Relentless action marks this debut action thriller set in Boston and the US east coast. Harry Reilly, retired from active FBI duty, believes that a copycat killer is working in the shadows of other serial killers.
Maelstrom (Michael MacConnell, read by Sean Mangan, Bolinda Publishing, $34.95 audiobook, 11 CDs, ISBN
9781742011530, December) **
Relentless action marks this debut action thriller set in Boston and the US east coast. Harry Reilly, retired from active FBI duty, believes that a copycat killer is working in the shadows of other serial killers. His daughter Sarah, also in the FBI, comes up against a private ‘Black Ops’-style vigilante group which enjoys hunting down and murdering serial killers. The story opens with the approaching murder of a young couple spending their first weekend together. It’s set up to look like the work of the ‘Lakeside Killer’, but certain details don’t add up. While the writing is somewhat stilted, the style and story premise will appeal to action lovers. The plot’s implausibility is jarring—the FBI exists only to make incredible blunders in pursuit and surveillance; a serial killer deliberately steps out of the shadows for no credible reason; a wealthy ex-military citizen can find a killer’s address more
easily than the FBI; the phrase ‘Violet-Eyed Man’ quickly becomes tedious. Empathy with the victims is lacking—a stylistic fault rather than a plot failure. But Sean Mangan’s reading is magnificent—his voice is textured and spine-tingling without descending to parody. Matthew Reilly fans will probably enjoy this. Recommended primarily for action fans.
Ingrid Heyn is an audiobook specialist at Soundbooks, an opera singer, composer, writer and web designer
This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker