The Bullet Catch

By: John Gaspard / Narrated By: Jim Cunningham

Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins

Magic, Murder, and oh yeh: High school reunions…!

Here’s the deal, and I ain’t necessarily proud of it: When I stumble upon an author I like, I really wanna listen to everything they’ve ever done, like, NOW. Same goes for a grand series. And usually in my reviews for books in a series, I can’t help but end my review with words that go along the lines of: So good I’m hitting the next in the series POSTHASTE!

And it raaaarely happens cuz, see, there are just so many audiobooks, so many genres, and dude! sooo little time. Not to mention, occasions crop up, various Heritage/History Months demand their due. Or I just get on a kick of this that and the other.

-BUT-

Seriously! I reeeeecently just did a Week O’ Mysteries, and in THAT week, I’d stumbled upon the New To Me “Eli Marks Mysteries”, and had wound up absoLUTEly loving the first in the series. What did I go and do but end the review with a: Soooo Gonna Hit The Next Audiobook, Like, Soon!!!

Well, fellow Accomplice, here it is, the time is NOW! and all I have to say to that is, WONDERFUL -and- Yeh I Flunked The Marshmallow Test, so suuuue me!

Prepare yourself for much-loved characters turning up like a coin from your ear, and don’t be dismayed if some are kinda sorta on the back burners as we all head into The Bullet Catch seeing as, well, Eli and his girlfriend are On A Break. Add a few new ones, saaaay, a friend from High School who’s now a famed actor in a movie about a once famous Magician who died ignominiously doing a dangerous act, trying to catch a bullet in his teeth… but failing rather horribly. This friend, the effervescent Jake, is also pretty keen to get Eli on set as he’s absolutely certain something is going to go terribly awry in the filming. Yup, that trick’ll be the death of him, most literally.

Worse? For Eli, at any rate, is the High School Reunion that Jake’s dragging him to. Oh, and even WORSE? Eli’s Always-There Acrophobia has become CRIPPLING, and the Reunion is being held waaaay up a gazillion (And six!) floors. Even WORSE THAN THAT? His old high school crush is there, and danged if she’s not even more dazzling than she was as a hot teenager.

The Reunion goes as well as can be expected, it’s just unfortunate that Trish’s drunken, dumber than a box of rocks, lecherous husband is found dead the next day, shot in the chest, shot in the face. A mugging gone bad? -OR- something more sinister. And poor Eli; wasn’t he just seen chatting it up with the victim and the bereaved widow who just keeps turning up now that Eli’s life is all in-a-mess. Throw in MORE murder victims, and Eli’s Assistant DA ex-wife and her Homicide Detective husband are asking him questions.

Ahhhh, Eli, again with the corpses that keep turning up?!

Okay, I dinged narrator Jim Cunningham for a Neeeear But Not Quiiiiiite Perfect Performance in The Ambitious Card for throwing himself into his narration -except for- not making high-pitched squeeeeaky voices whenst our Hero and heroine breathed in helium. That was the ONLY thing I could ding him for, but here? Oh perfection with nary a ding to be found. Cunningham still makes Harry the most aDORable magician uncle ever. Jake is a ridiculous and smarmy-at-times egomaniac. Trisha is believable as The Bewildering Crush who is suddenly NOW taken with him (WHY couldn’t she have noticed his existence 15-yeeeears ago?!). And the Artful Codgers are delightful. Throw in an easily bewildered Eli, who only now and then has flashes of brilliant insight but who gamely makes up for it by being a jolly good chap who’s kind and kinda clueless, especially when it comes to women. Cunningham just makes author John Gaspard’s clever crafting and amusing situations come to sweet, joyous life.

Yep, Big Sis said it best when she offered that Eli Marks Mysteries have become something akin to Comfort Food. Yeh yeh yeh: Body Counts and all that.

But aren’t they quite simply jolly good, sweet to the ear, treats?!

Audiobook Accomplice

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