On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, there is a little-known psychiatric facility where the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state make them a danger to their own country. One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But Hal isn't crazy. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Hal clears his drug-hazed mind and pulls off a daring escape. But friends and longtime associates don't remember him, there are no official records of Hal Ambler, and when he first sees himself in the mirror, the face that looks back at him is not the one he knows as his own.
There are audiobook readers, and there are audiobook performers. In the case of this Ludlum thriller, Scott Sowers rarely goes beyond delivering a competent rendering of the text. Occasionally, he lends some emotion to the words to convince listeners that he is portraying characters. But mostly he just reads, which is unfortunate as Ludlum could have used some help telling his complex story of a spy who escapes from a mental institution and tries to prevent an assassination. The story calls for some varied accents and characterizations. However, Sowers fails to deliver. And the work is poorer for it. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Robert Ludlum’s novels have been published in thirty-two languages and forty countries. Read by hundreds of millions worldwide, his books include The Bourne Identity, The Prometheus Deception, The Scarlatti Inheritance, and The Chancellor Manuscript.
