From the Reading List

Two audiobooks:

A Darker Place by Jack Higgins - This is yet another in the series of novels Higgins has written involving former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon (there have been 18 so far).  All the usual characters are here - Dillon, Brigadier Ferguson, the Salters (reformed East End criminals) and the rest of the crew of the unofficial "Prime Minister's Personal Army".  I've been a fan of Higgins beginning with his first bestseller "The Eagle Has Landed".  He has a deft touch with character and plot.  Better yet he doesn't try to be anything beyond what he is - a top flight thriller author.  This one follows a famous Russian author who is also an accomplished killer.  He finds himself confronted with the both a false and real defection operation all at the same time.  I doubt the ending will come as any great surprise to anyone but Higgins does a great job of making you want to stick around to the very end. 

Cross Country by James Patterson -  Alex Cross is Patterson's best known character who also appears in no less than 18 novels.  I've read at least one other in the series and liked it enough to grab this audio version for a recent long trip.  Unfortunately as so often happens with long running characters Alex Cross has become one of those mystery heroes whose greatest asset is the inability of the villains to ever kill him off.  In following a murder case Cross decides, with no back up, no real contact in country and with no real leads at all, to go to Nigeria.  Nigeria - a country with very little civil control and rampant crime.  After being arrested, beaten and more he decides the smart thing to do is...go to the Ivory Coast, yet another country where he is guaranteed to be kidnapped, beaten some more and have the fortunately inept villains miss their chance once again.  Then Patterson takes time to make his political case for the horrors of Dharfur.  And it really felt like a political screed rather than what was needed to advance the story.  Can you tell I got rather annoyed with the book?  I'm close to the end so I'll probably finish it up on a run to Buffalo and back but I'm not overwhelmed and less likely to grab another one of the series.

There is one other thing I want to note about the audiobooks.  The Higgins is from Brilliance Audio while the Patterson is from the Hachette Book Group.  One is an audiobook specialist, the other has it as one of their divisions.  Let me tell you that there's a difference.  The Brilliance discs were MUCH more convenient to use as they would tell me that I'd reached the end of the disc and tell me what disc it was.  Then I'd be told what disc I had just inserted at the beginning as well.  This made things significantly easier as I was driving since I didn't need to check things as I went.  The Hachette discs gave no indication you were done till they looped back to the beginning of the disc and started over again.  No audio to help me along at all.  It added to my irritation with the book.  So I'll keep my eyes out for the Brilliance name in the future.