The Protégé

Midway through this book involving a secret American spy outfit, the Mafia, and Big Business, the listener may despair. Surely there can be no way that business mogul (and super nice guy) Christian Gillette can make everything turn out right. It's a good thing that author Stephen Frey has a more agile mind. Reader Holter Graham keeps the listener on the edge, raising expectations and just as quickly dashing them. He has a voice of quiet authority, a voice to trust, a voice you'll want to hear again. The way he seamlessly shifts from Gillette's calm voice to the Australian lilt of his second-in-command or the wheedling tones of traitor David Wright is inspiring. This is a blue chip winner. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

October 31, 2005
The mob and a disgruntled competitor are trying to kill Christian Gillette, the charismatic, good-looking and wildly successful chairman of Everest Capital, a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. He's got government spooks trying to use one of his companies as a front for a top-secret nanotechnology program. And on top of all this, he still has to run his firm and figure out the truth about his father's death. Narrator Graham does the book justice, voicing the high-powered businessmen with all the right intonations, using slight alterations to distinguish between characters, including a spot-on British accent (although his mob hit man accent does seem a bit trite). His facility for dialogue makes Graham an ideal choice for this audiobook, as the novel's characters are its primary strength. Graham is also adept at reading the narrative sections, using deliberate pacing that makes the action compelling and easy to follow\x97and this is essential, as the novel features a complex web of plot threads that, at times, strains credibility. Fortunately Graham provides a stabilizing influence, keeping the story more firmly grounded in reality even as the author has it veer off into thriller fantasyland.Simultaneous release with the Ballantine hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 3).