"Frank Becker is a highly sought after, expert assassin." That's the pitch. Thirty-five minutes later, you're done. And I'm sitting here in my home office at 10 PM, Ranger snoring at my feet, wondering if I just got ambushed by a Kindle Single masquerading as an audiobook.
Let me cut to the chase - this isn't really an audiobook. It's a short story. A 35-minute short story. I've sat through mission briefings longer than this thing.
When Baldacci Gives You a Magazine Instead of the Full Kit
Look, I respect David Baldacci. The man's written over 50 novels, and plenty of them scratch the itch for folks like me who want smart action with competent operators doing competent things. But No Time Left feels like a fragment of something that could've been good if it had room to breathe. You've got Frank Becker, an assassin who takes a mysterious job that forces him to confront his past. The premise has legs. The execution? It's like watching someone sprint a 40-yard dash when you paid for a full football game.
The twist - and I won't spoil it - genuinely caught some listeners off guard. I'll admit the direction Baldacci takes the story pivots in a way I didn't fully anticipate, but calling it a "twist" might be generous. It's more like a sharp left turn on a road that's only two blocks long. You don't have enough invested in Becker as a character to feel the weight of it. He's an assassin. He's got a past. He takes a job. Things get personal. That's about all the character development you're going to get in 35 minutes, and it shows. Becker never becomes more than a silhouette with a gun.
Scott Brick in a Sprint
Scott Brick narrates, and the man is a pro - I've listened to him on longer projects and he knows how to hold a room. His voice is clear, authoritative, and he reads with the kind of controlled pace that works well for thriller material. But here's the thing about a 35-minute performance: there's nothing to build toward. Brick doesn't get the chance to differentiate characters in any meaningful way because there aren't enough characters or scenes to warrant it. He's solid. He's professional. But he's a Formula 1 driver being asked to parallel park. The talent is there with nowhere to go.
No sound effects, no music, just Brick and the text. Clean production, no complaints on the audio side. I ran it at my usual 1.25x, which brought it down to roughly 28 minutes. Twenty-eight minutes. I've spent more time cleaning my Sig.
The Real Problem: What Are You Paying For?
Here's where it lost me - and I think this is the core issue based on what other listeners are saying too. One reviewer nailed it: "If Baldacci or the publisher needs the money that bad, I'll send them a donation." That's brutal, but I get the sentiment. When you use a credit on something that runs barely over half an hour, the math doesn't work. This was clearly designed as a Kindle Single, a quick-read digital experiment from when those were the hot new thing. As a free promotional piece or a $0.99 impulse buy, it's fine. As an audiobook competing for shelf space with 15-hour thrillers? That's a hard sell.
The story itself isn't bad. It's competent. Baldacci knows how to structure a scene and how to pace a reveal, even in miniature. But "competent" and "worth your time" are different things, and at this length, there's no room for the things that make Baldacci's full-length novels worth recommending - the layered plots, the procedural detail, the slow accumulation of tension. You get a sketch where you wanted a painting. Squeeze Me is a good example of how to actually deliver a complete, satisfying story in that same thriller lane — characters with weight, plot with room to move.
Who Should Grab This (and Who Shouldn't)
If you're a Baldacci completist, knock yourself out. If you've got exactly 35 minutes to kill - waiting at the dentist, stuck in a short carpool loop - it'll pass the time without offending you. But if you're spending a credit on this expecting anything approaching a full Baldacci experience, you're going to feel shortchanged. Borrow it through your library app or catch it on a streaming service.
Worth your time? Here's the debrief: it's a snack-sized story with a decent twist, professional narration, and not much else. Ranger slept through the whole thing. To be fair, he sleeps through most things. But he didn't even twitch.
