ACT OF WAR

A high-tech thriller written by Brown and read by Dufris is a hard act to follow. First, you have gadgets like CID, a nine-foot robot you can climb inside and with which you can do superhuman feats. Then you have a reader whose natural voice is melodic and whose characterizations, including women, are one hundred percent convincing. All this comes together in a yarn about a group of conspirators who set off a thermonuclear device at an oil complex near Houston, killing thousands. Finally, you have U.S. Army Engineer Major Jason Richtor, a new character for Brown, who parlays smarts and technology into finding and eliminating the terrorist threat. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 06]