VICIOUS CIRCLE (A Joe Pickett Novel) by C.J. Box

Published in 2017 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

In 2015's Endangered, C.J. Box introduced his readers to the Cates family. The Cates family was a dangerous group by anyone's standards - likely to poach wildlife, cheat business partners or maybe just get in a fight for the sheer fun of it. The most dangerous members of the family are the mom and the golden child Dallas. Dallas is also a champion professional rodeo star and should have been a real celebrity in his hometown of Saddlestring, except for the fact that no one can stand him or his family.

Joe Pickett helped break up the Cates family crime ring and in the process most of the family was killed. Dallas Cates and his mother went to jail. His mother is serving a life sentence. In the process of her family being taken down she broke her neck and is now paralyzed.

Joe Pickett has a problem. Dallas Cates has just been released from jail and it's clear that he wants revenge. He hasn't made a move yet, but it is obvious that he wants to punish Joe by taking out his family, just like Joe took out his.

And, to make matters worse, Joe Pickett's mother-in-law is back in town...

This was a great entry in the long-running Joe Pickett series. It was a return to the basics for Joe (no international plots - as in one of the more recent books). Just a story of revenge told well. A very modern version of a classic Western theme.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Vicious Circle by C.J. Box.

THE AVENGERS: EVERYBODY WANTS to RULE the WORLD (audiobook) by Dan Abnett

Published by GraphicAudio in 2015
Read by a multicast
Duration: 6 hours, 9 minutes.

Unabridged.

Captain America is called to Berlin to uncover a Hydra plot. Iron Man is called to Washington, D.C. to confront Ultron. Thor is in Siberia confronting a magical threat of immense proportions. Dr. Banner is investigating a mystery of his own with SHIELD. And, Black Widow and Hawkeye have their own problems confronting A.I.M.

In The Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World, the Avengers are each pulled into their separate top-level emergencies - each of which could result in a worldwide disaster. Soon enough, the Avengers discover that each of these threats has arisen in response to a much larger threat - if only they can figure out what it is in time...

Usually, I really enjoy GraphicAudio's adaptations of comic book novels. Their use of sound effects and multiple actors remind me of an old-time radio show.

But, a high quality performance could not hide the fact that the action in this audiobook was too crowded with 5 separate plot lines. None of them were properly developed and the whole thing seemed half-baked throughout. It was a hurried mess that would have been better if it were simplified even more (drop out one or more of the plot threads) or greatly extended in order to properly tell each of the stories. 

The voice actor that played Tony Stark/Iron Man deserves special recognition for sounding exactly like the actor that plays the character in the Marvel movies, Robert Downey, Jr. The actor that played Quicksilver had a bizarre accent that sounded more like Katherine Hepburn's accent than his sister's. Truly an odd choice by the GraphicAudio team.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: THE AVENGERS: EVERYBODY WANTS to RULE the WORLD (audiobook) by Dan Abnett.

ROGUE STATE: FRACTURED STATE, BOOK 2 (audiobook) by Steven Konkoly

Published in 2017 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Timothy Andres Pabon.
Duration: 9 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged

The action surrounding embattled water engineer Nathan Fisher and his family in the year 2035 continues in Rogue State, the second book in this series. In the first book, Nathan witnessed an act of terrorism designed to egg on a tense situation between the government of California and the federal government. Now, he and his family are being hunted by a mysterious group funded by a group of oligarchs that are determined to manipulate this situation to their advantage.

In the second book of this series the action factor gets ratcheted way up. In many ways, the main story line of the book is one giant chase scene across a series of rural and urban desert landscapes - but it is a heck of a chase scene. We also learn a lot more about the bad guys and the messed up version of America that Konkoly has created for this book (which I found at least as interesting as the chase scene thread).

The audiobook was read by Timothy Andres Pabon who read the first book as well. Once again, he did a great job except he cannot say the word "chassis" correctly.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: ROGUE STATE.

See the review of Book 1 in this series here: Fractured State.

FRACTURED STATE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLER (Rogue State Series #1) (audiobook) by Steven Konkoly

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2016
Read by Timothy Andres Pabon
Duration: 10 hours, 9 minutes
Unabridged

In the year 2035 America is almost unrecognizable. Environmental collapse due the abuse of aquifers and mountain run-off in the West has caused the governments of many Western states to practically collapse. The highway systems have become "No Man's Land" and the Arizona border has practically been overrun by drug cartels who often act as a brutal de facto government in some areas.

California has escaped this fate due to a strict resource protection regimen that limits travel, and strictly watches how much water and electricity each household consumes. The relationship between the strict (yet successful) government of California and the often ineffectual federal government is strained to the point that there is an open and active movement that is pushing for California to secede.

Political assassinations and the sabotaging of a critical power plant make the political situation all the more tense. This is where the main character, Nathan Fisher, stumbles into the story. He is on a public beach loading sea water into big water bottles. He does this frequently because he owns a personal desalinization unit so he is able to augment his family's official water allotment.

But, while he is loading up his water bottles he sees something he shouldn't see - he sees the military unit that attacked the power plant and he realizes that the official story is not the truth. And, he realizes that they know that he saw them and they are coming for him and his family in order to shut him up...

The author, Konkoly, slowly gives out the bits and pieces that make up the political backdrop of this story. But, he quickly gets into the exciting cat and mouse chase as Nathan Fisher and his family try to figure out who they can trust and where they can go.

The audio version of this book was read by Timothy Andres Pabon, a veteran actor and prolific readers of audiobooks. It was quite good except for an occasional mispronounced word. The author uses the word chassis several times and the Pabon mispronounced it every time (he pronounced it like it is spelled so it sounded like "chassus" rather than "chassee"). It struck me as weird every time.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Fractured State.

See my review of Book 2 in this series here: Rogue State.

THE GOOD COP (Carter Ross #4) (audiobook) by Brad Parks

A Review of the Audiobook

Published in 2013 by Dreamscape Media, LLC.
Read by Adam Verner
Duration: 9 hours, 18 minutes
Unabridged

Carter Ross is an excellent reporter in the newsroom of a slowly dying newspaper in Newark, New Jersey. When he hears of the death of a police officer, he immediately rushes to the family and convinces them to talk to him about the officer and the kind of life he lived. Ross is certain that he has the makings of a top-notch human interest story - the kind of story that he would be proud if the family saved it for the officer's tiny baby son to read someday.

But, when Ross calls in the good news to his editor he is immediately waved off of the story because the Newark police are telling everyone that this officer killed himself after he got drunk on the job. But, that sounds fishy to Ross so he starts his own investigation into the case - and soon he finds that he has more suspects than he can possibly investigate...

Brad Parks has a way of making a serious crime book funny and serious all at the same time. When things go wrong, Carter Ross digs harder, makes even more wisecracks and makes the reader enjoy the book even more.

Adam Verner nails the tone of Carter Ross perfectly. The only down thing about the book is that there are too many "soap opera" touches to the book concerning Carter Ross's romantic entanglements. Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable audiobook experience.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE GOOD COP by Brad Parks.

RUEFUL REGRET (audiobook) by Steve Vernon

Published by Stark Raven Press in 2017.
Narrated by Charles Craig.
Duration: 3 hours.
Unabridged.

Bass Clayton is a bounty killer, basically a paid assassin, in the Old West. He has had no qualms about doing this job - at least he didn't until he tried to kill Silver Grimes. He fired blindly into Grimes' cabin with a shotgun, wounding Grimes and splattering Grimes' girlfriend all over the bed.

Clayton walks away from his bounty hunter gig and becomes the town drunk in a town called Rueful Regret. His plan to slowly drink himself into oblivion is going well until Grimes walks into the bar...

I did not enjoy this audiobook. The book was full of too many folksy expressions and was surprisingly slow-paced considering that it was just a three hour audiobook. But, the worst aspect of the book was an overly detailed description of animal cruelty and bestiality that did nothing to advance the plot. All it did was provide a few minutes of padding in an already slow story in a misguided attempt to add a bit of humor.

Charles Craig was a good choice to read a Western. He has the correct sound for the genre.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Rueful Regret.

Note: I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

BLACK PROFILES in COURAGE: A LEGACY of AFRICAN-AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENT by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg

Originally published in 1996.

With Black Profiles in Courage, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presents a look at American history through a different lens than you usually see. This book follows from even before the arrival of Columbus through Rosa Parks receiving her just accolades in the 1990's. His underlying theme, as explained in the title, is that African-Americans have been contributing in important ways the entire time, but they are often "whitewashed" from history.

Abdul-Jabbar is best known for his time as a top-level basketball player. But he is not just a jock (if you are a fan, you know he never was JUST a jock.) He is also an amateur historian - and quite a thoughtful one. Clearly, he was inspired by the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy but this book is not structured in any way like that classic.

The book starts with its weakest proposition from a historical perspective. There are historians that assert that African peoples were heavily involved in Mesoamerican history (Mayas, Aztecs, Olmecs) and Abdul-Jabbar agrees with them. While it is interesting to ponder, I think that, at best, it can be said that there maybe some influence there - or maybe not. We cannot be definitively sure, even if there are tantalizingly suggestive clues, due to the lack of historical records on both sides of the Atlantic and a genetic record that has been muddled by intermixing for the last 500+ years. 

But, the rest of the book is really quite strong. I very much enjoyed his biographical sketches of Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, especially Crispus Attucks. Abdul-Jabbar makes a solid case that the people he discusses should be part of everyone's history books, not just special themed history books.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: BLACK PROFILES in COURAGE: A LEGACY of AFRICAN-AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENT by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg.