death Benefits is so droll and understatedly outrageous, I found myself bursting into laughter in the most quotidian situations, and the actuary, John Walker, is his perfect straight man. The narrator, Michael Kramer, does an absolutely perfect job.On more than one occasion I had to stop driving because my eyes were watering so freely.
That said, I thought the final chase and conclusion were a little over the top and a little bit of a let down. Funny how another reviewer thought this book lacked Perry's "usual sense of humor" but loved the ending. Go figure.
This is one of the few books I've listened to twice, because I just loved the ride, and it was just as enjoyable on the second go-round.

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Another grand slam for Sandford

Revisado: 07-02-13

John Sandford just keeps batting them out of the park with his character-driven detective stories. This one revolves around a particularly dirty political trick and the people who perpetrated it. The characters are utterly believable, the dialogue is crisp, the descriptions are priceless, and the narration, by Richard Ferrone, is as usual, impeccable. If you haven't listened to any of Sandford's "Prey" series, this is as good a place as any to start. If you have, you probably don't need my encouragement to buy it.

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Juvenile and trite

Revisado: 07-02-13

I suppose there is some demand for a book about a tough-but-gentle mom/cop who loves her children but hates people who mutilate and murder innocent-but-misunderstood teenage girls, but I didn't realize I was contributing to it when I plunked down my credit towards this supposed mystery/suspense/thriller.
I'm frankly baffled by the good reviews this book has gotten, so I assume there is an appetite for these ingredients:
1: A corpse nicknamed Zombie Doe by the Minneapolis Police Force, because she looked like a zombie bouncing out of the trunk of a speeding car.
2: A curmudgeonly cop with an estranged daughter about the same age as Zombie Doe and a penchant for introspection.
3: A conflicted female cop who frets she works too hard and long for society at the expense of her fractured family
4: A conflicted female cop's teenaged son who thinks his mother works too long and hard at his expense, but shows real grit in the face of bullying and makes his mother proud because he's actually a great kid even if he's a free thinker and not one of the popular kids.
5: A self-centered mother of a troubled teen-aged girl who cares more about herself than her daughter (Imagine how that's going to end up!).
6: A diabolical serial killer.
7: A psychologist with a weakness for troubled teenaged girls and their mothers.

The recipe this book seems to follow is to combine these ingredients (along with a pinch of schmaltz and maybe a dash of self-righteousness ) and just shake and serve.
More predictable than mysterious, and more pedantic than suspenseful, this audiobook was about as thrilling as a Public Service Announcement.

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