THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich

 

Published in 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Lorelei King
Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Janet Evanovich's The Recovery Agent features Gabriela Rose. Recovery agents can be another term for bounty hunters who look for fugitives, but Gabriela Rose is not a bounty hunter. She searches for missing property. Sometimes it's insurance fraud, sometimes it's stolen property and sometimes it's just looking for something rare for a wealthy client. She is based in New York City, is quite successful and flies all over the world recovering items. 

Gabriela Rose is dismayed to hear that her hometown in North Carolina has suffered a direct hit from a hurricane and (somehow) won't get any help from FEMA or any other government recovery program. The town is dying but Gabriela's grandmother knows where a fortune might be found. She was somehow told about the fortune by the ghost of her dead grandmother. In that fortune there is a ring called the Seal of Solomon. This ring is mostly in Arabic language legends about King Solomon of Israel who could use it to talk to animals and to control demons and djinn (genies).

Most of the book is a hunt to find and keep the ring in various settings with an ongoing simmering romance on the side. Readers familiar with the 1980s movie Romancing the Stone or the 2022 movie The Lost City will get the idea - except this book has competent protagonists.

My review:

This book is just all over the place, literally. There are 5 different trips to 4 different countries with jungles to find this ring. It gets old.

*****caution: spoilers*****

The goal of all of this searching is to find a treasure to save the town. Time after time the main characters leave behind literal fortunes of common, run of the mill gold trinkets, jewel-encrusted necklaces, statues, and at least one other famous golden item that would certainly have saved the town. 

There are other issues as well. Evanovich loves to name drop products in her books - pistols, boats, cars and more are named by brand. At one point, there is a planned attack on a compound. Gabriela Rose goes into battle with a fully automatic machine gun wearing a $465 La Perla Balconette bra (the price is mentioned). We know what bra she is wearing because at one point her bra is used as a tourniquet. Who wears a $465 lacy push-up bra into battle and not a sports bra? Sure, it made for a funny scene in the book, but it makes no sense - especially when she goes to a Target later on and buys common everyday underclothing and makes comments about how great they are.

*****end spoilers*****

What is good in the book is interesting supporting characters throughout the book.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich.

WALKING the AMERICAS: 1,800 MILES, EIGHT COUNTRIES, and ONE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY from MEXICO to COLOMBIA (audiobook) by Levison Wood

Published by Tantor Audio in 2018.

Read by Barnaby Edwards.
Duration: 8 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

Levison Wood is a British explorer/journalist. He has gone on two other hiking expeditions (one to walk the length of the Nile, the other to walk the length of the Himalayas) before this trip. In Walking the Americas he was joined by a Mexican photographer friend from Merida, in the Yucatan Peninsula. Together, they started walking south to Belize, then on to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and finally Colombia.

The author, Levison Wood

Along the way, they encounter hidden Mayan ruins, a city overwhelmed by drug gangs, poverty, the aftermath of a hurricane, welcoming people, a few unfriendly people, Native Indians, a horrible rainstorm, mansions, a couple of difficult horses and the remains of a lost colony founded by Scotland in the 1700's.

This was a surprisingly short book considering it spans eight countries. It was an entertaining book with some poignant moments, but not the deepest read. Sometimes Wood is too quick to characterize whole countries as having good or bad character (not a fan of Guatemala, but he really likes neighboring Honduras). It is a fun story of two friends going on an adventure.

I really enjoyed Barnaby Edwards' reading, despite his horrendous pronunciation of Spanish throughout.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WALKING the AMERICAS: 1,800 MILES, EIGHT COUNTRIES, and ONE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY from MEXICO to COLOMBIA.

Guardian of Lies: a Paul Madriani Novel by Steve Martini

Steve Martini gets better and better (from an occasional reader of Martini)

Published in 2009.

I'm not the biggest reader of Steve Martini. I'm inclined to discount his work precisely because he is a "name brand" author. Plenty of authors that have made it to the top  start to crank out books like a factory and the quality drops and I always think that Martini will do the same.

Guardian of Lies is my fourth Steve Martini/Paul Madriani novel. I went back and checked my reviews of them. I've enjoyed them all and have been surprised by the fact that I have enjoyed them as well. I was expecting churned out novels and have always been pleasantly surprised.

Steve Martini

Guardian of Lies is the most ambitious Martini/Madriani novel I've read. We move from a simple courtroom case to international terrorism. Madriani gets swept along in a multi-country chase to find out the truth and to clear his own name. Along the way, he gets stalked, betrayed, nearly blown up and framed in a plot that zips along.

Well, who could ask for more?
 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 
Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel (Paul Madriani Novels)  

Reviewed on July 17, 2009.