Hidden River

Product Description


[MP3CD Audiobook format in Vinyl case]

[Read by Gerard Doyle]


Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award

In this electrifying noir thriller, a young Irish ex-cop travels half a world away to investigate the murder of a beautiful girl he once loved.

Alexander Lawson is a former detective for Northern Ireland's police force who, after a disastrous stint in the drug squad, became addicted to heroin and resigned in disgrace. Now twenty-four, sickly, and on the dole, Alex learns that his high-school love, Victoria Patawasti, has been murdered in America. Victoria's wealthy family sends Alex to Colorado to investigate the case, and he seizes the opportunity for a chance at redemption. But things don't go as planned. Plagued by a heroin habit, forced to go on the run after the only credible witness to Victoria's murder is accidentally killed, wanted by both the Colorado cops and the Ulster police, Alex struggles just to stay alive.


Review


''A storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream.'' --
Kirkus Review (starred review)

''[Listeners] will be hooked by both McKinty's skillfully woven suspense and (audiobook narrator) Doyle's almost endearing interpretation of this memorable protagonist.'' --
Publishers Weekly

''(Narrator) Gerard Doyle compels the listener into the midst of this gritty thriller . . . achieving skilled psychological shadings that inform and color all the characters . . . Listeners will be riveted.'' --
AudioFile


About the Author


ADRIAN McKINTY was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, when terrorism in Ulster was at its height. Educated at Oxford University, he then immigrated to New York City, where he lived in Harlem for five years, working in bars and on construction crews, as well as a stint as a bookseller. He is the author of
Hidden River and
Dead I Well May Be, which was short-listed for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. He lives in Denver, Colorado.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


Hidden River

By Adrian McKinty
Blackstone Audiobooks
Copyright © 2005
Adrian McKintyAll right reserved.

ISBN: 9780786183630




Chapter 1: Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer

Seven time zones west of Belfast the murdered girl was alive yet and well. She was confident, popular, young and clever -- this last virtue was going to be the death of her.
That and a slug from a .22.
She lay snug in the groove of the futon mattress. Over her: a cotton sheet and a fleece blanket. The fan on for noise. The humidifier for moisture. The heat in the middle of the thermostat. She was comfortable, as comfortable as one could be in this bed, in this room, in this building, in this town.
I know all this because I read the police report.
Perhaps the humidifier cast off a little light that illuminated her face. An interesting face. Imperious, marked, beautiful. Of good background, of good stock. Actually -- and although she said it was unimportant -- of good caste. She had dark eyes and dark hair. An aristocrat, you might have said, or someone who could play the archetypal rich girl who disdains and then ultimately falls for the poor but handsome boy in the silliest of Hindi films.
Victoria Patawasti was clever but even the cleverest can't be experts at all things. The encryption software for her computer diary had said that the FBI's Cray supercomputers would take years of processing time to break her password; all that she wrote would be safe, certainly from office gossips or other ne'er-do-wells. Of course, the encryption software meant nothing if the password wasn't secure. But who would ever think of a long word like Carrickfergus -- the small town where she'd grown up, in Ireland.
She had confided everything to her computer diary: her thoughts, her ideas, her suspicions. Suspicions. What a big word. Probably nothing she should worry about. Klimmer had been right. Not the sort of th