Customer Reviews

Death Echo CD

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With a low, mature, assured voice Beth McDonald delivers a fine narration. She emphasizes our protagonist's strengths as well as her fears in what turns out to be an often treacherous journey even for one as stalwart as Emma Cross.

A former CIA agent, and a mighty effective one, Emma had enough of hair breadth escapes. So, she joined St. Kilda's Consulting believing some private investigating would be a piece of cake. Readers of the mega best selling Elizabeth Lowell know that's never going to happen.

We find Emma gripping "the round chromed bars of the pitching Zodiac's radar bridge..." Zodiac is a small rubber craft tossing its way across Puget Sound as she tracks Blackbird, a yacht which is a twin of another ship that disappeared. Whatever Blackbird's cargo may be it is lethal, and Emma has all of one week, seven days, to find out exactly what it is or there will be unprecedented mass destruction.

She's paired with Mac Durand who once led a special ops team in Afghanistan only to see it lost thanks to bad intelligence. That was a lifetime ago and now Mac captains boats. Only one mention of his "dark eyes" by Emma and we know they'll be more than assigned partners....and often. Romance aside others are watching Blackbird - among them is Taras Demidov who notes the difference between Russians and Americans by thinking "Russia accepted a world of good and evil. Americans believed only in good." Demidov is evil incarnate, and his belief might be his undoing.

As is her wont Lowell's plot moves swiftly but for this listener it is sometimes hindered by a cast of characters that is hard to keep straight - just who is a friend and who is an enemy? We hear, "Too many agencies. Too many secrets. Too little real cooperation, because budgets depend on delivering departmental success stories." It would seem if the threat is ultra dangerous that the FBI would cooperate with the CIA and vice versa.

Nonetheless DEATH ECHO is as fresh as today's news with its focus on transnational crime - a world without borders. There's a wealth of description re living aboard and crossing dangerous waters in a 42 foot boat plus ultimately a satisfying finish. Lowell fans will relish this journey.

- Gail Cooke