Review: Joe Ledger: The Missing Files by Jonathan Maberry [audiobook]

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Joe Ledger: The Missing Files

By Jonathan Maberry






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Joe Ledger: The Missing Files presents five short stories that exist in and around the events of Jonathan Maberry's first three Joe Ledger novels. As I've come to expect of Maberry, each story is competently written, filled with plenty of action and smart-ass wit, and the audiobook's narration by Ray Porter is, also as expected, a top-notch delivery.

The main sticking point here, though, is that the first few stories feel pretty disposable. Kicking off this collection is "Countdown," a wholly unnecessary prequel to the first book, Patient Zero. I'm not sure who this story is ultimately aimed at, frankly... If you read the first Joe Ledger book than you already know this story, which involves the raid on a Baltimore warehouse that ultimately earns Joe the attention of Mr. Church. If you haven't read Patient Zero, I'm not sure there's enough meat on this short story's bones to compel you to latch onto and stick around for the main course. Mostly, this story feels like stuff that was edited out of an earlier draft of Patient Zero and was re-purposed as a very short short story.

Zero Tolerance follows on the heels of Patient Zero, with Joe and his DMS squadron tracking down one of that book's surviving terrorists. It's a sharp little story, but, like "Countdown," it's not exactly indispensable. Ditto "Deep Dark," which has Ledger and his crew squaring off against terrorists in an underground vault. It's a neat story involving transgenic modification of human test subjects, written as a precursor to help tease The Dragon Factory. While I can't say it's redundant, and Maberry does enough things differently in this short story, "Deep Dark" also feels almost exactly like a particular encounter that occurs in The Dragon Factory.

It's not until the last two stories that we get to the really good stuff, and they present some original concepts as Maberry finds his feet with Ledger and company existing in short-form narratives. "Material Witness" sees our band of DMS operators taking a trip to Pine Deep, the setting of another Maberry series. I haven't read the Pine Deep trilogy yet, but there's enough teases of information in "Material Witness" and Church's presentation of the official cover story to pique my interest and move those books further up my To Be Read pile. This story is just flat-out cool, involving an author whose cutting edge thrillers have made him a wanted man by various terrorist factions. Maberry shades "Material Witness" with plenty of The X-Files inspired intrigue, enough so that I could practically hear Mark Snow's theme playing as the story's final denouement plays out. That's no bad thing at all, mind you.

"Dog Days" was my main reason for checking out The Missing Files, and it delivered exactly what I had hoped for. Ledger's second novel-length outing, The Dragon Factory, ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. I was immediately disappointed to discover all those loose ends wrapped up before book three, The Plague Factory, even started, and with Ledger suddenly having a canine partner to wage war alongside of. Well, all that connective material is told in this short story, which introduces Joe's new partner, Ghost, and puts him on the hunt for The Dragon Factory's escaped assassin. Maberry does a fantastic job condensing all of the fun interpersonal dramatics between Ledger and his comrades into this short, before launching into all the action. Given the way the second book ended, Joe is in a bit of a dark place; it has some necessarily sad overtones, but thankfully revenge is sweet and Maberry writes one hell of an action-packed finale.

Joe Ledger: The Missing Files is not an indispensable read, at times coming across more like deleted scenes from the core body of work, but it does tie up a few loose ends here and there, even if it sometimes feels repetitive of particular plot points covered in the full-length novels. "Material Witness" and "Dog Days" are the clear stand-outs here, providing enough story to satisfy. The rest are largely ancillary, recommended only for Ledger completionists.



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Published on November 30, 2018 09:33
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