The Copper Bracelet (audiobook)

Much like the last one in the series, the experiment in making the story is better than the story.

7 discs
9 hours
+ 1 interview disc lasting about 45 minutes.

The Copper Bracelet is the second installment in the Harry Middleton story. Harry is former military officer, former music teacher, current hunter of war criminals. Along with his compatriots, the Volunteers, Harry Middleton is after war criminals from Kashmir.

The story behind the book is pretty simple - Jeffery Deaver ( Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936), 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 (16 authors in total) until it got back Deaver who wrote the concluding chapter.

This is a slightly different group of writers than in the first novel, The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller. The Copper Bracelet is a bit smoother than the first book, but it still has its herky-jerky moments in which characters are introduced and than promptly killed. To me, the bad guys seemed rather James Bond Super-Villain-ish, which for me is too cartoonish to be interesting.

The most interesting feature of the audiobook is the last "Bonus" disc that includes an interview with the narrator, veteran actor Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2) and an interview with Jeffrey Deaver and a couple of authors about the process they used to write the book. Most interestingly, no overall plot was ever discussed beforehand - the authors receive the completed chapters and have a limited amount of time to add another chapter before it gets handed off to the next author in line.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on March 10, 2010.

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