DEEP BLACK: Dark Zone Dark Zone

J. Charles does his best to bring the latest super-spy novel by Stephen Coonts to life, or perhaps larger-than-life. Charles goes overboard with the droll “Hah-vard” tones he gives the National Security Agency honcho, but he has fun with his British, Irish, and French accents. The problems with the book are in the writing, not the reading, starting with the notion of the two cookie-cutter heroes. There’s nothing to differentiate Deep Black agents Charles Dean and Tommy Karr. If not for the two terrorist plots going on in two places simultaneously, one at the Eiffel Tower and one in the Chunnel, a single hero would have sufficed. M.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 06]