Current Best Sellers: Buyers Beware

If you're the kind of reader, or listener, who must finish a book no matter how disappointing, or keep going hoping it'll get better, you might want to save time by simply avoiding these current offerings from three marquee-name writers.

VANISHED, by Joseph Finder
Genre: Corporate thriller
Print edition: 400 pages
Audio edition: 10 hrs and 42 minutes
Narrator: Holter Graham
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Audio edition: Macmillan Audio

LOG LINE
Unfaithful husband and the estranged brother of the hero, goes missing from his high finance corporate job. Has he been kidnapped or is he scamming an all powerful Blackwater-type security firm?

COMMENT
Joseph Finder has deservedly cornered the corporate thriller niche with books like Paranoia, Company Man and Killer Instinct. His successful formula: ordinary company guy gets immersed in deep doo-doo and must face powerful forces well above his pay grade. In Vanished, the writer drops this game plan and goes with more for a Jack Reacher, Mitch Rapp, John Wells approach with a 6-feet, 2 inch, former Special Forces, Bosnia and Persian Gulf veteran named Nick Heller, who grinds up three beefy thug-mugs in one sitting with great ease and a few flip lines. Unfortunately, in Finder's hands: the thrill in this thriller is gone. Hero Heller is derivitive. There are several bad guys but none with any sustaining drive throughout and the ending just limps off.

The audio edition of the book is not helped by actor/narrator Holter Graham whose vocal timbre doesn't quite sync-up with the big muscular, good-guy and who also portrays the female lead, and her teen-age son, as annoying whiners.

BOTTOM LINE
If this is the beginning of a new Finder series starring Nick Heller, we all might benefit from a stronger editing hand and alternate narrator the next time out.

RENEGADE: THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT by Richard Wolffe
Genre: Non-fiction Contemporary History
Print edition: 368 pages
Audio edition: 15 hrs and 49 min (Unabridged)
6 hrs and 13 min. (Abridged)
Narrator: Arthur Morey (Unabridged)
Richard Wolffe (Abridged)
Publisher: Crown
Audio edition: Random House

LOG LINE
How Obama Won the Presidency

COMMENT
Author Wolffe acknowledges this book was suggested by candidate Obama as a Theodore White-style account of the presidential campaign. With extended access to the candidate and staff during and after the election, Wolffe had a ripe opportunity to deliver a 2009 version of The Making of a President. Mission UN-accomplished. The writer jerks back and forth between pre-and-post election events creating a significant obstacle in the narrative flow. He, also, doesn't include much of the McCain campaign as necessary counter-point friction. Perplexing.

For the unabridged audio edition, Arthur Morey does an adequate job with narration. The abridged version is voiced by the author, whose flat delivery suggests he should stick to writing.

BOTTOM LINE
Someone, somewhere will offer a detailed 360 of this momentous election story. Renegade isn't it.

FIRE AND ICE: A BEAUMONT AND BRADY NOVEL, by J.A. Jance
Genre: Cops and Killers
Print edition: 352 pages
Audio edition: 10 hrs and 39 min
Narrator: Hillary Huber and Erik Davies
Publisher: William Morrow
Audio edition: Harper Audio

LOG LINE
A series of grisly murders across Washington State and a homicide in Arizona intersect to create danger for Beaumont and Brady.

COMMENT
J.A. Jance brings together her two popular police procedural series regulars, Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont and Cochise County, Ariz, Sheriff Joanne Brady to solve seemingly unrelated murders. If you're a fan of these series, this might work for you. Newcomers and ADD listeners will have a hard time getting past the first two discs of the audio edition which is more like a report from the HR department about which series personnel are appearing, and which are not.

BOTTOM LINE
Pass.

Comments

[BlackJAC]

Although I once had lunch with Joseph Finder, it would've been a while before I got to his new one, what with my existing backlog.

[larry278]

OK, that settles it, I'm going to read J Singh's book on Jinnah. I've been wanting to know more about Mr Jinnah for a long time. Perhaps this will be the book on Mr Jinnah which wil compare favorably with the books on India's founders. Users of Hindi English have done well in covering India's birth. Pakistan & Mr Jinnah merit at least 1 good book.
Oh, drat, I've gone off thread again. I have lost my interest in fiction mixed with facts & history American's have written lately.

[LMPE]

OK. Won't pay these any heed.