Fifty Grand

A Novel of Suspense

By: Adrian McKinty

Narrated by: Paula Christensen

An illegal immigrant is killed in a hit-and-run on a frozen mountain road in the town of Fairview, Colorado. No one is prosecuted for his death and his case is quietly forgotten. Six months later another illegal makes a treacherous run across the border, barely escaping with her life. She finds work as a maid and, secretly, begins to investigate the death of her father. But she isn't a maid, and she's not Mexican. She's Detective Mercado, a police officer from Havana, and she's looking for answers to her father's death. McKinty's live-wire prose is riveting, right up to a final, shocking conclusion.©2009 Barron's Educational Series, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This amazing novel....has riveting mystery, politics of just about every shade, and thrills on almost every page. . . .This is going to be the BIG BOOK of 2009." - (Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and Once Were Cops)

Haunting

This is a very good experience. Adrian McKinty leaps the gap between reality and narrative... Hmmmm... No... Perhaps he heals it. And Paula Christensen brings Mercado's voice to haunting life... Particularly her internal voice.

McKinty exploits suspense/mystery to examine an individual's options when culture, politics, and violence exert crushing pressure upon anyone, or anything that's impelled to act - individually. Sometimes McKinty's own drive to examine the trees though, distracts us from the forest. In this case Mercado's internal monologues occasionally pulled me out of the story arc and, well.... It's not good for the magician to remind the audience that his left hand's doing things when we want to be amazed by the right hand that's abruptly full of rabbit. Y'know?

Maybe this book needed just a hair more editing and compression: hence my overall 4 rather than 5 stars. But hey... I am judging McKinley by his own standards and consequently I found this story, overall, to be unnecessarily slower than each of the others I heard before it.

Regardless... "Fifty Grand" is marvelous. McKinty and Christensen are a powerful team of artists. Buy it, listen, and feeeel.

McKinty at his best

Be in no doubt, this writer has talent. Like his other books, 50G is beautifully written. There's mountains of wit, intelligence and world-weary knowledge in this book. The intricate and entralling plot builds to a crescendo which left me stunned. Easily the best book I've listened to this year.

Hard to start

I found this really hard to get into and let it simmer in my ITunes for several attempts after starting it. But, when I ran out of most new stuff to listen too I tried this again. The protagonista, Ms. Mercado, is not Ms. Salander or even Anna Pigeon, but it finally got going and the last half of the story turned out pretty good and worth the listen.

Fabulous Story

What made the experience of listening to Fifty Grand the most enjoyable?

I have read many Adrian McKinty books. This book is a great example of his wonderful story telling, but takes it to a new and more intimate level. The story grabs you from the start and you want to know what is going to happen.

What did you like best about this story?

The heroine is complicated and very likable. You root for her from the very beginning.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I found myself finding every moment to listen so I could find out what was going to happen!

Terrible voices for audible

Male voices bad all sounded the same and not realistic , hurt story line and believe ability