Jon on Books

The low down:

• Voice talent: great


• Story: not so great

Although this book (abridged audiobook, paperback, hardcover, movie) gets some really great ratings on Amazon.com (4 out of 5 stars), I didn't enjoy it much - in fact, I'm not sure why I finished listening to it!! Well, you know how it is - you get half way through something and you just have to finish it:). I think my main gripe was with the plausibility of the story. Let me summarize it for you: Mark, an 11 year old, witnesses the suicide of a crooked mob lawyer. Before the suicide, the lawyer tells Mark a dirty little secret about one of his client's murder victims - the location of the buried body. The rest of the story is about Mark's evasion of telling the authorities this secret - he does so because he's afraid that the mob will kill him if it finds out that Mark knows the location of the body. The thing about the story that's not plausible to me is this - why doesn't he just tell someone (even anonymously) where the body is buried? I mean, the authorities don't need him to testify - what they need is to find the body. Once they find it exactly where Mark tells them to look, I think his credibility would be pretty self evident. What would the mob have to gain by killing him then? The body has already been found - he's of no further importance. Ugh...I'm having a hard time describing the situation, but let it suffice to say that this aspect of the story really bothered me:).

On a brighter note, there is a silver lining in the audiobook - the narration by Blair Brown was really great - the story takes place in Tennessee, and Blair does a wonderful job with the "southern twang" of all the characters - especially the large, intimidating, 300+ pound judge Harry Roosevelt. A+ for a wonderful reading!

2 out of 5 stars - rather weak story, only saved marginally by some great voice talent.