Narrated by Tristan James
I’ve been looking forward to this latest book from Layla Reyne for months. I loved her Agents Irish and Whiskey series of fast-paced, steamy romantic suspense novels, and was over the moon when she announced that she’d be writing a spin-off series featuring two of the major secondary characters from those books – Special Agent Cameron Byrne, one of the FBI’s top K&R (kidnap and rescue) specialists and Assistant US Attorney Nic Price. Imperial Stout is book one in the Trouble Brewing series (as well as his day job as a legal eagle, Nic co-owns a craft brewery) and I was looking forward to more of the same; a fast-paced, tightly plotted and complex story and two fully rounded, engaging characters I could root for. Sadly, however, Imperial Stout doesn’t deliver on any of those things. There’s an attempt to follow a similar pattern as the I&W books, in that there’s one thread that looks set to run through the whole series, accompanied by a self-contained plot that is wrapped up by the end of each book; but while the long-running thread is certainly intriguing, the self-contained plot is pretty lacklustre, the villain is a caricature and the large suspensions of disbelief required on the part of the listener in order to make it work are just too much.
I should also say that while this is the first in a new series, I suspect that newbies might find themselves rather lost as the opening chapters assume listeners are familiar with both protagonists and the various other secondary characters who either appear or are name-checked.
The book opens as Nic and Cam are in the middle of an operation to take down a dangerous gang of thieves who are attempting to steal some priceless Serbian artefacts that are due to form a high-profile museum exhibit. Nic is on edge, fretting over the idea of Cam being injured, when someone starts shooting at the van containing him and the surveillance team. A former Navy SEAL, Nic isn’t going to just sit back and get shot at, so he goes after the shooter; meanwhile the operation to capture the gang goes awry, and the wife of the Serbian dignitary who escorted the artefacts to the US is killed.
Some of the gang members are apprehended during the raid, but none of them are talking; and when Nic’s star witness and confidential informant, Abby Monroe, is kidnapped from under their noses, it looks as though the chances of bringing them down permanently is slipping away. The situation is helped not at all by the fact that Nic’s boss is engaged in a long-standing game of one-upmanship with Aiden Talley, who is now Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco office of the FBI, and in Aiden’s absence (he’s on his honeymoon) is stirring up as much trouble for Cam (Aiden’s second-in-command) and Nic as possible. (I couldn’t help asking myself how such a complete idiot had risen to a position of such authority – seriously, the man is a complete dickhead!) Thanks to his interference, the rescue operation Nic and Cam put together is completely screwed up, which leaves them with only one alternative option to foil the plot to steal the artefacts, bring Anica Kristić’s killer to justice and rescue Abby. They need to put someone on the inside, and fast – and it seems that Cam’s somewhat murky past makes him the ideal man for the job. Cam has deeply buried reasons of his own for being wary, but time is running out; it’s him or no-one, and there’s no way he’s not stepping up to the plate.
Most of the problems I experienced with this story are in this part of the plot, which is full of holes, inconsistencies and stretches the listener’s credulity to the limit. So many of the plot points just don’t ring true; it usual for a US Attorney to attend a shake down and take an active role in an investigation? Would he go around armed, regardless of his background or training? How is Cam able to infiltrate a supposedly deadly dangerous gang so easily? How come he’s up to date on all the latest ways to crack safes, pick locks and hack electronic security? (a sort of explanation is given, but it’s pretty lame); and most of all, his concerns about going undercover are just ridiculous. He’s been an FBI agent for twenty years and he’s worried about falling back into his old habits and way of life? Come ON.
While I liked Nic and Cam, I was sorely disappointed at the lack of depth to their characterisation and lack of backstory for them both. We’ve met them before as secondary characters, it’s true, but in their own book I had expected we would get to know them in much the same way as we got to know Aiden and Jamie in the previous series, with the author gradually revealing more about them as the suspense plot wove around them and gradually pulled them together. But here, we’re told that Cam and Nic shared a passionate kiss a few weeks earlier (at Aiden and Jamie’s wedding) and that they’re both hankering for more but are still dancing around each other … for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom. In chapter 4, in Cam’s PoV we’re told that Nic is “the man who’d grown to mean more to him than he should”, but we don’t know why that is, or how it happened. And later, in Nic’s, that Cam has “grown to mean more to him than any other in a long time.” In both cases, we’re TOLD. Not shown. There’s definitely strong sexual chemistry between the pair, but I wasn’t feeling anything deeper; and lots of mental lusting is no substitute for developing an actual romance and emotional connection between your protagonists.
Nic’s plotline is much more promising and is the reason I will pick up the next book. His father, a property magnate, is in serious financial trouble and has borrowed money from some very unsavoury characters. Father and son are estranged and have been ever since Nic came out twenty-seven years earlier, but Curtis Price’s creditors don’t care; if they can’t use Nic as a bargaining chip, they’ll extort the debt out of him when his father can’t pay.
While the story was disappointing, however, the narration was not. The last narration by Tristan James I listened to (in Rhys Ford’s Rebel) wasn’t up to his usual standard, but I was pleased to hear him back on form here. His pacing is generally a little on the slow side, but that’s not something that bothers me, and his delivery is much more upbeat than the last time I listened to him. His character differentiation is pretty good all round; there are a large number of male speaking parts in the story, and while some of the minor roles sound similar, for the most part, the characters are clearly delineated and Nic, Cam and Aiden are easy to tell apart. It helps that Cam and Aiden both have accents; Cam’s Boston accent is referred to often, as is Aiden’s Irish one, and Mr. James does a good job with them both (I listened to some examples of the Boston “Southie” accent that’s described in the text so I could get an idea of what I was listening out for!) – but my favourite vocalisation out of the three was the slightly deepened, authoritative tone he adopts to portray Nic, which fit the image of him in my head perfectly. My main criticism of the performance is that Mr. James’ female voices aren’t great. They’re by no means horrible and he doesn’t pitch them into the stratosphere, they’re just a little … unsubtle sometimes.
Unfortunately, however, Mr. James’ more than decent narration isn’t enough to paper over the cracks in the story, and I’d hesitate to recommend Imperial Stout.
Caz
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