Kill me if you can

In this Patterson-Karp collaboration, a bungled assassination by a hit man known as the Ghost sends New York City's Grand Central Station into such turmoil that art student Matthew Bannon is able to stumble onto a cache of diamonds and walk away with them. Then Bannon and his beautiful art professor girlfriend find themselves on the run from an assortment of killers in the employ of an international diamond syndicate. Sharing the narration, Jason Culp and Jeff Woodman ably complement one another. Culp's youthful, upbeat delivery is well matched to chapters featuring Bannon's first-person narration, while Woodman's cooler rendition is perfect for third-person chapters. As the love-struck couple race across Europe, both narrators do justice to the thriller's triple-time pacing while offering an assortment of accents, everything from a Nazi hit woman and growling Russians to an effete British art gallery owner. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

During an attack on New York's Grand Central Station, hard-up art student Matthew Bannon finds a bag containing $13 million worth of diamonds and takes it. (What's wrong, he hasn't read any thrillers about what happens to the guy who makes off with loot that isn't his?) Soon he's being trailed by the Ghost, an assassin who just rubbed out a high-ranking member of the Diamond Syndicate and was supposed to retrieve the gems. And he's being trailed by a rival assassin. Yet another biggie. Interesting tidbit: Patterson was the first writer in the world to sell one million ebooks.