Do or Die by Suzanne Brockmann

Do or DieNarrated by Melanie Ewbank and Patrick Lawlor

Do or Die is the beginning of a new Brockmann suspense/action series – Reluctant Heroes – that piggy-backs (roughly) onto the Troubleshooter Series. Ian Dunn, former Navy SEAL, is introduced in the prologue where he’s on an op in Istanbul. All he has to do is “charm and distract” while his boss downloads potential terrorist information from a laptop. But while on the job, he takes a gamble and pockets $3M in jewels being sold to a Holocaust collector, the jewels being ill-gotten gains from a Nazi collaborator.

Thus begins Ian’s new SEAL-gone-rogue career in jewel heists and con jobs. The most recent episode has him serving 18 months in a high-security prison as a deal with the local Florida mob. This is where attorneys Martell Griffin and Phoebe Kruger offer him a deal: lead an op to rescue 2 kidnapped children in a political quandary and gain freedom.

The publisher’s blurb indicates the story has a Mission: Impossible angle, but it was more like the TV series Leverage – a loosely organized group of rogue experts who don’t exactly trust each other pull off really long, complicated (and impossible) confidence jobs with a Robin-Hood-esque quality. Ian is forcibly sprung from prison – Martell and Phoebe don’t know his mafia deal – and begins to gather his erstwhile team, consisting of his brother and various relations to his brother’s spouse, all of whom have Leverage-style skills with technology and setting up con jobs. And this one was a doozy!

The story hits the ground running after Ian’s prison release, with shoot-outs, panic rooms, high-tech surveillance and explosions galore. Phoebe, as it turns out, is new at the firm that represents Ian, and she is thrown into the position of being his lawyer without any preparation. She’s game, however, to jump into the fray, with both Martell and her playing along with the con. Ian’s driving force in life at this point is protecting his younger (but adult) brother, something he has done all his life – all decisions he makes in the first half of the book are based on this premise. If you like action and adventure with plot twists around every corner, the second half of the book will fulfill. But the first half was a confusing labyrinth of “who’s on first” for me as I tried to keep up with all the characters and their various relationships and associated talents. And since the book was 19+ hours long, that was a really long labyrinth, complete with several flashbacks to the past to fill in the details.

Lawlor and Ewbank don’t disappoint – each brings his/her vast and varied experience with romantic suspense narration to the story, moving it forward at a fast clip. I’ve already written about Brockmann’s “deep POV” – she writes from the point of view (POV) of one character for sections at a time, so that sections from male POVs are read by Lawlor, and female by Ewbank. The bulk of Ewbank’s sections are in Phoebe’s POV, but Lawlor gets to represent several of the male characters, and manages to differentiate even the narrative. This is a gig they’ve done before; the two of them narrated eight of Brockmann’s books together, so they are completely comfortable with the format. Both have mad skills in using their voices to tell stories, complete with a forceful pace when the story has you at the edge of your seat, and appropriate emotions and registers for their characters.

The references to our Troubleshooter friends were brief – Ric (Force of Nature) is mentioned as as associate of Martell; Jules sends Deb and Yashi in to help with the “sting”; there may have been others, but if you’re a TSS addict, you won’t get any satisfaction here for your Sam or Izzy injections. Also, in the midst of the chaos of saving Ian’s brother from the mob and rescuing the poor kids, Phoebe and Ian fall in love – I think. I mean, yeah, it’s romance, and Suz brings it on home for the protagonists at the end, but I honestly wondered when and how it happened. I also felt like there were some unfinished threads – why did the legal firm send Phoebe to represent Ian, when he has a specific relationship to one lawyer only (and it wasn’t Phoebe)? Was there a nefarious reason for her being there, connected to the kidnapping, or was I supposed to believe it was just an honest mistake on the part of some lowly office clerk? I had more questions – I will definitely have to schedule a re-listen.

Melinda


Narration: A for both

Book Content: A-/B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

 

 

 

You can find Sound clips of Do or Die here.

Listen to Suzanne Brockmann, Melanie Ewbank, and Patrick Lawlor discuss Do or Die and more.

Do or Die was provided to AudioGals for review by Blackstone Audio.

6 thoughts on “Do or Die by Suzanne Brockmann

  1. I finished the ebook on the weekend and thought it was a ripper. I could hear Patrick Lawlor in particular in my head when I read reading! :)

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