crime – Page 27

Review of The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

SFFaudio Review

The Lies of Locke Lamora
By Scott Lynch; Read by Michael Page
18 CDs – Approx. 23 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2009
ISBN: 1400110513
Themes: / Fantasy / Crime / Magic /

An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains—a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans—a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards.

Here’s the one sentence summary I’ve been using to describe The Lies Of Loche Lamora:

Like Oliver Twist in Lankhmar.

In a way this is the anti-Harry Potter book. It’s about a school for thieves and not magicians. It doesn’t have heroes and villains as much as it has profligate crooks and despicable liars. Our protagonist is the titular Locke Lamora, a young wastrel in the city of Camorr. He’d starve or be sold into worse slavery had he not been born with a certain larceny in his heart. Camorr, the city itself, too is a terrific character in this book, being a vividly described assemblage of various fantasy cities Lankhmar, Arenjun, and real life historical ports like late medieval Venice. Under careful tutelage, Locke and his companions grow into formidable talents, practicing their art in a series of ever more elaborate con-games.

When I was a kid playing Dungeons and Dragons I almost always played the “thief” class. Magic users always seemed lame to me, clerics were like magic users but with religion (which seemed to me like a third wheel for actual role playing) and fighters were boring. Sure you’re tough – and that’s good for fighting, but that’s it. I always thought there was a little too much fighting in D&D. My favourite part of role playing was the part in the tavern, before the quest proper really got started. I was inspired by Baggins burglar clan – but thought they had it too damn easy with the magic ring of theirs. Later in life I’d see movies like: The Sting, The Grifters, and Harry In Your Pocket. I’d read books like: The Green Eagle Score and The Girl With The Long Green Heart. Those stories all had setups I really dug. I liked characters who lived by their wits. Characters who, without being either the best shot, or the fastest draw, without having the biggest muscles or fastest legs could make the getaway with at least half a sack of gold in hand. And that’s why I like The Lies Of Loch Lamora so much.

The Lies Of Locke Lamora is rich with detail. I have a hard time conceiving just how much time Scott Lynch put into the world building. The magic system is based, smartly, around the “language” or “name” model of magic. Words have power. Knowing the “true name” of something or someone gives you power over it. Indeed, even in real life language is almost like magic. I can say to you something like: “The blue horse with the rainbow flavoured fedora is clambering slowly up the valley’s cool red roof” and some sort of weird imagery is suddenly **poofed** into your mind. I can buy into this kind of magic. It’s the same kind of magic that J.K. Rowling puts into her villain names: Just think about it, Voldemort and Malfoy, (“underground death dweller” and “bad foil”). It’s too bad Rowling didn’t have the teachers at Hogwarts teaching this magic language magic system instead of the hodge-podge it has – I might have cared more. So back to the book at hand, magic plays a fairly central role in the plot of The Lies Of Locke Lamora, it’s rare, and doesn’t enter into the novel until quite late. Other furnishings in Lynch’s Fantasy landscape include substitution. Instead of glasses we get “optiks” and instead of chemical we get “alchemical.”

Thinking back, narrator Michael Page did employ a fairly wide range of voices. And there are quite a few characters for him to bring to life. Several of these age over time. Some narrators take over the text, Page is not one of them – he delivers the lines as appropriate, so that for the most part I didn’t notice his performance. If there are any laments I have about this excellent audiobook they are very few. One would be it’s length, it is a tad long. This is a sin that virtually every Fantasy novel is guilty of these days. It held my attention, but there were certainly a few scenes that could have been easily summarized without losing one whit of the novel’s otherwise careful pacing. Another lament, the Bantam Spectra paperbook edition of this book includes an excellent map of the city of Camorr. Modern audiobooks never include maps as a supplement. So neither does this Tantor edition. This is a mistake. Any novel assumes a certain familiarity with geography but Fantasy novels, especially of this kind, are burdened with creating a new world from scratch. An audience that is unfamiliar with its geography is less likely to be able to follow the action spatially. Several times during my was listening I wished I had a map of the city of Camorr at hand.

If you do get this audiobook I suggest that you print out a copy of THIS MAP over on ScottLynch.us.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Killing Castro by Lawrence Block

Aural Noir: Review

Killing Castro is book number 051 in the Hard Case Crime library.

Hard Case Crime Killing Castro
By Lawrence Block; Read by Henry Leyva
4 CDs – Approx. 4 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: January 2009
ISBN: 9780792759751
Themes: / Thriller / Cuba / Hitman / Mercenaries / History / Assassination / Crime /

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro.

Until the announcement on the Hard Case Crime website in 2008 most Block aficionados, like me, had no idea that novel that is Killing Castro existed. Us Blockheads knew that LB had written a ton of novels early in his career. Heck we’d even identified quite a few of them. But unless you’d owned a copy of Fidel Castro Assassinated: A Dramatic Tale of a Daring and Successful Plot to Kill Cuba’s Dictator, and had compared this obscure 1961 Monarch paperback with Block’s writing you’d never have known he’d written it. This is because it was originally attributed to an otherwise unknown author “Lee Duncan.” Had it been written by “Paul Kavanagh” (a known Block pseudonym), I’d have already found and read a copy years ago. Indeed, to my ears this certainly feels like a lost fourth Paul Kavanagh novel. Two of Paul Kavanagh’s three other novels are about shady operatives doing black-ops for cash too. If you want the original paperback, by the way, ABEbooks.com currently lists a copy at $150.00. That’s down from the $600 asking price just a few months back. Hard Case Crime offers the gorgeous covered paperback version for just $7. Me, I’ll stick with the BBC Audiobooks America version.

One of the things I liked most about this audiobook, other than the brisk characterization and snappy plotting, was all the historical context Block put into the novel. This isn’t merely a thriller, or a crime story. Running just under 5 hours (204 pages in paperbook) there’s about half an hour of historical exposition between all the action. In those sections Block deftly details Fidel Castro’s personal biography, the history Batista’s rule of Cuba, Fidel’s leadership of the revolution and a thoughtful analysis of the revolution’s aftermath. As far as I can tell the history is entirely accurate. It sticks to the facts and makes a case both for and against Castro’s revolution without any special pleading. To my mind “Lee Duncan” could have probably got a job at the Cuba desk of the CIA, just based on the analysis within this novel. They really could have used him too as the book originally came out the same year as the CIA-backed Bay Of Pigs invasion. But I guess the covert world’s loss is our literary gain.

This is the first time I’ve heard Henry Leyva as a narrator. He performs the American mercenaries with enough distinction to tell all five of them apart, and gives good voice to two Cuban rebels, one male, one female. As Leyva is fluent in both English and Spanish he brings a ton of authenticity to the Cuban accented anti-castristas. He really is a narrator to watch. I first heard him as an actor performing in an episode of J. Michael Straczynski’s excellent audio drama anthology series City Of Dreams. He’s also narrated the audiobook version of Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard, so I’m gonna have to get my hands on that audiobook too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Free @ Audible.com: The Case Of The Missing Will by Agatha Christie

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Here’s a FREE Agatha Christie short story from BBC Audiobooks America [via Audible.com]. I have at least one friend who’ll snap up this download within about two seconds of seeing this post. And check out the narrator!

The Case of the Missing Will
By Agatha Christie; Read by David Suchet
FREE Audible Download – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: 2008
Provider: Audible.com
Poirot receives an unusual request for help from a Miss Violet Marsh, who was orphaned as a child and went to live with her peculiar Uncle Andrew. He died a month ago, leaving a will with a strange clause. Marsh has given instructions that his “clever” niece is allowed to live in his house for one month and in that time she has to “prove her wits” and find his second will. If at the end of that time she hasn’t, all his worldly goods go to charitable institutions and she will be left with nothing. Can Poirot help her?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of Paranoia by Joseph Finder

Aural Noir: Review

Paranoia
By Joseph Finder; Read by Scott Brick
Audible Download – 13 Hours 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: July 2009
Provider: Audible.com
Themes: / Thriller / Espionage / Business / Crime / Corporate Culture /

Adam Cassidy is 26 and a low-level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job. When he manipulates the system to do something nice for a friend, he finds himself charged with a crime. Corporate Security gives him a choice: prison – or become a spy in the headquarters of their chief competitor, Trion Systems. They train him and feed him inside information. Now at Trion, he’s a star, skyrocketing to the top. He finds he has talents he never knew he possessed. He’s rich, drives a Porsche, lives in a fabulous apartment, and works directly for the CEO. He’s dating the girl of his dreams. His life is perfect. All he has to do to keep it that way is betray everyone he cares about and everything he believes in. But when he tries to break off from his controllers, he finds himself in way over his head, where nothing is what it seems and no one can really be trusted. And then the REAL nightmare begins…

I quite enjoyed this audiobook. That surprised me quite a bit. I was fairly skeptical going in. Books about business are often too much like self-help books. At worst they can be all full of untestable advice, formulaic reformulations of Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War, dogmatic variations on Machiavelli’s The Prince or even, horror of horrors, creating their own Baconian-style methodology (writing lists of commonalities). But, I told myself, this is a business thriller and not a business book, so I gave it a try. Now,after reading this thriller I think I’d be up for reading a good book on real world corporate espionage. It might be more interesting than any other kind of non-fiction business book I’ve read. A few other things struck me about Paranoia. First, Joseph Finder can write. This isn’t Oprah fiction, this literature that fits in somewhere in between John Grisham and Nelson DeMille. Second, there are a few twists and turns along the fairly predictable path. Some of these came rather unexpectedly. Those being generally in a good way. Third, Adam Cassidy, our flawed hero, is a fairly likable protagonist. This is helped by having the story told first person (and narrated the ever lovable Scott Brick). As to the novel’s formula, there were a couple of rough patches. At several points throughout the novel Finder seems to make a special effort to distance Cassidy from the techie world he works in. This felt a bit odd for the story, but it seems like a ploy to make a thriller set in the iPhone world more mainstream than it really is. At certain points Finder has Cassidy far less familiar with his tech business than he should be. In my experience techies usually don’t think of their toys as mere tools. I’ve never worked for Palm or Apple or Research In Motion (they make the BlackBerry), but I’m betting that the folks who work there are a lot more techie than Adam Cassidy. Another issue, the family and friends felt constructed into the plot – put there to provide a break from the main thrust of the story. Despite this I found myself not too upset with the author’s manipulation. Scott Brick again probably helped here. I’m not convinced he’s the best narrator for a lot of novels I hear him reading, but for those told first person, I must admit he’s got to be one of the best. Lastly, as with the character being blatantly aimed at the mass market, rather than more realistic for his position, there is comparable problem with the novel’s title. Sure there is a bit of paranoia in Paranoia – but that title has more to do with crappy generic book titling culture than the book itself. Corporate suits get there way on this all the time, and we consumers aren’t calling them on it. I would much rather read We Can Remember It For You Wholesale than Total Recall. The first tells me something about the story.

I picked up Paranoia during Audible.com’s free giveaway of the audiobook a few weeks back. After getting my first taste for free I think I’d be willing to pony up an Audible credit for the next Joseph Finder novel to come out. One Audible reviewer gave the novel a low star review because it has “more F-Bomb’s in it than any other book that I’ve read.” Thinking back, I can’t say I remember that many. The odd “Fuck!” now and then was present, but given the circumstances Cassidy is dealing with from chapter to chapter leaving them out would have been far more noticeable than having them there. Real drama tends to have swearing. I don’t usually like to talk about adaptations of audiobooks into other mediums. My ususal thinking is that fiction is best in the audiobook form, but I realized about two thirds of the way through that Paranoia might be improved further. There is a chapterized serial cliff-hanger feel to it that is similar to that of some of the best of modern television programs (the likes of Dexter, Breaking Bad and Weeds). Thematically, of course, this theoretical television adaptation would be far more similar to the short lived Fox TV series Profit. If there is going to be an adaptation of this novel, I suggest it be to cable TV, if only to keep the all the swearing.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Blake’s 7 – Point Of No Return and Eye Of The Machine

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Blake’s 7 – Point Of No Return and Eye Of The Machine (Vol. 1.2 & 1.3)
By Ben Aaronovitch and James Swallow; Performed by a full cast
2 CDs – Approx. 70 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: B7 Media
Published: November 2008
ISBN: 9781906577063
Themes: / Science Fiction / Politics / Crime / Artificial Intelligence / Terrorism / Noir /

‘Blake’s 7 draws much of its inspiration from the legend of Robin Hood. It follows a small band of outlaws, under a figurehead leader, leading a rebellion against a tyrannical regime.’
–A History and Critical Analysis of Blake’s 7 by John Kenneth Muir

This is the second release in the first season of Blake’s 7 prequel stories. For more information on the original the Trilogy Box Set and Volume 1.1 of the prequel series read our reviews HERE and HERE.

Point of No Return and Eye Of The Machine are two more rousing and unconventional adventures in the Blake’s 7 reimaginging. As is typical with most excellent series the music, sound design and acting are absolutely stellar. But, it is the writing which amazes me the most. There are two ways you can go with remakes of old television series. One is to write it so that the dumbest people in your audience won’t have any trouble following it (New Doctor Who I’m looking at you). The other is to re-imagine, re-construct and re-engage with those who loved a smart Science Fiction series for its intelligence. I’m happy to say that this new Blake’s 7 series is in the latter category. Feelings of surprise and utter engagement followed from the opening moments of a rainswept city soundscape to the final credit sequence. I was rapt, imagining the goings-on as vividly as if they were projected onto 1,000 foot screen. Here are my thoughts on each of the two episodes in this set…

Point of No Return – (Episode 1.2)
Written by James Swallow, directed by Andrew Mark Sewell

Point of No Return depicts a critical juncture in the life of Major Stefan Travis. Travis is a Blake’s 7 baddie, the Guy of Gisborne to Roj Blake’s Robin Hood. In this prequel story we find Travis assigned to investigate Carl Varon. Varon is a kind of proto-Blake – a political troublemaker who claims to have been setup by the powers that be. The evidence is against Varon is damning. There’s a laundry list of horrific charges against him. Plus, there’s all the video evidence. So what’s Travis’ problem? Just that Varon may be entirely innocent. Travis has two duties. 1. A duty to the state. 2. A duty to the truth. Which will he choose?

Actor Craig Kelly plays Travis. To my ears his voices sounds pretty similar to the original TV series actor Brian Croucher. What benefits Kelly here is that he gets a much meatier role than poor Croucher (the TV Travis) ever got. He also benefits by playing against a veteran like Peter Guinness. Guinness has a Jekyll And Hyde-like role in this story, we get him as the innocent man in jail and as a political terrorist (during some video playback sequences). Jake Maskall has the least to do here, playing Sub-Lieutenant Garcia. His role being to mostly act as a naive assistant to Travis.

Eye Of The Machine – (Episode 1.3)
Written by Ben Aaronovitch, directed by Andrew Mark Sewell

Eye Of The Machine also follows a baddie (but one of the less bad baddies). Kerr Avon (the Will Scarlet of Blake’s 7) in this prequel story is a brilliant and geeky post-graduate student at Oxford in 2230. The university’s campus, like so many on Earth, is roiling with political protest movements. Avon wants nothing to do with politics, but a fellow student is hot for two things – political change and Kerr Avon. Meanwhile Avon’s brilliance in his chosen studies has caught the eye of a respected cyberneticist professor. Professor Ensor is working on an artificial intelligence breakthrough – he needs a mind like Avon’s. Will Avon’s attendance at Freedom Party meetings or the ambitious Professor Ensor be his undoing?

Colin Salmon (playing Avon) is a movie star with stage acting chops. Anna Grant (played by Keeley Hawes) is fast talking and passionate. She’s terrific. Ensor, is played by Geoffrey Palmer, a veteran of virtually every television series made in the U.K.. In this he’s slimy, mean-spirited and perfect. The script jumps back and forth between the events as they unfolded chronologically and sometime shortly after ‘what happened’ wherein Ensor and Grant give one sided answers to an interrogator’s questions. Both Episode 1.2 and 1.3 use just three actors each but we don’t need even more. These scripts are perfectly polished audio drama gems. Highly recommended.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown

Aural Noir: Review

[This audiobook was created by Wonder Audiobooks which is owned by SFFaudio contributor and a past reviews editior Rick Jackson]

SFFaudio Essential The Fabulous Clipjoint
By Fredric Brown; Read by William Coon
Audible Download – 5 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com / Wonder Audio
Published: 2009
Themes: / Crime / Mystery / Murder / Alcoholism / Noir / Carny / Chicago / Janesville /

You’ll hear the soft, lazy voice of a dame who’s been around, and you’ll meet up with a beautiful heller. You’ll learn the lurid secrets of a man’s locked past, and you’ll prowl dark alleys with two men–two men turned hunters. And you’ll wonder–why Ed and his Uncle Am didn’t level with the cops; what business a gang would have with Ed’s dead father; and where the killer thought the hunters would go wrong. Here are your answers, in this fast-spinning, two-fisted mystery about thugs, molls, and carnival folks.

Ed Hunter is 18, an apprentice linotype operator in 1940s Chicago. He works with his father. One morning Ed gets up to work only to find his father missing, having not come home the night before. This can only mean one thing – MURDER! The cops aren’t too interested, his alcoholic stepmother and oversexed step sister aren’t up for it, so it’s up to Ed to get justice. But to get the job done he’ll need help so For he enlists his uncle, a carny with more brains and experience than any man Ed knows.

Rick Jackson, the man behind Wonder Audiobooks, is a good friend of mine. It’d be hard to say I’m 100% objective about reviewing his stuff. The problem mostly being that he and I have such similar tastes in audiobooks and fiction that to praise one of his audiobooks is very much like saying how cool I am! But he is cool damn it! And more importantly this is a truly awesome audiobook. I will stake my reputation on you loving it. If you’re twice as apt to like an old crime novel as a new one, then you’re three times as apt to love The Fabulous Clipjoint. The mystery is not hard to follow, the story is told in first person, but conversely it was devilishly hard to solve. I pride myself on being an excellent armchair detective, but I was happily baffled right up til the big reveal. That’s really saying something. William Coon sounds like a wise teenager. But then whenever he’s tasked with another character’s voice he switches: Falsetto, gruff, kindly, Coon does them all. Highly recommended.

Posted by Jesse Willis