"Life can be neither created or destroyed."

2030. When Partho and his wife, Rhea, are invited to the all expenses paid 25th wedding anniversary of their billionaire friends Tom and Betsie they were delighted to attend, even if it did mean Partho dragging himself away from work. Around the world, the new and very virulent virus, Covid 30, is raging, deaths escalating and, curiously, several multi millionaires have also died suddenly from heart attacks. Meanwhile, Rhea's brother Dave might just have found a girlfriend.

The inclusion of the new pandemic, Covid 30, should give an immediacy to this story, but with no further convincing support for it's presence other than a single victim, it almost felt like an intrusive irrelevancy set up in the story for no real reason. The rest of the tale, however, is very intriguing although a somewhat unbelievable muddle of solution was disappointing. Much more enjoyable than the two previous books, however, possible because of the new narrator: Shawn Goodman Jones has a pleasing reading voice and takes both alternating first person chapters of Partho and brother-in-law, Dave. I was surprised to discover that Partho, with an investigative style similar to Sherlock Holmes, was relatively young: from previous stories I had assumed he must be at least in late middle age! It would have been improved, however, if two narrators had each taken one of the two story tellers as the voicing were too similar.

My thanks to the rights holder of The Great Escape who freely gifted me with a complimentary copy. It was an enjoyable book, although editing could have made it better. But fun to read and this new narrator made the listening pleasure much greater. At approximately four and a half hours this is a quick and interesting read.

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