The Siege

Alan Gregory, Book 17

By: Stephen White

Narrated by: Dick Hill

As a lovely weekend approaches on the Yale campus it appears that a number of students - including the sons of both the secretary of the army and newest Supreme Court justice - may have gone missing. Kidnapping? Terrorism? The authorities aren't sure. But the high-profile disappearances draw the attention of the CIA...

and the FBI's vaunted Hostage Rescue Team. Attention quickly focuses on the fortress-like tomb of one of Yale's secret societies. Suspended Boulder police detective Sam Purdy soon finds himself in New Haven, where he is quickly snared by an unlikely pair of Feds: FBI agent Christopher Poe and CIA analyst Deirdre Drake.
Sam, Poe, and Dee join together, desperately trying to solve the riddle of what is going on inside the windowless stone tomb on the edge of campus. The clock is pounding in their ears. The unknown enemy is playing by no known rules...is making no demands...is refusing to communicate with the hostage negotiator...is somehow anticipating every FBI move...is completely unconcerned about getting away...

And...is sending students, one by one, out of the building's front door to die.

©2009 Stephen White (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Thought provoking

This book looks at the potential evolution of terrorism into something even more scary and dangerous. For the first half of the book you see the story unfold through three different perspectives. I don't read many like that so I found it interesting. The characters were very real. People whose lives had taken unexpected turns, people who were vulnerable yet very strong. And the narration was superb.

Enjoyed the whole book!

I have either read or listened to all of Stephen White's books and this is one of the best. It held my interest to the end.

White's best yet

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Dick Hill is amazing as usual. After a few chapters I didn't need to hear names, his character's voices remained spot on throughout the story. The plot was amazing. The story has you riveted from the beginning through to the end. Highly recommended.

Excellent Book

I like the story, and the detail used to develope the characters. The narrator used nice tone inflections to give each character life in the story. Some of the comments during the interaction made me laugh.
Very entertaining indeed.

Entertaining and thought provoking story

Suspenseful and very well written. Although I believe it's fictional there probably is some truth in the story. Good book

Good Listen

What did you love best about The Siege?

This was a good listen, it strikes at the heart of our greatest fears, the only problem is the reason behind it The siege, I am about sick of the big ruthless america theme in so many books. but is well worth your time. Stephen White does a good job here and the narrator was good.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

the siege of course and how it was planned

What about Dick Hill’s performance did you like?

he always does a good job

Nice for Sam to take center stage

Detective Sam Purdy is the star of this whodunnit and it was really a nice change. His no bs, down-to-earth approach to this murder mystery had many twists with a satisfying ending!

Excellent

We are big fans of Stephen White, but my husband and I agree this was one of our favorites. It was nice to have the story focused on Sam.

Outstanding!

From a different first voice. Powerful, creative and possible.

I’ve read all of the series so far. How did I not know about Stephan White!

So-so

I love Stephen White's older books with Alan Gregory. This book focused on Sam Purdy and then two new characters who we have never met (Po and Deirdre) and will probably never see again.

Parts of this book were very good and the premise behind it had a lot of potential but in the end it fell flat. As I found with Stephen White's last book I thought there was way too much dialogue about things that did not move along the story and in the end the main characters really did not affect the outcome of the situation - they were just bystanders and as someone else mentioned just figured out the motives behind the situation before anyone else.

I really noticed a political message coming through from the author in the whole story with regards to 9/11 and the resulting events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not a total waste of time but not what I expected from someone who used to be my favorite author.