Faux Friends

By: A.J. McCarthy

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"A potent, briskly-paced crime thriller featuring a detective whose vulnerability creates first-class suspense." –Best Thrillers

Chantal Pouliot, of the Quebec police force, is relegated to mind-numbing desk duty because of a case that went wrong six months earlier. A break comes her way in the form of a white-collar cyber-crime case, something she hopes will help restore her status as an undercover detective. The downside is having to collaborate with an RCMP team that will join her in Quebec City.

When the safe, tedious job she envisaged turns to murder with a potential link to organized crime, Chantal is thrown back into the life she wanted, with Jeff Lafond by her side once again. But somebody is playing games with them, and that person is aware of her past. Is someone close to the investigation involved? What is the purpose of the game and how many people will the murderer sacrifice in the race to win it?

poor AI narration

This story was a challenging one to get through. The AI narration was so poor, pronouncing the protagonist's name at least five different ways throughout the book. AI cannot take cues from the storyline to adjust tone and meaning, so what is clearly meant to be a soft or sarcastic response from a character comes off strange and jarring.

On a separate note, the characters are not likeable, make consistently bad choices, and nonsensical leaps of logic. The dialogue seemed forced, though it is hard to tell if that is due to the narration or the writing.