The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller (audiobook) by various authors



Published in 2007.
Read by Alfred Molina.
Duration: 7 hours, 30 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Chopin Manuscript is not really a great story but an interesting premise and veteran actor Alfred Molina does a fantastic job performing this audiobook. This book was given an "Audie Award" (2008 Audiobook of the Year) and that is entirely due to the masterful ability of Molina to mimic accents and create voices for literally dozens of characters. His performance was much better than the material he was given to perform.

The idea behind the story is pretty simple - Jeffery Deaver (The Lesson of Her Death), a well-known writer of action thrillers started out an international thriller by writing the first chapter. Then the story was handed off to another author and a chapter was added (15 authors in total) until it got back Deaver who wrote the concluding chapter.


The story is a thrill-a-minute ride that has a herky-jerky nature. Every author seemed to be out to move the story along as much as possible so character development was sacrificed for action. I do not know if an over-arching plot line was discussed among the authors but it seems clear that the minor characters were definitely out to be slaughtered (or ignored) throughout. Super villains are created in one chapter and then dispatched in the next without much fuss as the next author cleans up the other author's "mess" and creates his own. A whole chapter is spent developing a character that appears on maybe two pages worth of material in the rest of the book.

Lisa Scottoline (Everywhere That Mary Went) is probably one of the least "big time" authors of this book but her chapter was excellent - she eschewed action for character development and revealed the most awful betrayal of the book in a chapter that literally was set in just one room. I've always liked her work and was pleased to see that she went for smart storytelling over a splashy shoot 'em up chapter.

So, to sum up - mixed bag but an interesting experiment. I recommend the audio version since Molina's performance will make the rough patches in this book more palatable.

3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE (audiobook) by Kaitlyn Schiess

Image
Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com. Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess. Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes. Unabridged. I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post . She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast. I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers. The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politi
Read more

ILLEGAL (graphic novel) Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

Image
  Published in 2018 by Sourcebooks Young Readers. Illegal is the fictional story of two young brothers from Ghana: Ebo and Kwame. While it is fictional, it is based on lots and lots of true stories. Most Americans are very aware that immigrants/refugees are fleeing from their native countries and arriving at the border of the United States and are not aware that a similar thing is happening in Europe.  Europe has a similar refugee/immigrant situation. People are fleeing from the wars in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. There are also refugees fleeing the brutal poverty and political situations in sub-Saharan Africa. Like in the United States, these immigrants/refugees depend on very shady people to move them closer to their goals. In this story, two young brothers named Ebo and Kwame live in a village in Ghana. They are orphaned and living with a useless, drunken uncle. They have an older sister that has already crossed the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to look for work but they don
Read more

BENITO MUSSOLINI: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (World War 2 Biographies) (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
  Published by Hourly History in 2017. Mussolini and Hitler in 1937. Nowadays, Benito Mussolini is best known as Hitler's far lesser partner in the Pact of Steel (signed in 1939), the formal treaty of the Axis Powers. He is often seen as the weaker partner that may very well have drug the entire alliance down due to incompetence.  But, back when Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, he was seen, by some, as the vanguard of the future of political organization in Europe - a movement called fascism . He was at least begrudgingly admired by people all around the world.  This is, perhaps, the most balanced of all of the Hourly History biographies. I was mostly interested in a brief look at how Mussolini came to power and what he did once in power. The biography was a little skimpy on Mussolini's years in power before World War II and it won't please students of the war to see how little they discuss of his wartime policies and decisions. That being said, I thought this was a p
Read more

THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Image
Published by Penguin Audio in 2021. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well. In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia. Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside.  The Milwaukee Public Market Lewis and Peter notice a fig
Read more

WONDER CITY (graphic novel) Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum

Image
Published by Insight Kids in 2022. Synopsis: Teenager Alex Riley and her older sister Elizabeth are very different kinds of people. They are the daughters of a adventurous married couple who turned their adventures as archaeologists into a TV action adventure cartoon. Think of them as the archaeologist versions of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) and his wife. Their mother passed away a while back and their father recently died in mysterious circumstances working on a secret project in the subway tunnels under New York City. Now they are having to depend on each other. The good guys sneaking into the network of tunnels and sewers under New York City When Mafia-type thugs show up to their place and try to steal notes their father had written while working on his secret project in the subway they know someone has been lying to them about their father's project... My review: I liked Wonder City well enough, especially at first. There are strong characters, interesting art, and Ther
Read more

THE PRINCESS, the SCOUNDREL, and the FARM BOY by Alexandra Bracken

Image
  Published in 2019 by Disney LucasFilm Press. The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy is a YA re-telling of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.  It is told from the perspective of three different characters: Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker - in that order. The book starts out, like the movie, with the attack of Leia's ship and the fight as stormtroopers board it and stays with her through the destruction of Alderaan. The middle of the book starts with Han in the cantina looking at the results of Ben Kenobi's handiwork with a light saber. It stays with Han until they escape from the Death Star. At that point, it switches to Luke and stays with him until the end. This is more than a simple re-telling of the movie, though. That book was already written by George Lucas (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster) a long time ago. There are lots of direct quotes from the movie ("I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board." "That's no moon..
Read more

RESOLUTION (Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch #2) (audiobook) by Robert B. Parker

Image
Published by Random House Audio in 2008 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 4 hours, 40 minutes Unabridged At the end of Appaloosa, the first book in this series, Hitch and Cole have parted ways. Hitch ends up in the town of Resolution, a mining/lumbering town with some small unsuccessful ranches/farms scattered around. Hitch is hired by the owner of a local hotel/saloon to keep the peace inside the saloon. Soon enough, Cole shows up. He is on the outs with his girlfriend again. She has issues - she just has to throw herself at the most powerful man in the room and Cole had finally had enough of it and killed a man she was with. For Cole, this is devastating. He has always followed the law, even if it is arbitrary law that he has written himself. Killing this man broke the law and Cole is now a man who cannot follow his own code. So, Cole just hangs out with Hitch and ponders the meaning of laws and rules and the Social Contract for half of the book. In the meantime, Hitch is
Read more

Appaloosa DVD

Image
A western for grown-ups. It's not about the guns, horses or bullets. It's about friendship, sex and, ultimately, love. Movie released in theaters in 2008. Be warned right now - this movie review is mostly one giant spoiler. Here's the non-spoiler parts right up front. This is a movie that strives to look authentic. The two main characters have known each other for years and have no need for a lot of dialogue - they know each other well, they know each other's habits and their conversations are spare. Many reviewers have missed the whole point of Appaloosa . It was not about two buddies/lawmen bringing peace to a town, although that does happen (mostly) and the gun fights are quick, brutal and ugly. The movie is about what happens when such a partnership is disrupted by a woman. Look at the DVD cover art and you can see it symbolically represented - there is Renee Zellweger standing between Mortensen and Harris. ****Spoiler alert****The rest of the review is jus
Read more

BLOOD MONEY: A LUCKY DEY THRILLER (audiobook) by Doug Richardson

Image
Published in 2019 by Velvet Elvis Entertainment. Read by Tim DeKay. Duration: 9 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged Synopsis: On a lonely country road in Kern County, north of Los Angeles, a police officer is murdered while he is trying to help 2 crash victims. The police officer is the little brother of a hard-charging officer named Lucky Dey and Lucky is determined to get the murderer at all costs. They determine that the driver of a black semi hauling a matching black refrigerated trailer is probably the murderer. The evidence points towards it heading to Los Angeles. Lucky rolls into down at 100+ MPH, meets up with a contact/babysitter from LAPD and they soon figure out that this is even more of a mess than they thought it was... My review: The general idea of Blood Money was good, but just too busy. I think the story was told through at least eight different characters and that just diffused the action and drive of the story too much. On top of that, almost none of the characters are l
Read more

WHAT CAUSED the CIVIL WAR: REFLECTIONS on the SOUTH and SOUTHERN HISTORY by Edward L. Ayers

Image
Published in 2005 by W.W. Norton and Company This wonderful set of nine essays is just about as complete of a discussion of the South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, family, home, historical research and some practical applications of the lessons of the Civil War for us today as I have read . It seems to me that most of these essays have been published somewhere else first. That being said, Ayers has arranged the essays in What Caused the Civil War in a rough chronological order based not on the historical topic of the essay but on Ayers's own life. He starts with his own childhood in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and his own growing understand of what it means to be a Southerner. As the essays go along, Ayers goes to college, travels the world a bit and eventually returns to the South to do research and eventually teach at the University of Virginia.  As Ayers moves through his education and his career he develops a perspective on the Civil War and that pers
Read more