Review: Oh, Boy, Here Comes 'Trouble'

Review by guest blogger Star Lawrence.
TROUBLE (audiobook), author Jesse Kellerman and read by Scott Brick.

You’re a medical student who sets out in the middle of the night to replace your gore-slathered shoes and you stab a guy in order to save a screaming woman crawling away from her assailant. What do you have to lose by starting a twisted affair with her?

The author Jesse Kellerman is the son of Jonathan and Faye, the beloved crime novelists. Yes, the spawn is rising. At least Jesse kept the family last name. Stephen King’s son is named Joe Hill. (John Doe was in use, I guess.)

Anyhow, this whiny, smarty-pants med student, Jonah Stem, soon runs into the woman he saved. Her name is Eve Gones, although she informs him this is pronounced “Jones.” OK, now, guy? Now, are you seeing any flags on the play?

Nope.

OK, things progress and our Eve turns out to…well, wouldn’t want to introduce any spoilers. Let’s just say, she has unusual tastes between the sheets, if she even is between actual sheets at any point, I can’t remember. Jonah is quite overwhelmed between these disturbing romps, cracking Gray’s Anatomy, dueling with crabby residents, coping with being a famous superhero who saves winsome masochists from harm, and hanging out with his former girl friend who is almost catatonic from some past trauma or other.

Books on CD are such a different art form from books on dead trees. The reader, in this case, Scott Brick, one of my favorites, has to fit the story—and he does. Brick has a slow paced, patient-sounding, slightly nasal voice that drops at the end of every sentence. It’s kind of an East Coast accent, deliberate, letting the words line up neatly. He does the various voices in an understated way, no falsettos for the women or comical rasps for the men. Yet, you can always tell who’s who and who’s back.

While I notice some grumpy reviews on Amazon, and of course, I am as ever, your Snark Woman, I listened to the bloody end. I rather liked this book and recommended it to my sister.

I doubt I will be doing any midnight shoe shopping soon, though.