Narrated by Roger Wayne
I had a few reservations about the love story in Hidden, the first book in Rebecca Zanetti’s Deep Ops romantic suspense series, but I enjoyed Roger Wayne’s narration sufficiently enough to want to give the series another try. There’s a novella –Taken – that comes between Hidden and Fallen (the second book), but I didn’t feel as though I’d missed anything by not reading or listening to it; in fact, Fallen works pretty well as a standalone.
In Hidden, the author introduced listeners to a small and out-on-a-limb branch of the Homeland Defense Department headed up by FBI agent Angus Force, a charismatic but obviously damaged individual whose personal mission – to find the serial killer he supposedly shot and killed five years earlier – turned into an obsession that pretty much derailed his career. He’s been sidelined and tasked with setting up this small unit which is going to end up doing the jobs the bureau doesn’t want to dirty its hands over. The rag-taggle group of agents he’s assembled includes former cop and undercover specialist Malcolm West, hacker Brigid Banaghan, FBI agent Raider Tanaka and former Navy SEAL Clarence Wolfe and department shrink Nari Zhang. Oh, and let’s not forget Force’s booze-loving German Shepherd, Roscoe. They’re a quirky, engaging bunch, and the author has developed strong relationships between them that clearly go beyond the professional; they like and respect each other even if they don’t always show it, and their banter and snark is well done.
A talented hacker, Brigid made the mistake of breaking into the wrong system and received an orange jumpsuit and a prison sentence for her trouble. Force has her sprung from jail in order to assist with the current mission – to track down a group of mobsters known to be using the dark web to run all their criminal activities, from drug running to money laundering to people trafficking and prostitution rackets. Brigid doesn’t quite understand how she can help; the dark web is un-hackable, and the only way Force’s team can gather the information they need is for them to meet with someone on the inside of the operation. But her confusion quickly turns to anger when Force explains all; Brigid has been brought in because her father used to be part of the Irish mob out of Boston, and Force believes that he’s back in contact with some of his old cronies in the Coonan family. He wants Brigid to go home to the Banaghan family farm to reconcile with her father and introduce him to her ‘fiancé’ – a man with criminal ties who might want to do business with the Coonans. Brigid is furious, adamant that her father isn’t and never has been part of any criminal organisation and determined to prove Force wrong.
Special Agent Raider Tanaka screwed up when he had a one-night stand with the wrong woman – his boss’s wife. The story going around is that he got busted down to the HDD’s secret and embarrassing unit because of it, but the truth is that he used that incident to get himself transferred to Force’s team because he’s been out to take down the Coonan family since they murdered one of his informants. He’s not wild about Brigid’s involvement – she’s not a trained agent and they could well come up against some seriously unpleasant individuals – but it’s the only way to get close to her father quickly, so Rider agrees to pose as Brigid’s bad-boy fiancé and vows to protect her while he does everything he can to bring the Coonans to justice.
The suspense plot is well-done, and there’s plenty of high-stakes action and drama along the way as Raider, Brigid and the team have to race against time to find the information they need to bring down the Coonans, break the sex-trafficking ring they’re operating and rescue the latest batch of young girls being brought into the country to be forced into slavery and prostitution. It’s like an action movie in audio; fast-paced and smoothly edited – and with just about the same amount of implausible and occasionally silly twists and turns!
The fake-relationship trope is a favourite of mine, and there’s a definite spark between Rider and Brigid from the moment they appear on the page. I enjoyed the snarky banter and the push-and-pull between them, but I can’t deny that I found Brigid a little underwhelming as a heroine; there’s nothing about her that made her stand out from the many other similar heroines out there. Rider is perhaps a little more well-developed, but he’s pretty much your typical alpha male; smart, hot and protective, with the addition of a backstory that has him making something of himself despite having spent his formative years in the foster system.
As I said at the beginning, Roger Wayne’s performance in the previous book in the series is the main reason I picked up this one, and he doesn’t disappoint. He’s an experienced narrator who is able to differentiate a fairly large cast of characters effectively – Raider, Mal, Force and Wolf are all easy to tell apart in their scenes together – as well as to imbue his performance with the right degree of expression and emotion. I like narrators who act rather than just reading the words aloud, and Mr. Wayne does a great job here of relaying moments of humour, intimacy and danger, and as I pointed out before, I like that he doesn’t use his normal speaking voice to portray any of the characters, so there’s never any difficulty in working out if he’s performing narrative or dialogue. His female voices are good, too, and it’s a strong performance all-round, although I noticed several places where Raider is described as having a Southern accent, or speaking with a New York accent – and there were a couple of others as well, I think – and they weren’t distinct. I don’t claim to be an expert on American accents, but I can spot a Southern drawl and hear the difference between it and some other US accents, and given that they were supposed to reveal something about Raider’s character, I wish a bit more had been made of them.
That apart, however, I enjoyed the performance overall – and although the story was a bit far-fetched in places, I’d recommend Fallen to anyone looking for a romantic suspense fix who doesn’t mind suspending their disbelief a bit.
Caz
Buy Fallen by Rebecca Zanetti on Amazon
