Immoral Book

Not since Michael Connelly or Dennis Lehane has a debut author unleashed a thriller as mesmerizing, original, and utterly shocking as Brian Freeman's IMMORAL Every time you think you know how it ends…think again…

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows it's not a moral world. One teenage girl has already disappeared on his watch, leaving behind no body, no killer, and no justice. Now, when another girl goes missing on a cold night in Minnesota, Stride must relive his worst nightmare…

"A NEAR PITCH-PERFECT NOVEL.

—South Florida Sentinel

"TIGHTLY WRITTEN."

—Dallas Morning News

"SPELLBINDING."

—Toronto Globe & Mail

Publishers Weekly

Barrett has his work cut out for him on this audiobook. The novel, spanning several years during which Duluth Police Lt. Jonathan Stride investigates the disappearance and probable murder of a promiscuous teenage girl, has an extraordinarily large number of characters. Barrett moves efficiently through a variety of voices and accents, but he's stuck with a few sexually explicit sequences that sound a bit silly, especially coming from a single narrator. His smooth reading can't hide that the novel is simply too long and its plot too convoluted. A protracted segment in Las Vegas should have stayed in Las Vegas, and a subplot involving Stride's much too impulsive marriage doesn't merely derail the action, it suggests that the hero has the emotional maturity of a teenager. Barrett manages to take some of the tin out of Freeman's uninspired teenspeak dialogue by elevating his pitch when enacting the missing girl's contemporaries with boyish croaks and girlish squeaks. Immoral may not be a thriller for the ages, but Barrett does make the most of it. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's hardcover (Reviews, July 25). (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.