Liars & Thieves (Tommy Carmellini Series) [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

Stephen Coonts (Author), Guerin Barry (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2004 | Series: Tommy Carmellini Series

Tommy Carmellini - who dazzled thriller fans in Stephen Coonts's CUBA and LIBERTY - is the CIA's top man for jobs that require extreme stealth, breaking-and-entering skills, and split-second, sometimes lethal, decisions. In LIARS & THIEVES, he's sent to post guard duty at a farmhouse in Virginia's remote Blue Ridge Mountains, where top government operatives are debriefing a star defector: the ultimate KGB insider, a man with records on every operation and every dirty trick the shadowy intelligence agency has ever run, from Lenin to Putin. Carmellini arrives to find the guards shot dead, and a ruthless team of commandos - American commandos - slaughtering everyone in sight, then setting the house on fire. He escapes a hail of bullets and a deadly mountain car chase with what seems to be the sole survivor, a beautiful and mysterious translator who steals his car and leaves him for dead at the first chance. What secrets did the defector know? Who would have killed to prevent him from talking? And how could a hit team act so fast, so efficiently, and so murderously without intimate, inside knowledge of the debriefing? Smart money says someone in the U.S. government is behind the massacre and is now after Carmellini. And that begs the biggest question of all: in a world where nothing is as it seems and no one is who he pretends to be, who can Carmellini trust? Finding out will be terrifying. The answer may be deadly.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers accustomed to having series hero Jake Grafton save the world every year (Liberty; Cuba; etc.) may be disappointed to learn he's retiredâ€"but they won't fret for long. Former Grafton sidekick Tommy Carmellini, ex-burglar and CIA operative, has been promoted to star in what's sure to be another excellent, long-lived series. Tommy is hanging out with partner Willie the Wire when ex-girlfriend Dorsey O'Shea turns up asking favors: will Tommy break into a house and retrieve some sex tapes in which she has unwittingly participated? No problemâ€"he hands the tapes over and dismisses Dorsey from his mind. Several months later, the CIA sends him to a West Virginia safe house where Russian defector Mikhail Goncharov is being debriefedâ€"and there, Tommy stumbles into a full-blown massacre. He kills a couple of attackers, rescues a woman, beats a retreat and quickly finds himself in spy hell: out in the cold, accused, alone, hunted by friend and foe alike. As the plot snowballs, it accumulates characters both good and bad: Goncharov has escaped the safe house but has amnesia; Dorsey returns; deadly assassins try to kill Tommy; and evil politicians scheme. (One of them, a woman, is determined to become president of the United States, no matter what: "Give me four years to line up support and be seen by the public and I could beat Jesus Christ in the next election.") Tommy is smart, brave, skilled and possessed of enough self-deprecating, wisecracking wit to endear him to readers. Jake Grafton makes an appearance to help save the day, but Tommy proves himself more than capable of saving the world on his own.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Readers first met Tommy Carmellini, an ex-burglar and CIA agent, in the Jake Grafton novel Cuba (1999). He usually works overseas, breaking and entering for Uncle Sam, planting bugs, stealing documents, "that kind of thing." Now in Coonts' nineteenth novel (for those readers who are still counting), Carmellini replaces Grafton as the hero-protagonist who is^B out to save the world. It involves the usual gorgeous woman; this one is being blackmailed and wants Carmellini, her former lover, to get some incriminating videotapes that a later boyfriend had made when they were dating. The plot also involves a massacre at a CIA safe house, an illegal break-in, and secret KGB files. Like other of Coonts' heroes, Carmellini faces all sorts of dangers as he seeks to solve the case. As in the previous books, adroit dialogue abounds (for instance, "I was dripping wet with perspiration. If they didn't hear me coming, they would smell me"). Predictably, the hero outwits the bad guys, and, predictably, this latest Coonts tale will hit the best-seller lists. And, predictably, librarians should purchase multiple copies. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• MP3 CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on MP3-CD; MP3 Una edition (June 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593353065
• ISBN-13: 978-1593353063
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,421,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Coonts is the author of 14 New York Times bestsellers, the first of which was the classic flying tale, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER.
Born in 1946, Stephen Paul Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a coal-mining town of 6,000 population on the western slope of the Appalachian mountains. He majored in political science at West Virginia University, graduating in 1968 with an A.B. degree. Upon graduation he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy and began flight training in Pensacola, Florida.
He received his Navy wings in August, 1969. After completion of fleet replacement training in the A-6 Intruder aircraft, Mr. Coonts reported to Attack Squadron 196 at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington. He made two combat cruises aboard USS Enterprise during the final years of the Vietnam War as a member of this squadron. After the war he served as a flight instructor on A-6 aircraft for two years, then did a tour as an assistant catapult and arresting gear officer aboard USS Nimitz. He left active duty in 1977 and moved to Colorado. After short stints as a taxi driver and police officer, he entered the University of Colorado School of Law in the fall of 1977.
Mr. Coonts received his law degree in December, 1979, and moved to West Virginia to practice. He returned to Colorado in 1981 as a staff attorney specializing in oil and gas law for a large independent oil company.
His first novel, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, published in September 1986 by the Naval Institute Press, spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists in hardcover. A motion picture based on this novel, with the same title, was released nationwide in January 1991.
The success of his first novel allowed Mr. Coonts to devote himself full time to writing; he has been at it ever since. He and his wife, Deborah, enjoy flying and try to do as much of it as possible.
Mr. Coonts' books have been widely translated and republished in the British Commonwealth, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, China, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Latvia, and Israel.
Mr. Coonts was a trustee of West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1990-1998. He was inducted into the West Virginia University Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 1992. The U.S. Naval Institute honored him with its Author of the Year Award for the year 1986 for his novel, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER. Mr. Coonts and his wife, Deborah, reside in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stephen Coonts writing like Mickey Spillane, February 16, 2005

By 

Rennie Petersen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Liars & Thieves (Hardcover)

"Liars & Thieves" (published as "Wages of Sin" in Europe) is a quite different book from the Jake Grafton series that made Stephen Coonts famous. Personally, I don't like the change in style.

I'm a fan of thrillers, especially international thrillers and techno-thrillers. I like most of Stephen Coonts' books and consider them to be "the thinking man's thriller", a notch up on the intellectual scale from Tom Clancy, for example.

"Liars & Thieves" is different from the Jake Grafton series in many ways. To start with, the main character is Tommy Carmellini, a CIA operative who plays a secondary role in the last four Jake Grafton books.

Tommy Carmellini reminds me of Mike Hammer, the fictional hero of Mickey Spillane's books. He's physically big, he's tough and doesn't shun violence, he's great with the fast-paced repartee and he doesn't claim to be all that smart. Women find him attractive (what's with these silly women anyway?) and he beds them without much emotional involvement. And he tells his story in the first person.

Fortunately, Stephen Coonts is not 100% loyal to the first-person style. As the book progresses there are more and more passages that tell parts of the story that Tommy Carmellini can't tell because he's not at that location.

There is a lot of violence in this book, something that doesn't particularly appeal to me. The body count rises slowly but surely through the story, with Tommy personally killing 13 of the "bad guys"! These shootouts and other fights are described in detail, and are exciting at first, but about half way through the book it gets tedious.

The romantic (to use the word very loosely) subplots are very minor. Tommy succeeds (without trying or particularly enjoying it) in bedding three of the female characters. But if Tommy doesn't really care much one way or the other, why should we?

The weirdest scene in the whole book is when Tommy makes love to one of the women in a bugged hotel room, knowing that his best friend is monitoring the bugs! The fact that he doesn't particularly like the lady in question just added to my incredulity!

A general problem with the whole book is that the characters are poorly presented and not very believable. Surprising, considering that Stephen Coonts is otherwise very good at writing books populated with real people.

In particular, Tommy Carmellini doesn't come across as a believable person. To make it worse, he isn't a person that I find all that appealing. He's great at shooting holes in the bad guys and making clever remarks, but I'd prefer a leading "good guy" who is smarter and displays more real human characteristics.

On the plus side, the plot is pretty good. The story is partly based on the real-life defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who arrived in Great Britain in 1992 with six suitcases of notes from classified KGB files! Mix this with an American presidential nomination and people in high places with a past that is damaging to their political careers and you have an exciting cocktail.

Still, the good plot can't compensate for the disappointing characters and the repetitive violence, so I'm only giving three stars to "Liars & Thieves".

Rennie Petersen

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Coud Not Put This Book Down, January 27, 2006

By 

Alan L. Chase "Al Chase" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Liars & Thieves (Hardcover)

Mini-Review: "Liars & Thieves" by Stephen Coonts

I have many things for which I am indebted to my friend, John Byington. One of those debts is that fact that he introduced me to author Stephen Coonts - not to be confused with Dean Koontz! A few years ago, John, an Annapolis graduate and former Navy aviator, made the following observation: "You have come to know quite a few of us Navy guys who were pilots. If you really want to understand the world of naval aviation, you should read Stephen Coonts' "Flight of the Intruder."

I did read "Flight of the Intruder," and vowed to read as many of Coonts' other books as I could. Last year I enjoyed reading "Liberty," and I have just completed the riveting "Liars & Thieves." Coonts is a Viet Nam combat veteran and naval aviator, who went on to earn a law degree. He writes with a rapier wit and an acerbic and sardonic view of a world inhabited with a wide assortment of "bad guys," and a few old-fashioned heroes. Here is an example of his wry gift for introducing a character and setting the right tone:

"Obviously Dorsey had not considered the possibility that Willie might refuse to tell her whatever she asked. Few men ever had. She was young, beautiful, rich, the modern trifectas for females. She came by her dough the old-fashioned way - she inherited it. Her parents died in a car wreck shortly after she was born. Her grandparents who raised her passed away while she was partying at college, trying to decide if growing up would be worth the effort. Now she lived in a monstrous old brick mansion on five hundred acres, all that remained of a colonial plantation, on the northern bank of the Potomac thirty miles upriver from Washington. It was a nice little getaway if you were worth a couple hundred million, and she was." (Page 2)

The plot of this book involves double-dealing all the way from the Kremlin to the West Wing of the White House, as the two heroes, Tommy Carmellini and retired Admiral Jake Grafton, lay their lives on the line to try to save a former KGB official who has defected to the West. I won't spoil the treat for you by revealing anything else about the story line.

I could not put the book down. What else is there to say about a book!

Enjoy.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad Carmellini, August 20, 2004

By 

CDR USN (Ret) "bohm107w" (Eldersburg, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liars & Thieves (Hardcover)

Have been a fan of Steve Coonts, a former shipmate, for a long time, since "Flight of the Intruder" and all the rest. Hate to see Jake Grafton "retired" but that's more on me than on Jake, as I'm retired now, too. Won't bother with synopsizing the plot, which is no wilder than many of this genre, but the body count is VERY high, and as one other reviewer pointed out, there are many editing oversights. Carmellini is a Spillane-esque character: kills people without a glance, sleeps around with no apparent regard for the medical risks, maintains a rugged physique with no more exercise than an occasional run, survives everything shot, thrown or exploded at/under him, and also does throwaway gag lines. I didn't find him all that appealing, just as I don't care for Dirk Pitt, Clive Cussler's supermensch. There is also some mystery about Jake being a "consultant" who is still able to make a phone call and get a Delta Force team on site, no questions asked. Fortunately, the story moves along at such a high velocity that these are nit-picky details that only emerge after you've turned a page and then suddenly wonder "hey, how did THAT happen?" If you don't expect anything profound, it's a decent beach read.