All the Queen’s Men by Linda Howard

allthequeensmen

Narrated by Kate Forbes

This is classic LH romantic suspense and features one of her best RS heroes ever – the elusive John Medina. John is a sort of a Gray Ghost of LH’s RS world, too mysterious to pin down, too many names and personas. When he does fall, he falls hard. His heroine is also an alpha character, another operative, Niema Burdock. When the book opens, Niema and her husband Dallas are on a mission overseas with John, and Dallas is killed in action. As you can imagine, your heart starts pumping hard from the opening scene, and stays at that level pretty much throughout the book. Even the villain, Louis Ronsard, is a fully-fleshed out, three-dimensional character that you find you want to protect as much as you want to stop him.

Kate Forbes also narrated one of my favorite LH RS/comedies, Open Season, in the abridged format. She is truly superb – her voice has just the right amount of urgency for the RS format. Her male characters – really, all her characters are distinct and recognizable. She has that perfect narrator quality of bringing the story to life while remaining in the background, something I equate to lighting at the theater – when it’s good, you are not even aware of it separate from the action. ATQM has no comedy at all, but I feel compelled to point out that Open Season is pretty dang funny, and her comedy delivery is excellent too, even though the audio is abridged! Forbes has an impressive list of narrations, including another 5-star listen for me, Francine Rivers’ inspirational Redeeming Love, and a host of non-romance audiobooks. I would love to hear more of her in the romance genre!

ATQM was originally published in 1999 – check out Lea’s poll (you can participate through 1/23/2013) on newer audios of older books. This is a book that is passing the test of time – not much in the story dates it to the pre-smartphone/widespread wifi era, and both the story and the characters are memorable and compelling. Highly recommended!

Melinda


Narration: A

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

 

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