The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockmann

Narrated by Patrick Lawlor and Melanie Ewbank

The Unsung Hero is Book 1 of the enormously popular (and sometimes controversial) Troubleshooters Series, AKA TSS. Brockmann first wrote about Navy SEALS in her earlier series, Tall, Dark and Dangerous, AKA TDD, a Silhouette series released in the 1990s.  She expanded the concept for the Troubleshooters, using a longer format and multiple storylines that crossed over multiple books, although each one features a prominent hero/heroine who get their HEA at the end. She started the series with a trilogy that includes a secondary WWII romance/storyline, neatly woven into the current plot. The result is a more complex story, with a strong adventure core as well as a romance.

In 2003, The Unsung Hero was released in audio format performed by William Dufris. An extremely prolific narrator with a ton of experience, he was completely miscast for this project. His narration works well in suspense and thrillers, but was not a good match for Brockmann’s romance/romantic adventure series. And he mispronounced the hero’s last name! Gak! But a lot of people liked his narration even though I did not.

In fact, the first six TSS books were all read by different artists, in differing levels of quality, until the team of Patrick Lawlor and Melanie Ewbank took over in Flashpoint, Book 7. Using Brockmann’s “deep POV” where the book is presented in 3rd person as if being observed by one character, the book was separated into sections with any male POV read by Lawlor and any female POV read by Ewbank. Now the first six TSS books are being rerecorded and released in this format, using these narrators. Yes!!

The main story features Tom Paoletti who, after receiving a serious head injury while on a SEAL mission, has been sent home for 30 days leave to recuperate. He returns to the small New England town where he grew up with his uncle, the groundskeeper for a wealthy family. His high school crush was the daughter of the wealthy family, Kelly, who is now taking care of her father, dying from cancer.

Tom thinks he sees a terrorist at the airport upon arrival, and spends a lot of time trying to justify what might be the paranoid delusions of his head injury. He involves several members of his team, including the series’ first heartthrob, Sam Starrett, in his plot to thwart whatever the terrorist – if there is a terrorist, that is – has planned. The suspense subplot is almost like another character in the book, running alongside the relationship between Tom and Kelly as they revisit their young crush and find friendship and love again.

The secondary WWII story concerns a bittersweet love triangle in France, with Tom’s uncle and Kelly’s father and a young French woman named Cybele, and it’s told in multiple flashbacks throughout the story. Cybele is a fighter in the French resistance, running a rag-tag army protecting children and others in Nazi-occupied France. It’s a clever and touching counterpoint to the current story.

I was thrilled to have a new interpretation of this story – I’ve read it multiple times – especially with Lawlor and Ewbank. So I’m hesitant to say I wasn’t as pleased as I thought I would be. Lawlor gave it his usual full bore gusto – he sounds very involved, reading the narrow escapes and suspenseful parts with an urgency that has you sitting up. His characterizations are good – he had the slightest blue collar Boston accents for Tom and his uncle, which vocally separates them from the wealthy family. His voices for the young WWII soldiers were noticeably younger than the same, gruff old men in the current story. Generally I have liked the way he handles female characters, but unfortunately his Cybele was not placed well in his voice and was too falsetto, too cartoony. Normally I don’t hear the cast in my head, but in this case, Cybele sounded all wrong – she could have had a low, smoky sound, or a stronger one in any case (think maybe Edith Piaf). For the female POV, Ewbank was too deliberate, too slow, her pacing very unnatural with a slight hesitation between every sentence that was just a nanosecond too long. I kept hoping that was only something at the beginning, but about halfway through I switched to 1.25X speed using the Audible app, and that made her delivery much easier to listen to. Unfortunately, that also affects the quality of the sound AND it made Lawlor sound manic, so I switched back to regular time when I could. By the end, I think either I got used to it or perhaps she speeded up. Other than the pacing, she is easy to listen to and she creates differentiated characters well. The narration wasn’t an epic fail, but I was disappointed.

However, the book delivered in a big way, and as I always do, I had to get out the tissues at the big climactic turning points, and cried all the way to the end even while I was punching my fist in the air with a loud YESSS! that scared my dog. Brockmann does that to me – the stories have deep emotion, complex characters, and edge-of-the-seat suspense. Oh, and seriously HOT heroes and kickass heroines!

Melinda

Narration: B-

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Blackstone Audio