Title: Day and Knight
Series: Day and Knight: Book One
Author: Dirk Greyson
Narrator: Andrew McFerrin
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Run Time: 7 hours and 22 minutes
Category: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense
At a Glance: This book is a great buy, for what it is. If you like spy stories or procedurals with a twist, this is a good book for you, and though the narration shines above the story, you won’t be disappointed with either.
Reviewed By: Mike
Blurb: As former NSA, Dayton “Day” Ingram has national security chops and now works as a technical analyst for Scorpion. He longs for fieldwork and scuttling an attack gives him his chance. He’s smart, multilingual, and a technological wizard. But his opportunity comes with a hitch. His partner, Knighton, “Knight”, is a real mystery. Despite countless hours of research, Day can find nothing on the agent including his first name.
A former Marine, Knight crawled into a bottle after losing his family. After drying out, he’s offered one last chance: along with Day, to stop a terrorist threat from the Yucatan. To get there without drawing suspicion, Day and Knight board a gay cruise, where the deeply closeted Day and equally closeted Knight must pose as a couple. Tensions run high as Knight communicates very little, and Day bristles at Knight’s heavy-handed need for control.
But after drinking too much, Day and Knight wake up in bed together. As they near their destination, they must infiltrate the terrorist camp and neutralize a plot aimed at America’s technological infrastructure. If they hope to have a life after the mission, one that might include each other, they must learn to trust and rely on each other.
Review: Take two agents from an undercover intelligence agency, add two closets, toss in a noticeable age difference, add one gay cruise, stir in techno terrorism and pot-boil until done.
Dayton Ingram has never been in the field before, since his computer skills have always kept him inside an NSA building. His new partner, Agent Knight, has a past, a drinking problem, and a dead family. Neither man has ever come to terms with their sexuality, but when the NSA needs them to join a gay cruise to get to a Mexico tourist town as quietly as possible, their play acting turns feelings long hidden into undeniable action.
Andrew McFerrin is a great voice actor. He makes the bits of the story the author glosses over interesting and worthy of listening to. Some words of caution that are due to the author and not the performance—Dirk Greyson has chosen to use nicknames for the main characters throughout the book. In the case of Day, it is short for his first name, but not once after his introduction do you hear his full name of Dayton. In the case of Agent Knight, it is done to make him seem mysterious and dangerous, as if a single-named agent has deep secrets only he can deal with. That’s fine in print, but in audio format, using the names Day and Knight fourteen times in just over five minutes of dialogue, it begins to bang on the ear and take away from the very fine voice work McFerrin puts in on this book. Hopefully, if these characters return, it becomes less of a gimmick and more of a cute reference to their first pairing.
The budding romance is equal parts performance for their cruise companions and a real attraction between Dayton and Knighton. Hearing them fight an obvious attraction is sweet. Hearing them fight to not be gay—when they clearly are—is at points infuriating. When they allow their desires to play out, the coupling is grand and powerful. When they revel their reasons for being in the closet, they seem heartfelt but more about their own self-doubt than reality. McFerrin does a great job of conveying these emotions, but really has fun when the danger of the mission ratchets up. He really gets to shine with the rapid pace and multiple voices in those scenes.
This book is a great buy, for what it is. If you like spy stories or procedurals with a twist, this is a good book for you, and though the narration shines above the story, you won’t be disappointed with either.
You can buy Day and Knight here:
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