Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Specialists

Author: Lawrence Block

Narrator: Fred Sullivan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-06-11

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 21 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense

Publisher's Summary:

Albert Platt is a rotten man. Bred in the rough parts of Brooklyn, he made his name as a killer and has built a fortune from gambling, loan sharking, and the other pastimes of a standard thug. His latest gambit? Buying banks, robbing them, and collecting the insurance. He's a hard man, and no one ever stood in his way until he brushed up against Eddie Manso. Manso is no ordinary veteran. He and four other commandos, battle-hardened in the jungles of Laos, have found that the civilian world demands their talents as much as the military once did. These specialists have made a living targeting vicious men whom the law cannot touch, dismantling their empires and taking their plunder. And Albert Platt has just entered their crosshairs.

Members Reviews:

A guilty pleasure

It's not Eight Million Ways to Die or even Girl with the Long Green Heart, but I couldn't help liking this book. It's fast-paced, with wildly implausible action scenes and tongue-in-cheek humor. (I particularly liked the part where one of the commandos would tape a knife to his leg and then sneak up behind someone, remove the knife quiety, and kill him. Really? How does the intended victim not hear you ripping duct tape off your leg?)

I realize this book is deeply silly on many levels. But it's like watching a James Bond movie from the 70's: Yes, the plot barely makes sense. And yes, the characters are little more than cardboard cutouts. But you still can't turn away because it's so much fun seeing what comes next.

One interesting twist in this story was that the "good guys" were arguably morally worse than the bad guys. In fact, throughout the book, the menacing gangsters never actually killed anyone. Oh, they threatened and they beat a few people up, but nothing like the "good guy" commandos who basically ran around killing gangsters, gangster wives, and hapless security guards almost at random.

But hey, who doesn't like a good shoot-em-up every once in a while?

A Gritty A-Team

Certainly one of Block's lesser novels, I was struck throughout by the similarities between the Specialists of the novel and the A-TEAM television series that I watched as a kid -- not giving too much away, but each team is led by a special forces colonel who is a brilliant strategist, each team fights civilian criminals, each team is comprised of specialists in a particular field, etc.

The similarities were so profound that I expected Block's afterword to comment on them or perhaps indicate that THE SPECIALISTS was an inspiration for the A-TEAM. Since there was no such comment I can only assume that the similarities were simply coincidental. I can see why Block didn't pursue the novel as a series, as was his original intention, as both the plot and characters were flat and a sequel would have likely been as unnecessary this book itself was.

The specialists-not so much.

Block states that after completing this book he decided not to make it into a series and follow these characters. Good choice.

This story started slowly and went downhill from there. I almost thought Block may have been paid by the word. He tended to sort of drift off in parts of the story.