Audiobook review - Amok: a constant feed of tiny subtle clues lead you to question what's real and what's false, keeping you on the edge of your seat throughout this intense audio drama

Have you ever listened to the radio where the DJ phones a number at random and if the person replying answers with the correct catchphrase they win a prize? That’s the format on 101.5FM in Berlin, except this morning the format has changed.  A gunman takes hostages at the radio station and rewrites the rules – if the answer is “I listen to 101.5, set a hostage free” then a hostage goes free – if not he’ll shoot one of the hostages and repeat the game every 30 minutes.  The gunman, Jan May was previously told his fiancée was killed in a car crash, yet he was speaking to her on the phone as the policeman arrived to deliver the news.  May is thwarted at every turn to find the truth - framed for drug possession and falsely accused of sexual assault on one of his patients, May has decided that this is the only way to find the truth.  

  

May comes up against Ira Samin, a criminal psychologist and hostage negotiator battling her own demons of her daughter’s suicide and alcohol abuse which have brought her to the verge of taking her own life.  Samin is dragged into the stand off and assigned as the hostage negotiator.  May demands that the negotiations are broadcast live on the radio, so we hear a series of tense and gripping conversations, as Samin negotiates with May to try to defuse the situation and stop the police storming the studio.  May is also a skilled psychologist and constantly challenges Samin getting her to reveal what’s going on in her mind, revealing the most intimate details of her life so everyone hears about Samin’s relationship with her family and her daughter’s suicide.  Samin knows she has to comply, however painful it is for her, as she has stall May and find out what really happened to May’s fiancée to stop the impending carnage.

  I’m spending a lot of time driving at the moment, so this audio drama was perfect way of entertaining me whilst I was chewing up the miles on the M25.  It’s fantastic – a really good story, which has so many twists and turns, that at times you feel your head’s going to explode as you try to process what’s true, what’s false, the motives for the half truths and lies to get to the bottom of a what’s really going on.  Listening to it in the car also gave the drama a great sense of atmosphere as if I was actually listening to the radio station and the negotiations as I was driving.  On a number of occasions I actually sat in the car after I’d arrived at the office or the hotel where I was staying and carried on listening until I got to the end of another scene (in some cases another two or three scenes!).  There was never a lull in the tension and action, right until the final minutes when…..sorry, no plot spoilers.

 

Photograph copyright Audible/Amazon

Amok is published by Audible and based on a novel by Sebastian Fitzek.  Last year saw one of Fitzek’s previous book, The Child released to great acclaim as an audio drama and I’ve no doubt this will be even more successful.  Audible aren’t skimping on the production and have enrolled some big names – Rafe Spall, Adrian Lester and Natasha McElhone are the stars of the cast and Robert Glenister as narrator, delivers a superb performance.  It’s a genuine drama that’s simply top notch, keeping you engaged and on the edge of your seat throughout.  

If you want a taster, this is a link to a preview on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z8aJjMDFxs

Here’s a link to Digital Spy where Spall and Lester talk about Amok and the power of audio drama:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/a646186/rafe-spall-and-adrian-lester-discuss-the-power-of-audio-dramas-theres-hunger-for-it.html

Final verdict - a fantastic audio drama that I’m sure I’ll listen to more than once!

Romancrimeblogger