Panic by Jeff Abbott

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Pub. Date: August 2006
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 416pp
BN Sales Rank: 229,148
ISBN: 0451412222

I listened to this on Audio but since it was borrowed from the library I no longer have the ISBN information.

How is it even possible that it's the end of August and I've finished only 1 book so far and it's an audio book! I thought with my vacation I would get so much read and I did not! Yikes.

Synopsis: Evan Casher is a successful Documentary film maker and has a pretty great life until one morning all of that changes. Evan receives a call from his mother to come home urgently and when he gets there his mother has been murdered and the assailants are still in the house. Evan is quickly thrust into the world of spies where you don't know who to trust and have to be willing to do anything to survive. Evan learns more about his parents than he ever knew was possible and when the assailants take his father as a way to get back what was stolen from them he has to become resourceful to get his father back from the kidnappers.

One of my book clubs had this as a side book club read and since I listened to Fear last year and loved it I thought I should listen to this one as well. LJ Ganser also read this one but it didn't have the same gusto for me. I thought Fear was so much better. This was exciting and well done, but a bit unbelievable for me at times that Evan knew so little about his parents life and yet could jump in so easily and run things so professionally. I will definitely read more by Abbott, he is very good with suspense and thriller - I just found this one a little too over the top for an amature, when professionals are dying left and right in the story. Still 3 stars is nothing to cry about, very good effort and enjoyable to listen to.

This book fits the following Challenges/Categories for me:

• Hogwarts Reading Challenge - Defense against the Dark Arts
• Thriller and Suspense Challenge (This completes that challenge!)
• Monthly Mixer Mele

Fear by Jeff Abbott (Audio)

Rating: 4/5 Stars

I picked this audio book up on a whim, based on no knowledge of Abbott whatsoever. My library has shelves and shelves of Audio books and I couldn't decide what to listen to next so I started all the way to the left of the stacks at A and picked the first one in the stack. What a nice surprise it was for me to find that I picked up an exciting and complex tale of suspense.

This book brings 3 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) patients together after their therapist asks them for help and then is murdered. They feel a need to find out who killed her and why she was killed and finish what she died for. These 3 people get into the thick of more traumatic events while still trying to face their own fears and move on with their lives. This book was really well written and you never really know who can be trusted nd who cannot, with lots of twists and turns that will keep you excited to read on. There are alot of characters in the book but I think the author does a good job in keeping them clean and separate, never being confused by them.

I absolutely loved the narrators voice, L.J. Ganser. I know I've heard his voice somewhere else before. It's the perfect voice for a handsome leading man character, especially for a suspense novel. I looked him up to see what else he's read and he has quite an audio book listing, which is not surprising because he is really a great narrator. You can find his audiofile site here.
I will certainly be reading more from Jeff Abbott and I will be picking up Panic from the library on audio ASAP, where L.J. Ganser is the narrator, so this is a bonus for me.

You can find out more about Jeff Abbot and his books here. He has apparently been nominated and won several awards and has a couple of books optioned for film. I think he is definitely one to watch.

This book fills the following categories/challenges for me:

• Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge
• PBT Feb Tag: Other
• Monthly Mixer Mele Challenge: A in januAry
• New Authors Challenge