The Starling Project by Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver has done a few books for Audible with his character Harold Middleton. The first two books, The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet were serial novels. This means they had a chapter at a time released on Audible and Deaver wrote the first and the last chapter of the book but everyone in between was done by different mystery writers.  This book is strictly written by Jeffery Deaver and it is a novella not a full novel. This is only available in audio version right now, but it is totally worth it. This book not only continues the story of Harold Middleton but this is done by a full cast of characters with sound effects, and a really cheesy sound track. It was great. 

This book has Middleton and his team of volunteers trying to find information on who are what the Starling is. Starting out the book with a secret assault on what I think was a drug lord to take his harddrives to find any information they can about the Starling. Let’s just say this starts out with a bang. The nice thing about Novellas or short stories is they don’t waste anytime getting to the good stuff.

I need to sadly air some little peeves of mine. This book has some really cheesy dialog and I expect more from Deaver when it comes to solid writing. Maybe it was the voice actors that made it feel cheesy but I can’t just blame them because Jeffery Deaver is my favorite author. Don’t get me wrong, this book is cheesy in such a good way that it is just a fun mindless read that you can just sit back and enjoy. I also never can figure out what twists Deaver is going to through at me so I tend to not even try to figure out what is going to happen next. In this story I was able to figure out the next move only to be proven right and then a little later be proven wrong and after awhile this was less suspense and more frustrating. It was also a little irritating that Middleton just knew what was going on. I realize for the sake of time Deaver can’t go into the specific minute details that got the character from point A to point B Sherlock Holmes style.

This is a great story and I loved the cast of voice actors. In the past these Middleton books have been read by Alfred Molina and he is an amazing audio book reader. He at least is the voice of Middleton in this book so I was very happy. I would listen to any book he reads. He has done some voice work lately and on cartoon in particular is mine and my son’s favorite. He voices the part-time villian Rippen in Penn Zero Part-Time Hero and it is just awesome. Oh yeah, and Rippen is the Art teacher at Penn’s school durring the day but once school is out he is the Vilian to Penn’s Part-Time hero. My son and I really enjoy this show just like I enjoyed this book. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars and recommend this to anyone looking for a fun short read.