Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Crime & Chaos
SERIES: Thin Blue Line #3
AUTHOR: Patricia Logan
NARRATOR: Michael Pauley
PUBLISHER: Westburg Publishing
LENGTH: 7 hours, 57 minutes
RELEASE DATE: December 11, 2019
BLURB:
Homeland Security investigators Pope Dades and Felix Jbarra have been partnered for six months and the excitement on and off the job keeps getting better. Working together every day is generally routine, but when the partners are assigned to supplement the Secret Service on a VIP protection detail, things really begin to heat up.
An alternative energy conference is being held in Los Angeles. When Felix and Pope learn they’ll be bodyguards to a Saudi Arabian prince, they’re expecting rides in fancy limousines, a stay at the world-famous Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and exotic food. What they don’t expect is being once again thrown into the line of fire…literally.
Someone has put out a hit on Prince Ali ibn Abd Pasha, and the killers want it carried out on US soil to embarrass the Americans in retaliation for US news coverage over the murder of one of their journalists late last year. Felix and Pope only learn of the danger to the prince when a Secret Service agent friend is nearly killed.
Pope and Felix dive headfirst into another exciting case, but when they learn the man they’re guarding might be involved in arms trafficking because of ties to Mills Lang, they are forced to, once again, call on their buddies at the ATF.
Action, intrigue, and danger abound in the thrilling conclusion of the Thin Blue Line series.
REVIEW:
Crime and Chaos is the final chapter, or book in this series. The prologue starts off with a bang – not a literal for once. But the kind where Felix’s 18 year old sister Sophia was being forcefully abducted. Oh – and he’d just come out to his entire family – causing a literal row. Things were a bit tense there… come to think of it, it also fit with the rest of the series, our boys rarely do things the easy way.
Anyway, back to the thwarted abduction and Felix’s revelation. Now that’s a way to start a book, the listener or reader gets invested from the very start. Also, was it just me that wanted to know more about the events of the party? I mean for one, Felix had been agonising for months, years probably, about coming out to his family. It’s been one of the bigger hurdles between him and Pope really moving forward. And to only listen to a retelling, a summary of events… well, I’m not going to lie, I felt a little bit cheated. I would love to have been there and really experience it with him/them. I’m also really curious about Sophia’s would be abductor. I mean who was he?, why her? The squirrels might have been fun but they did not provide any answers, I have so many questions. Then again, maybe we weren’t supposed to know everything?
You might have already guessed that I’m just a tad hung up on the prologue, but that was barely a blip on the radar for everything else happening in this book. From the first page it was full speed ahead. Pope and Felix are loaned out to Secret Service on a joint mission; protect a Saudi prince while he’s in US for a conference. As things have a habit to when our guys are involved, things get really hairy really quickly. Someone has taken out a hit on the prince and has come precariously close to assassinate him a couple of times. And when they realise their case is tied to an arms dealer, well… they of course call their friends at the ATF – just to keep things interesting.
I love that we finally got our answers. That the bad guys were revealed and stopped. I loved that Felix and Pope finally took the leap to really be together, to commit to one another. That they made it through the fumbling and stumbling and uncertainty. That they got their happily ever after. It’s been a heck of a ride for them, but they made it in the end.
Michael Pauley delivered the performance with conviction and passion. He connected to the cast of characters and made listener do so too. He made you see and feel the connection between all the couples, the love between them. But also how strong their friendships were. I think it must be fun to narrate a book like this. There was something happening all the time, no real lull between one bullet or explosion and the next. Hmm, come to think of it, might be a tad exhausting as well, to always have that level of suspense and intensity, it never sowed though. His performance was spot on beginning to end.
RATING: 
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