Customer Reviews

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

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Christopher Brookmyre is a wickedly funny author who knows how to get the reader involved in a story. After only five minutes of listening to the audio on this one, I was completely hooked. Brookmyre's main character, Jack Parlabane, is sarcastic, world-wise, and more than a bit left of the main stream when it comes to his opinions on important subjects such as religion and education. This story focuses on the question of psychic powers and the afterlife and to say more would spoil a great plot.

The audio is performed by Billy Boyd of "Lord of the Rings" fame. His performance enhances what is already a very good book. He helps to bring the characters to life by giving them individual voices and accents. The author is from Scotland and so there might be a few expressions in the book with which some American readers would not be familiar but nothing that would keep the reader from enjoying the story. I enjoyed this one so much that I have since ordered another of Brookmyre's books. Great plot, interesting idea, and excellent audio. A very nice find all around.

I love this book and the storyline but when i ordered this I had ordered the one in which Billy Boyd had read and didn't get it, so had to reorder it

A book to win a skeptic's heart. This is not the funniest of the Parlabane books but it's an absorbing thriller. It begins slowly, and if you were unfamiliar with the author - or if you hadn't taken the hint from the book's dedication to Randi and Dawkins - then you might think the author was going to come down on the side of woo. Brookmyre allows the "ducks" to present the most cogent and insidious of the arguments in favor of "keeping an open mind" when it comes to paranormal research.

An "unsinkable rubber duck" is James Randi's phrase to describe those who are determined to believe in woo no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are presented with.

The book is suspenseful, full of devious twists and turns, and the villains are as evil a bunch as Brookmyre has ever invented.

This is the fifth novel to feature Scottish journalist Jack Parlabane. The books in order are:
Quite Ugly One Morning
Country of the Blind
Boiling a Frog
Be My Enemy
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks