THE SIRIUS CROSSING

The task seems simple for Jack Valentine, a British intelligence operative: Retrieve a twenty-five-year-old package from a Northern Ireland cave. Then an old IRA friend appears, and soon Jack is dodging the IRA, British and American Special Forces, and his own boss as he tries to survive while learning what's so special about that package. Sean Barrett is a mesmerizing reader for this gripping Irish thriller. The accents--Scots, Irish, public school English, even the difference between Texan and North Carolinian--are spot-on. Characters’ emotions are revealed clearly without overacting. And narrative pacing in Barrett’s warm, well-rounded voice is superb--quiet and clear, then racing with the action. He's so good that one doesn't, at first, attend to the book’s mayhem. It’s a violent tale, with a convincing love story, well written and beautifully read. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 05]