Lauded as his number-one favorite book of the year, Stephen King advised President Obama, in the pages of Entertainment Weekly, to pick up Michael Gruber’s previous book, The Good Son. With an unforgettable hero, The Return is as exciting and provocative as Gruber’s best work. The real Richard Marder would shock his acquaintances, if they ever met him. Even his wife, long dead, didn’t know the real man behind the calm, cultured mask he presents to the world. Only an old army buddy from Vietnam, Patrick Skelly, knows what Marder is capable of. Then, a shattering piece of news awakens Marder’s buried desire for vengeance. With nothing left to lose, he sets off to punish the people whose actions changed his life years earlier. Skelly shows up uninvited, and the two of them together raise the stakes far beyond anything Marder could have envisioned. As Marder and Skelly head toward an apocalypse of their own making, Marder learns that good motives and a sense of justice can’t always protect the people a man loves. With a range of fearsomely real characters, from a brutally violent crime lord to a daringly courageous young woman, a roller coaster of twists and turns, and a shattering exploration of what constitutes morality in the face of evil, Michael Gruber has once more proven that he is “a gifted and natural storyteller” (Chicago Tribune), and shows why he has been called “the Stephen King of crime writing” (Denver Post). ©2013 Michael Gruber (P)2013 Blackstone Audio



I have said this before and I will say it again, sometimes I don’t really know what it is about an audiobook that makes me want to listen. Sometimes its the the author, narrator, or the hype that I have seen fly by my eyes on the interwebs, The Return peaked my interest simply because of the clever cover art. Don’t be fooled my recklessness of picking audiobooks does not always turn out well, in fact I am waiting for Audible.com to say that I have reached my return limit for a while or something to that effect because I buy an return like crazy. Thankfully though their return policy allow me to take chances I normally wouldn’t take if I had to but audiobooks outright every time. Sometimes I think that is my lack of expectations that allow me to fully enjoy a particular story other times I think the same makes be unable to fully submerse myself in the fiction world the author tries to create. I am expecting an action packed story scattered with suspense and plot twists, hope I am right.

The Return: A Novel was perhaps not everything that I was expecting but it was quite the tale one man trying desperately to right the wrongs he thinks he did in the past, to his, and no one else’s, satisfaction. Or is it for finally being able to rain down the vengeance on those who he think made his personal life more difficult that it should have been? I think it was both. This audiobook started out slow and gradually gained momentum. Several hours in the entire feel for the novel started to change from what seemed like an old man trying to find his place in a new land to an all out war on those that indirectly destroyed his wife. Full of fascinatingly complex multifaceted characters that change as soon as I started to develop a connection with them. A very intricate plot, with many twists and turns, including elaborate action sequences, tense suspenseful situations, a bit of mystery, tasteful love and whole lot of drama. I enjoyed The Return: A Novel, it wasn’t my favorite listen ever, but I am happy that I gave it a chance.

Having this be my first time listening to Jonathan Davis I was impressed and disappointed at the same time, strange right? I was impressed with his seeming natural Spanish accent, being that most of the story takes place in Mexico there are many places where Spanish is spoken. Davis’ pacing was impeccable at times, slow at the right times and faster as the action or tension picked up. Where I was disappointed was in most of his characterizations, some were very difficult to differentiate from Marder, the protagonist, mostly the female characters, which I understand is something more difficult that it seems to me. While his Mexican cartel and the voice chosen for Skelly were absolutely amazing. I am sure that it is difficult to find narrators with perfect range and depth of their voices, could some one better have been chosen for this performance, maybe, but who? I have no idea.

About Michael Gruber Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist. He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolved. After the partnership with Tanenbaum ended, Gruber began publishing his own novels under William Morrow and HarperCollins. Gruber’s “Jimmy Paz” trilogy, while critically acclaimed, did not sell at the same levels as the Butch Karp series in the United States. The Book of Air and Shadows became a national bestseller shortly after its release in March of 2007, however.

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