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Black Bird

Written by: James Keene, Hillel Levin
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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Publisher's Summary

James Keene had it all: cars, girls, houses up and down the Gold Coast. But behind his well-connected star athlete façade was a money-obsessed drug dealer desperate to make the big score to get him out of the business. When he was sentenced to prison, it seemed the only lessons he would learn would be about navigating convict society. Instead, he was offered a chance to regain his freedom in return for going undercover in the nation’s highest security prison for the criminally insane. His task: to get friendly with Larry Hall, a mentally unbalanced serial rapist and murderer, and obtain his confession. For nearly a year, Keene walked the line between the part he played and the self he hoped to redeem, all the while dodging punches from deranged inmates, currying favor with imprisoned Mafia dons, and staying beneath the radar of Larry’s oddly protective psychiatrist.

©2010 James Keene with Hillel Levin (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
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What listeners say about Black Bird

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Enjoyed novel!

It surprises me always, that the main character, breaks the law, doing things that hurts others, and wonders why the end up behind bars.
Sounds like on his discharge, he started leading a more honest life.

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Wasn’t sure at first

I wasn’t sure if I’d like this or not, but I gave it a try anyhow. The narrator has a nice, deep and clear voice. The story was excellent and I’m very impressed. Good job

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awesome

this is one of the best books I've listened to for awhile. Very interesting especially knowing it was trye

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Superficial & odd, but fine, overall

Falls under the technically, you told a story category, for me. It’s very oddly written in a way, since Keene is a third person perspective but it’s ostensibly his book? Clearly, it is written by the other person with details supplied by Keene, which makes it odd he’s the predominate name, but I guess it’s more upfront than ghostwriting. It’s just a bit odd at the start as you acclimate.

It’s also fairly self aggrandizing and probably would have been better served just inserting testimonials for those sections. Who cares that he got laid a lot? Most people are probably like me and picking it up because of the tv show, Black Bird, which markets itself as being insider knowledge on Larry Hall, a convicted serial killer. That aspect was fairly interesting, though extremely superficial, with no insights; mostly, it’s just how he went about gaining the convicts trust and subsequent fallout, and then has small exposition at the end.

The audiobook is narrated well and I listened to it at over 2x speed with it sounding natural, making it far quicker than watching the show. Pleasantly surprised to find some of the more dramatized stuff from the show is pulled from this, when it had the look of artificial pacing injected into the script. Sometimes truth is as strange as fiction, I guess.

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