SPARK

Jake Underwood, the contract killer at the center of this futuristic thriller, believes he's dead--he suffers from "Cotard delusion," a rare condition in which the brain refuses to acknowledge its existence. The setup poses a challenge for an audiobook narrator. How do you keep the thrill in a thriller when the main character, the book's narrator, is emotionally flat-lined? Scott Brick succeeds by emphasizing tempo over tone and by occasionally infusing Underwood's resigned persona with a spark of excitement, a maneuver that also helps to make the ending more palatable. Fans of dystopian tales will feel at home in this novel's dark near-future, a bleak, frightening controlled world of corporate surveillance, robotic interactions, and morality-free decision making. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2014]