Robert Ludlum’s The Arctic Event

James H. Cobb is no Robert Ludlum. Although he wasn’t a great prose stylist, Ludlum (who died in 2001) could keep a story engine churning like nobody’s business. Compared to him, Cobb is a plodding, mechanical, cliché-ridden hired hand. And Jeff Woodman can’t do much to make things more exciting—or even interesting—as he reads this tangled tale. Woodman has the vocal talents necessary to make the third-person narration work, and he does his best to create believable voices for the male and female members of a search team and their villainous adversaries—Russians, North Koreans and private mercenaries. But Cobb undercuts him at virtually every turn, the story moving like sticky syrup as a top secret Covert-One team of specialists hunt for a crashed WWII bomber and a deadly toxin that could destroy all life on the planet. Simultaneous release with the Grand Central paperback. (Sept.)