How many times can one man end up on someone's hit list before he starts taking it personally?
I was up late recalibrating the alarm system at a client's warehouse - one of those jobs where you're 90% waiting and 10% actual work - and I had Hit List queued up on my phone. Seven hours and change. Perfect for a night of hurry-up-and-wait. And honestly? That's about the right energy for this book. It moves, but it doesn't exactly demand your full attention.
Stone Barrington's Teflon Lifestyle
Let me cut to the chase: Hit List is comfort food for thriller fans. Stuart Woods wrote over 90 novels, and by this point in the Stone Barrington series, you know exactly what you're getting. Stone finds his name on a hit list (no surprise given the title), decides to lie low, then predictably can't help himself and goes on the offensive. There's the usual cast of powerful friends, expensive restaurants, beautiful women, and phone calls to people who can make problems disappear.
The international cat-and-mouse premise sounds more ambitious than it plays out. The villain is described as "an expert at evasion," but the actual pursuit felt more like Stone making calls from nice hotels while other people do the legwork. I've seen real manhunts operate with more tension at a strip mall stakeout. The plot is thin - and I mean thin - but Woods keeps you moving from scene to scene fast enough that you don't dwell on it. Blue Labyrinth is another long-running series entry I auditioned around the same time - same genre neighborhood, but Preston and Child actually gave the villain some weight. It's a seven-hour book that reads like a five-hour book, which is both a compliment and an admission that there's not much underneath.
Where it lost me: the character congestion. Woods throws names at you like he's reading from a Rolodex, and keeping track of who's who becomes its own side mission. In print you can flip back. In audio, you're just hoping context clues bail you out. They don't always.
Tony Roberts Behind the Mic
Roberts has been voicing Stone Barrington for years, and the familiarity shows. He's got Stone's smooth confidence dialed in - that easy, affluent New York tone that fits the character like an expensive suit. His British accents land well enough, and when the action picks up, he keeps the energy right. The man can handle a scene.
But - and Ranger perked his ears up at this part because I actually groaned out loud - the female voices are rough. Not just "male narrator doing female voices" rough. We're talking actively distracting. There's a grating quality that pulls you right out of whatever scene is happening. And with a cast this large, Roberts occasionally loses the thread on who's talking. I found myself rewinding a few times during dialogue-heavy stretches, which at 1.25x speed means I'm burning time I shouldn't have to burn.
He's a professional, no doubt. AudioFile Earphones Award winner. But this performance felt like autopilot - competent, never inspired. Like a sergeant who's done the same briefing two hundred times. He'll get you through it. You just won't remember much about how it sounded.
Who's This Actually For?
If you're already deep in the Stone Barrington series, you don't need me to tell you anything. You're going to listen to this regardless, and it delivers exactly what the series always delivers. No more, no less.
If you're new to Woods? Don't start here. There's too much assumed familiarity with the characters. You'll spend half the book wondering why Stone apparently has the President's personal cell number and a Rolodex that reads like a Who's Who of law enforcement.
This is a windshield book. A treadmill book. Something to fill dead air while your hands and feet are busy. It doesn't reward close attention because there's not enough depth to find. But it doesn't punish inattention either, which is honestly its best feature.
Mission Debrief
Worth your time? Here's the debrief: Hit List is the literary equivalent of a decent airport meal. It does the job, it goes down easy, you forget about it by the time you reach your gate. Stuart Woods knew how to keep pages turning - I'll give him that until the day I die. But the plot here is tissue-paper thin, the villain never feels genuinely threatening, and the audio experience is hampered by Roberts' struggle with the female cast. At seven hours, the commitment is low. The payoff matches.
Ranger slept through the last two hours. I'm not saying that's a review, but I'm not saying it isn't.
