Off the Edge by Carolyn Crane

Narrated by Romy Nordlinger

Off the Edge is book two in Carolyn Crane’s Undercover Associates series but it stands alone very well. I haven’t read or listened to the first book but had no trouble following the story.

Laney Lancaster is a woman on the run from her evil ex-husband. She’s been hiding for two years in Bangkok, Thailand, and living and working as a lounge singer at the Imperiale Hotel des Roses run by the Shinsuran brothers and their sister (and her BFF), Rajini. Despite the fact that she has apparently successfully escaped from her ex-husband’s clutches, Laney is terribly naïve when it comes to the people around her.

Peter MacMillan Maxwell is a linguistics professor and an Associate (a non-government covert group who try and avert various world disasters. The Associates are “good guys” but they don’t always use good methods to achieve their aims). Peter joined the Associates after his family, including his beloved fiancée, was killed in a terrorist bombing in Mexico 10 years before the story takes place. He is “MacMillan” to the Associates and “Peter Maxwell” to his students but he regards the latter identity to be entirely a façade.

Peter uses linguistics to identify various terrorists and criminals and the Associates particularly want him to find out who is the mysterious terrorist known only as “Jazzman”. Jazzman has a drone weapon, the “TZ”, in his possession and is about to sell it to the highest bidder. The TZ kills via lasers and it is definitely not the kind of weapon anyone wants in the hands of the bad guys. It can pinpoint a single person target or take out an entire building depending on the programming of the various lasers it can access. Peter is at the Imperiale Hotel des Roses to listen to the arms dealers there for the auction to see if he can ID Jazzman, who has peculiar linguistic idiosyncrasies. I liked how the text said that such methods are not as specific as, say, fingerprinting, but that within a small pool of known criminals it was a reasonably precise method of identification.

I loved the Bangkok setting. It’s so nice to listen to a book set outside the US, Australia or Europe. Apart from that, the location felt plausible given the global nature of the auction. Thailand is very beautiful but Bangkok certainly has a shady dark side (like most places I guess) which fit well within the theme of the story.

Laney regards herself as a poet more than a songwriter – even though she’s a very good singer. Her facility with words is one of the key attractions between her and Peter and something they build on as the story progresses. When Peter finds out Laney records her performances he is desperate to get his hands on her laptop so he can download the voices inadvertently captured during her show.

Most of the story takes place in only a few days and the romance is therefore very quick. There is however a pressure cooker environment which made it more believable and an epilogue which takes place sometime after the main events of the story which helps to bed down the HEA.

There is some quite sudden and graphic violence in the book – some of it is more in the nature of wishful thinking than actual violence but there is some actual torture and therefore the story will not work for everyone.

While I liked the way the word play and linguistic detail was used in the story, I confess I also sometimes found myself a little bored by some of the technicalities.

There was also another aspect which made it initially difficult for me to connect with the story: for some reason I had it in my head that it would be lighter and more comedic. It really isn’t. It’s a serious, fairly dark, romantic suspense. I know the author from Twitter and I think I must have imported her quirky (but very funny) sense of humour into my expectations. That was somewhat cemented by the narration. Romy Nordlinger sounds like the kind of narrator you’d choose for a comedy, even a suspenseful comedy. That’s not a complaint per se, more a problem of perception. I think maybe it has something to do with the way her voice is a bit husky but I can’t really be more precise than that. It’s probably just me. Once I adjusted my mental alignment, things went more smoothly.

Peter is given a mostly British accent (he’s described in the book as having a “European” accent and my impression was that it was not so much British but rather… “not American”) – and the accent fit him and served to differentiate him from other male characters. There wasn’t a lot of change between the female and male voices – mostly the men were a little “sterner” rather than having a baritone. The Shinsurans were given accents which suited their Thai ethnicity but which didn’t sound like caricatures.

The story had a good mix of romance and suspense and Ms. Nordlinger delivered the risk and tension with skill.

I enjoyed Off the Edge and I’m looking forward to trying more of this series.

Kaetrin

Narration: B

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Graphic

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Off the Edge was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for review.