“The Silver Star Caper” Takes Listeners Undercover with Damien Dickens

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The Silver Star CaperAs The Silver Star Caper by Phyllis Entis opens, it has been three years since listeners last spent time with Damien and Millie Dickens. It is now 1986, and Clint Eastwood is running for mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, where the Dickenses have been living since The Blue Moon Caper. In the prologue, Damien and Millie stage a public break-up to enable Damien to disappear and go undercover with a white supremacy group that has been threatening the local community and potentially the greater population.

Throughout the roller coaster of the rest of the audiobook, Damien ingratiates himself to the hate group, while Millie, a licensed private investigator in her own right, conducts her own investigation. When Millie’s relative from Czechoslovakia visits, the older lady thinks she recognizes the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp in which she spent World War II. So Millie tries to determine if the politically high-placed man who resembles the Nazi is indeed the man who tortured Lydia 40 years earlier in the camp.

The Silver Star Caper is a fun adventure, with a strong message about the evil and dangers of hate. I appreciate that the audiobook uses an exciting mystery to address such a serious topic. Listeners identify with victims of hate crimes and find themselves repulsed by the actions and lives of the neo-Nazi group.

I have always enjoyed the narration of Tom Lennon, who has the ideal voice for the slightly gritty Damien Dickens books, just a little bit gruff and appropriately expressive. Lennon makes this audiobook a terrific listening experience. My main concern with this performance is that it does not leave pauses in the recording between sections in the audiobook, making it confusing to listeners each time the segments change. In addition, Millie has a distant cousin come to visit from Czechoslovakia via Canada, and she talks slowly for no clear reason and with an accent that doesn’t seem realistic. However, none of these issues is a significant enough concern to get in the way of an enjoyable performance.

I enjoyed listening to The Silver Star Caper, as with the previous books in the series. I do recommend that listeners experience the first five books before this one to be able to follow some of the back story. However, listeners who pick up this book as their first exposure to Damien and Millie will not have much challenge in following everything. I heartily endorse this audiobook and give it four stars.

Disclosure: I received this book for free for review purposes, but that has no effect on the content of my review.

If you want to read our interview with author Phyllis Entis visit here.

If you want to read reviews of the other Damien Dickens audiobooks, visit here.

And if you’d like to read our interview with narrator Tom Lennon, check it out here.

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