Thrillers, from wild to mild
China Lake
By Meg Gardiner
Brilliance Audio, unabridged fiction, 10 CDs, 12 hours, $36.95, read by Tanya Eby Sirois; also available on an MP3 disc, $24.95, or as a download from audible.com, $17.47
The Finder
By Colin Harrison
Macmillan Audio, unabridged fiction, 10 CDs, 12 hours and 30 minutes, $39.95, read by Jason Culp; also available as a download from audible.com, $27.97
The Year of Disappearances
By Susan Hubbard
Tantor Media, unabridged fiction, eight CDs, 10 hours, $34.99, read by Joyce Bean; also available as a download from audible.com, $17.47
The Reapers
By John Connolly
Simon & Schuster Audio, abridged fiction, five CDs, six hours, $29.95, read by Jay O. Sanders; also available as a download from audible.com, $20.97
Sometimes you need a little thrill. Unfortunately, "little" is the key word this week, as only one out of these four audiobooks is truly frightening. Thankfully, it makes up for the others.
For years Meg Gardiner's books were published in England and difficult to find in the States. (She is an ex-pat living in London.) Though she has written five Evan Delaney novels, her first, "China Lake," is the most recent to appear on audio, thanks to Brilliance Audiobooks. Fortunately for us, Brilliance is publishing more.
Gardiner creates a world so realistic that one can easily imagine the crazies in it. Delaney is a writer-lawyer whose ex-sister-in-law now belongs to a cult. The bad guys hide behind religious rhetoric so twisted one wants to scream when hearing their sophistry. The action flows, the dialogue is clever, the vibe taut.
Narrator Tanya Eby Sirois completely captures the spirit of the novel. She sounds strong, angry, hurt, or sardonic, depending on the passage. Her voice is pleasant, her diction lovely. Overall this is very easy on the ears and so far the best of the summer.
Though it relies too much on coincidence, "The Finder," by Colin Harrison, is a dark, well-written thriller peppered with secrets and violence.
Jin Li is a well-educated Chinese woman who helps her brother run scams through his paper-shredding company in New York City. When a bigwig at a pharmaceutical company realizes what is happening, he tries to make her go away. She flees, she is kidnapped, and her former boyfriend, a former fireman, stages a rescue. If you strip this down to the plot, it's pretty preposterous, but still interesting. Several chapters are so nerve-wracking you may find yourself gritting your teeth, and Harrison's characters are odd enough to be interesting without being so odd as to be laughable.
Narrator Jason Culp has that flowing, Everyman quality to his voice. His timing is good, and he changes his tone and pitch for different characters, so we never get bored by his delivery. Overall, "The Finder" is worth hearing if you don't think about it too much.
Susan Hubbard's "The Year of Disappearances" seemed like it might be chilling, since it's about vampires. But while it's engaging, it produces nary a shudder.
A sequel to "The Society of S," the story features 14-year-old protagonist Ariella ("Ari") Montero, a half-vampire, half-human genius who is perplexed by the sudden disappearance of the bees in her family's hives. She is even more perplexed when her friends start to go missing and she is the main suspect.
Hubbard creates an eerie atmosphere that permeates the story, but it could have been about any teenager; vampirism plays a lesser role than Ari's struggle to find her place in the world. Hubbard is a smart, literate writer and this is a smart, literate story, though it is stodgy in parts and not as involving as it could have been. Narrator Joyce Bean's delivery is fresh and spirited. She sounds as if she really were 14, and expresses all the confusion of that awkward age.
What can one say about John Connolly's latest thriller, "The Reapers"? "Forget about it" sums it up nicely.
The plot, in which a "killer of killers" is out to even some scores, is ridiculous. The action is muddled and choppy (perhaps partly due to abridgement), the characters are uniformly unpleasant, and the violence is over the top. The story features Charlie Parker, a detective who has appeared in other books by Connolly. If one had heard or read them all, this might have seemed less disjointed, but an audiobook should stand on its own, and this doesn't.
Narrator Jay O. Sanders mostly survives without much damage, though his foreign accents are sometimes off target. Still, he's an audiobook veteran whose overall performance is up to his usual high standards. He has one of those deep, vibrant voices one could happily listen to for hours. He deftly walks that line between acting and overacting, always landing on the side of believability.
Rochelle O'Gorman is publisher and editor in chief of audiobookcafe.com.
