AN EXPENSIVE EDUCATION

Nick Cordero gets to show off a couple of nifty foreign accents—one Scots and one African—in this spy novel, but regrettably those episodes are too brief to compensate for an otherwise lackluster performance. His delivery is earnest enough, but he doesn’t sound interested in finding the crannies of characterization that would make McDonell’s cast come alive. The novel raises the question of whether the leader of a group of Somalian freedom fighters is a hero or a monster as barbaric as his enemies. Those trying to discern answers are an American intelligence agent, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and an African national studying at Harvard who is left wondering who killed his family. If only Cordero had managed to breathe life into them. M.O. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2011]