Cat & Mouse — Abridged chaos with baffling accent choices

It's 0300. The unit is finally quiet—knock on wood—and I'm sitting at the nurses' station trying to catch up on charting for a patient who finally stopped fighting the sedative. I needed something reliable to keep my brain firing. Usually, Alex Cross is my guy. He's smart, he's a psychologist, he doesn't panic. Basically, he's the charge nurse of detectives. When I need that same steady competence in a protagonist, I turn to Terminal List: A Thriller—James Reece has that same controlled intensity without the weird narration choices.

But this audiobook? I spent the entire four hours frowning at my tablet.

Let's talk about the runtime. Four hours. It's abridged. I generally hate abridged books because it feels like reading a patient's chart where the night shift forgot to log half the vitals. You get the major events—Soneji at Union Station, the chaos in New York—but you lose all the connective tissue. The pacing isn't fast; it's frantic. One minute we're in D.C., the next we're dealing with a heart-cutter in Europe, and I'm left wondering how we got there. No build-up. No tension. Just event after event with nothing holding them together.

Keith David is a legend—seriously, the man has a voice like velvet—but someone made a weird call here. He gives Alex Cross this thick, deep Southern drawl. Why? Cross is a sophisticated D.C. detective with a PhD. Listening to him sound like he just walked off a plantation drama was jarring. I had the opposite experience with Affair: A Jack Reacher Novel—the narrator actually understood the character he was voicing. Every time Cross spoke here, it pulled me right out of the story. It didn't fit the character I've known for years.

And Anthony Heald handling the villains? He's trying way too hard. You know that specific tone psych patients use when they're trying to be intimidating, but it just comes off as theatrical? That. He makes Gary Soneji sound like a cartoon villain twirling a mustache rather than a terrifying psychopath. It's not scary; it's annoying. And don't get me started on his attempt at female voices—specifically Christine. I've heard better acting from patients trying to score Dilaudid.

The medical gore is there—hearts being cut out, standard thriller stuff—but because the narration is so over-the-top, it loses its impact. Instead of being horrified, I was just irritated.

If you're a completist who needs every Cross book checked off and it's free at your library, maybe. Skip it if you actually care about the character or want the full story—this version does a disservice to both. Cross deserves better.

I wanted my reliable Alex Cross fix. What I got was a rushed, weirdly voiced mess that felt like someone gave me the CliffsNotes version performed by actors who never read the source material. Next time I'm on night shift, I'm reaching for the unabridged.