Rancho Buena Fortuna

By: Bill King

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Two criminal oligarchs—one Mexican, the other French—secretly join forces to make their extensive logistics and distribution networks available to global terrorists ... with terrifying consequences.

Almost immediately, a sudden rash of terrorist bombings hits a half dozen Federal Reserve Banks, beginning in the Upper Midwest before spreading to the mega banks in New York and San Francisco. In addition to the diversity of locations, the intensity of the attacks also keeps ratcheting up.

Then European officials inform their U.S. counterparts that a nuclear device has gone missing several weeks earlier and had been tracked to the Mexican port of Tampico, where it had cleared two days beforehand and had probably already managed to be smuggled across the porous southern border.

To prevent widespread panic, US and international officials kept word of the looming threat a tightly-guarded secret, including from FBI Special Agent Porfirio “Pete” Cortez, who was currently working drug and human trafficking along the remote stretches of southern border with Mexico.

Set amid the gritty landscape of south Texas, RANCHO BUENA FORTUNA is the first book in Bill King's Pete Cortez FBI Thriller series.

A pleasant surprise!

First off, I have to address my initial concern. Seeing that this was narrated by a synthesized voice, I went into this book with pretty low expectations for the performance. I admit that I am super impressed by the quality of the performance. There was appropriate inflection and good pronunciation of even the Spanish names and words. In fact, this was a better performance than my most recent listen in which the narrator mispronounced lots of common words..."foilage" instead of foliage, really?!

I am not sure how I feel about this. I have actually sought out books by some of my favorite narrators over the years, such as Scott Brick. I feel bad that they may be out of a job. and I will miss that personal connection. On the other hand, if this helps more authors produce audio versions of their books then that's a good thing. So, mixed emotions here...

On to the story, I really enjoyed it and I will certainly be looking for more titles from this author. He is a new find for me. Nicely done...and welcome to my library!