GoodRead - Six Degrees of Assassination: An Audible Drama

I was meant to listen to this and get this reviewed quite close to the release date which was a fortnight-ish ago. When Felicity at Midas PR asked if I wanted to listen to this, I jumped at it. It sounded interesting and gripping. Plus, it starred Andrew Scott and Freema Agyeman and I LOVE THEM!!! But I thought I would get it done quicker than I have, but due to the joy of my place of work wanting me to do overtime so my listening time was cut in half and it was this weekend when I blitzed through it

On one day in July, ten years after the horrible events of 7/7, the new Prime Minster visits a charity in East London. The coalition is becoming a distant memory, the economy is on the mend and the country is looking to the future with John Campbell being the leader of the country. Until a man comes out of the crowd and shoots the Prime Minister...

MI5 has to find out who this man is and why he did it. Alex Cartwright (Andrew Scott), MI5 Chief Counter Terrorism Officer, must find the truth. With his trusted second-in-command, Ellen Townsend (Freema Agyeman), Cartwright must look for the truth as clues seem to point to characters all over the world. But with the country in a state of shock, John Campbell's political party beginning to fight over who will lead them and the United Kingdom and MI5 find out that whoever ordered the hit has covered their tracks very well indeed, will they catch the mastermind behind it? And how close to home will the truth be?

This audiobook has a feel of the early series of Spooks, where I was on the edge of my seat. There never felt like a dull moment as the story jumped between MI5 (trying to find out who shot the Prime Minster and why) and Campbell's political party (which goes through shock before the backstabbing began on who should take John's place).

The acting in this was strong and, barring one or two actors, the cast was great and the writing to this was just as strong (though there was one or two times when a character would swear [yes, there is swear words in this] and it felt odd, as if the actor saying the word wasn't sure how their character would say it...).

My only nag with this was the subplot with Alex Cartwright's marriage problems, which (when we started) I felt was a bit pointless and we had seen it in pratically every crime show/book/etc. But then it got important in the middle of the story, although I sense some people would wonder, if the whole subplot of Cartwright's marriage wasn't written in, would it have effort the overall story? I doubt it, but it added to the drama.

Another problem I think most of you guys might have (but I didn't) is the music. I have seen on Audible that some people felt that, at places, it got very loud. I never thought that myself, but it's one of those things.

I can see this being turned into a mini-series for TV (BBC One or ITV, mainly) and I hope Audible Studios continues to work with M J Arlidge as I think these characters could have another outing...