DEAD AND KICKING

In McGeachin’s series, Alby Murdoch works for the DED, the Directorate for Extra-Territorial Defence of the government of Australia. As Murdoch is working his current freelance gig in Vietnam, where he’s making a film about the war, he sights men who were declared dead in the war. En route, Murdoch’s penchant for Asian foods has narrator Peter Hosking deftly moving from the hero’s rapture over purple basil to his quick-thinking evasion of his own assassination. The story’s diverse elements seem incongruous until the plot turns to a potentially fatal fish industry, launched with a vengeance by evildoers and halted by Murdoch, who is assisted by a sexy sharp-shooting Vietnamese detective. Hosking is best at Murdoch’s wry Aussie voice, and he also manages the accents of Asians—friends and thugs—and an American politician. However, he goes from salacious to shrill with an oversexed food celebrity who is an enthusiastic fan of the ironic Aussie James Bond. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2010]