This is ambitious! I've met all of these characters in their respective book series, except one, and it is a multiplex set up that requires a bit of background. Mayne does a relatively good job at getting the reader up to speed on each character as little reflections on their past are brought up. But this book is best served to somebody who is already knowledgeable about the characters otherwise it is disctracting from the plot itself.

I've read almost all of Mayne's detective books and this one doesn't hit the top 5. Although it has a lot of great elements that I have also loved about the previous books it doesn't quite hit the mark. I felt let down by how the story resolves and that it still feels a bit fuzy on how the antagonist was able to do everything he did, we don't get an explanation. This also could have been stronger with just a few more chapters letting us know the resolution of the multiple cases that we are pulled into in the story. A lot of things are just dropped and that is dissapointing because we get invested in this young adults and do not end up getting any resolution or look into how their cases ended.

The audio does a great job of bringing the characters to life, and adding te pace to the story.

Overall, I may continue the series if Mayne makes more of these conglomerate style stories. I like his characters and find all of his books are worth the read, of the ones I've gotten to.

This was definitely an interesting listen. I enjoyed it overall, but there were some things that just left me feeling confused. There was a lot going on and it just felt a little all over the place for me, maybe it was just me not fully understanding. It was still a really intriguing storyline and I enjoyed it, but it just didn't leave a lasting mark on me.

This book was rather hard to read. The amount of side characters introduced makes it quite confusing. The story line/ plot was promising.. However things seemed to line up a little too neatly for me. And a lot of those things just didn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. There's just no way someone would jump to the conclusion that Mitch was under the influence of an AI chat bot just because their daughter let them know that people use AI chat services these days…… makes no sense to get to that conclusion. And that's just one example.



As for the audio voices, it was hard to listen to. But maybe that's because there were way too many characters being introduced.

3.5 stars. I think I would have enjoyed this more in print because there are so many characters and technical topics that I would have processed and retained better in print. I thought the plot was engaging, and the characters intriguing. This one fell apart for me based on one specific element of the story (and I'm going to be vague so that I don't spoil anything), and the fact that the element figured so strongly in the ending in a way that was just nor believable for me. This one wasn't bad though, and I will give the next book in the series a try.

Missing teens, mind control, cool tech, and agents who won’t stop until they find the victims and deliver justice: this book has it all. Lots of references to known serial killers, and how our existing systems fail our children, especially those with unstable home lives. An exciting end … and the beginning of a new series 🤞?!
My thanks to the author, publisher, @BrillianceAudio, and #NetGalley for access to the now-available and well-narrated audiobook of #MrWhisper for review purposes.

This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

You can't trust me when it comes to reviewing books by Andrew Mayne. I have enjoyed his earlier books so much that I feel like I'm revisiting old friends when I read new adventures. My favorite character is Theo Cray, a computational biologist who pretty much stumbled into hunting serial killers. After the first book I read by him, I read the others in the series, and then I read the series with his other characters. In this latest book, Mayne has started a new series where four characters who have their own series are working together.
I do think I enjoyed it more because I do know the characters so well. This is the kind of mystery where it helps to have several brilliant people working together -- someone is using mind control on unrelated people, which is the kind of crime that leaves no fingerprints. This was very suspenseful and it was amazing watching these completely different people learn to work together.
Thanks to NetGalley, I listened to the audiobook. There were multiple narrators, all of whom did a fantastic job keeping the characters separate and building suspense.

I've enjoyed Andrew Mayne's previous underwater excursions, but in this outing found that unit to have been diluted by the addition of other "specialists" recruited to solve a mystery. It didn't hold up as well as the others I've read by Mayne.

Mr. Whisper is Andrew Mayne’s latest detective novel that combines some of his previous main characters into their role as Specialists.

His Specialists are trying to find an elusive killer who is seemingly using mind control on teens and vulnerable adults. This would never have been detected, were it not for the diaries and murmurings of these teens after the commission of unspeakable heinous crimes, and them all owning an obscure book.

This book was a wild ride into the unexpected and unimaginable, but in the best way. Mayne definitely tapped into something unique and a terrifying possibility.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Brilliance Publishing and Brilliance Audio for this amazing audio ARC!!

This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart


Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I love the Underwater Investigation Unit series, so I was thrilled to have this series with more of Sloan and her team. It didn't quite work out that way. The Specialists is the combination of 3 series, the UIU series, the Theo Cray & Jessica Blackwood series, which is preceded by a Jessica Blackwood series, and the Trasker series. The chronology seems to be the Jessica Blackwood series, then the Theo Cray & Jessica Blackwood series, then the UIU , and newest Trasker , and now The Specialists . Since I have only read UIU and now The Specialists , I don't know if the characters have interacted previously to now.

So if it's not clear from all those series, I would not recommend this series without some reading at least one of the previous series. I wish I'd read all of them previously. I felt a bit disjointed at times, particularly with Brad Trasker who just sort of sat out in left field until he jumped in at the end. I think I might have kept it together better if I was reading the ebook or alternating.

It also felt odd to me not having Sloan as the main character consistently. The rest of her team was mostly absent, only mentioned. Jessica & Theo were much more in the front of the story and I liked them very well.

Sloan finds a man who has limited memories of his past living in a Florida swamp. It turns out he is a missing teen who was thought to be a runaway in Oregon. She connects with Jessica & Theo to help research his past and they link him to another missing girl from the same town. And then they find others who are similar cases but not the same.

In the early cases, the teens talked to a state psychiatrist or graduate students who weren't involved with the investigation when they disappeared. They follow the trail and learn of other teens and other methods. The science and controlling of these teens is horrifying.

Things get dangerous for the team as they track the elusive scientist. The action is suspenseful and intense. I want to know if this "team" will now be a team after working on this case.

Now to go back and read the series I haven't. I love this author's work and characters so it's a pleasure. I just want to do it before the next book in October, Imposter Syndrome.

Narration:
I enjoyed the different narrators that are the usual ones for the three series being combined here. Susannah Jones is a talented narrator and the one I know from the UIU series. I appreciated having the different narrators as I went from different chapters to distinguish the point of view. I was able to listen at my usual 1.5x speed.