Mark Finkelstein

Baldacci does noir to a T!

Revisado: 01-28-25

I'm always searching for traditional noir mysteries and was pleasantly surprised to see Baldacci produce an excellent one here.

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HORRIBLE narration!!

Revisado: 10-30-24

The narration was so horrible that I began to wonder if it had been done by AI rather than by an actual human. So I went back to the Audible listing, and sure enough:

"This title uses virtual voice narration Virtual voice is computer-generated narration for audiobooks."

The narration was badly stilted, and the emphasis was frequently placed on the wrong word in a sentence.

I will attempt to return the book: it is UNLISTENABLE!

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Good story, but one thing really bothered me

Revisado: 09-25-24

My frustration has nothing to do with the author or the book, which was perfectly fine.

But I found myself getting frustrated and angry with the British law enforcement system, and in particular that most officers go around unarmed.

[Slight spoiler alert] As a result of being unarmed, numerous officers got seriously injured, in one case very grievously.

When severe danger arises, the unarmed officers have to call in special armed teams, who often arrive too late to prevent innocent people from getting badly injured or worse.

This is dangerous folly in 21st century UK. We're no longer in Victorian times in which bobbies, with nothing more than a nightstick, would tell the miscreant, "come along now," and they would normally comply. We are dealing with very different criminals nowadays. It is absurd for police to be regularly outgunned.

In some ways my frustration ruined, or at least significantly diminished, my enjoyment of the book.

But if the issue that bothered me wouldn't bother you, by all means, give this otherwise fine book a go.

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Beyond a mystery. Humanity.

Revisado: 07-18-24

Simply the finest mystery I have ever read. Kindness and humanity and insight into the human condition.

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Interesting story but implausible ending

Revisado: 02-25-24

[Spoiler Alerts]

It was a truly engaging, creative, story with some good plot twists.

But I found the ending implausible.

It seemed inevitable that "Helen" wouldn't be able to board the plane. But, having discovered her false identity, why would the Swiss authorities possibly have turned her over to Pavel, particularly since they had already taken Daniel into custody?

And it wasn't up to Sarah not to press charges against Daniel. He was guilty of a lot more than the relatively minor charges she mentioned -- he was part of a conspiracy to commit murder!

Finally, we never found out what happened to the $10 million endorsement fee. Somehow I expected that when Pavel turned over the documents to Sarah, a bank deposit slip in her favor for the $10 million would be among them -- but no. We never learned the fate of the $10 million.

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Anti-religious feminists: this is your book

Revisado: 02-19-24

There was some suspense.

But all the major characters were women, and the bad guys, with one exception, were men or a horrible religious group with practices beyond anything recognizable in today's world.

And this was definitely NOT a work of literature. It was pedestrian writing and ultimately hard to believe and boring.

A man who was decent in some ways was a monster holding his wife bound for months in the basement out of jealousy? Really?

I hung in there, but wouldn't recommend it. At the very end, it was disclosed that a significant woman character was gay. It didn't serve any plot line and seemed gratuitous, just to prove woke credentials.

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Enjoyable, but illogical premise [minor spoiler]

Revisado: 08-01-22

I'm a Parker fan, for the series being "pur et dur," as the French would say.

This is the 18th in the series I've listened to.

Although I enjoyed this book, I found a key part of the premise to be illogical. [spoiler follows]

To get access to the money room aboard the gambling boat, one of the members of the "string" impersonates an actual New York Assemblyman conducting an inspection tour. A reporter doing an undercover story knew the actual Assemblyman and realizes that the member of the Parker crew is a fake. He's about to inform the captain when a member of the crew puts him out of action, non-lethally.

But the boat is based in Albany, the capital of New York, where the Assembly is also based. The crowd aboard the boat was bound to include many people involved in various ways with New York government. Not only the reporter, but many others, were sure to know the Assemblyman, and to have realized that the Parker "Assemblyman" was a fake.

It was just way too shaky of a scheme, that stood a good chance of being exposed and failing.

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disappointing supernatural angle, obvious villian

Revisado: 04-09-22

Started out intriguing, but it soon became obvious who the villain was. And for those like me who don't enjoy supernatural stories, that angle was an annoying disappointment.

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This rather ruined it for me [very minor spoilers]

Revisado: 09-27-21

It was a nice enough story, with nothing being taken too seriously, and the gang careful to avoid killing anyone. Under the unwritten code of thrillers, this allowed the story to have a happy ending.

But there was one thing that stretched credulity beyond the breaking point, and thereby diminished my enjoyment of the story. At one point, a member of the gang climbs into a helicopter. And NEVER HAVING FLOWN A HELICOPTER BEFORE, not only successfully flies it through the New York airspace, but puts it down gently on the roof of a building.

As a fixed-wing airplane pilot, and someone who's reasonably familiar with helicopters, I can definitively say that this is IMPOSSIBLE! Yes, the "pilot" is said to be very gifted at driving all sorts of vehicles, and he mentions that he had built a helicopter. But that is a VERY far cry from flying one.

Flying a helicopter is much more difficult than even flying a fixed-wing plane. And landing it anywhere, which requires a hover, let alone on the roof of a building, is probably the single hardest maneuver in aviation. The notion that someone who had never flown a helicopter could pull this off is totally absurd. It did put a damper on the story for me.

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absurd premise

Revisado: 04-23-21

[Contains significant spoilers]

I was enjoying the substance and narration. It was a solid, if conventional, murder mystery.

But when toward the end the identity of the murderer was revealed, it totally lost me. The notion that a dog walker would murder countless customers because they were insufficiently kind to their dogs is absurd.

Note: the victims weren't some loathsome dog-killers, using them, for example, for dog fights and then killing them. They were just everyday people who weren't as loving or attentive to their dogs as they should have been. As grounds not just for murder, but for numerous, serial murders? Totally unbelievable, unless the killer was deeply psychotic, something that if true, the author never revealed or developed.

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