Robert

"The Odessa File" is Frederick Forsyth at his best. It tells the tale of a journalist who - for personal reasons that are revealed at the end of the book - hunts down a former concentration camp commandant.
The book is filled with the incredible detail and planning that are the hallmark of Forsyth's books, and he creates believable and interesting characters. The audiobook version of the story adds to this through David Rintoul's truly flawless narration. He perfectly matches the mood of the text, and does a good job giving each character a 'voice.' His narration of Roschmann's rant at the end of the book is brilliant.
This book thoroughly deserves five stars, and is highly recommended. Once you've finished this one, you should try "The Day of the Jackal," another superb Forsyth book which is also narrated by Rintoul.

"Icon" is yet another superb book by the master, Frederick Forsyth.

As another reviewer has pointed out, the narrative weaves through several time periods, but it all gets linked together well at the end. As usual with Forsyth books, he adds in enough detail to give the story a sense of realism.

The narrator, Steven Crossley, does a fine job. The pace of the narration is excellent. However, I do not think he did as good a job giving the characters accents, and it is this which cost the book its fifth star.

Overall, well worth a listen.

'Fatherland' is a fantastic 'what-if' novel. It posits the frequently asked question, 'what would have happened had Germany won the Second World War?'
In Robert Harris' novel, it is fast approaching Hitler's 75th birthday, and Germany is completely in control of the European continent, and Britain is very much a vassal state. Only America remains free - and they have been undergoing the same kind of Cold War relationship with Germany which they had with the USSR in real life.
Harris focusses his novel on Detective March, who works for the Berlin police. March is called to investigate the discovery of a body floating in a river, and the investigation leads him to the awful truth about the Holocaust. In Harris' imagined Germany, the average German has chosen to believe the lies about 'resettlement' propagated by the Nazis (or at least don't question them too much). There has never been any investigation, and certainly no facts to back up all the rumours. Yet it is exactly these facts which March discovers - indisputable documentary evidence about the Holocaust, which he is determined to smuggle to America so that the truth can be announced to the world. He is aided in this by a female American journalist (who is a somewhat uninteresting and uninspired character). March is far more interesting: a police officer who has devoted years of his life to catching criminals and bringing them to justice, who is now coming to the realisation that in fact the state he serves is the most guilty and criminal of all.
The novel is fast-paced, and the narration is excellent, creating a real sense of characterisation. Harris has obviously done his research - his descriptions of Berlin are superb, doing a good job of describing the over-the-top architecture envisaged by Hitler and his chief architect, Speer. Harris intersperses genuine history (including quotations from Hitler and Himmler) with all too believable alternate history.
Highly recommended.

As another reviewer has already mentioned, 'Plague of the Dead' is not exactly original. Put simply, if you've seen any of George Romero's zombie movies, there is nothing in Recht's novel that will surprise you.
That said, what's here is well done. Recht creates some interesting (if cliched) characters, and describes some wonderful scenes of set-piece combat.
This novel outlines the origins of a global pandemic, detailing how the world's military forces attempt - and fail - to contain it. Recht charts the decline of the military, focussing in particular on one American unit commanded by a General Sherman. After losing numerous people at Suez, the unit returns to the States and deserts, preferring to see to their own survival rather than trusting in the chain of command.
Recht does a good job of highlighting their desperate search for supplies, so that rather than just unleashing an endless hail of unlimited bullets at their undead opponents, the soldiers actually have to think more tactically than this. This allows Recht to describe some genuinely tense scenes, in which the soldiers try and sneak around zombies and, when this fails, have to be rather miserly with their bullets.
It's not all action, however. Recht spends quite some time looking at the emotional consequences of the pandemic on the survivors, whose safe and ordered world is disintegrating around them.
I happily award this novel 4 stars - it would have been 5 had Recht just come up with some original new twist on the standard zombie tale. The narration is wonderful and, although nothing in here will surprise you, you will have quite a few happy hours listening to this audiobook. Highly recommended.

This is a superb addition to the Star Wars universe, blending horror with sci-fi. It tells the tale of an Imperial Prison Barge that stumbles upon a seemingly deserted Star Destroyer. All is not as it seems, and the boarding party gets infected with a virus that kills them, and then brings them back as the Undead.
Joe Schreiber does a fine job of incorporating zombie lore into his narrative. The narration is superb, and there are just enough sound effects (e.g. blaster shots, the whooshing of doors, the enraged cries of the undead etc.) to add to the atmosphere without becoming distracting (as I originally thought it would when I first started listening to this audiobook). Schreiber creates some marvellous action set pieces, and is not afraid to kill off some of the main characters, creating a genuine sense of tension - the only two characters you can be certain won't become zombie food are the two guest stars from the Star Wars movies - I don't want to spoil the surprise, so I won't name them here.
I happily rate this audiobook as 5 stars, and would recommend it to anyone. Listen and enjoy!