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    Choke Point
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    Choke Point
    Unavailable
    Choke Point
    Audiobook9 hours

    Choke Point

    Written by Ridley Pearson

    Narrated by Todd Haberkorn

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Ridley Pearson is back with a heart-stopping new installment in the acclaimed international thriller series featuring John Knox and Grace Chu.

    "Filled with breathtaking suspense . . . Famous for his plotting and attention to details, Pearson is off to a great start with his compelling and multilayered new protagonists." - Library Journal on The Risk Agent
    (starred review)

    When an award-winning foreign journalist reveals the existence of an Amsterdam-based sweatshop known as a "knot shop" that employs and enslaves young girls as laborers, private security firm Rutherford Risk is hired by a philanthropist to find it and shut it down.

    David "Sarge" Dulwich, John Knox's former boss from their government contractor days, knows that Knox's cultural knowledge, combat skills, and sympathy for the abused make him right for the job. Joined by Grace Chu, whose more subtle skills for acquiring sensitive tech information help balance his improvisational style, Knox heads to Amsterdam in an attempt to dismantle the child labor operation and rescue the girls. In their way is a crime organization that has permeated the neighborhoods with goodwill, turning even the victims' parents against their would-be saviors. With enemies around every corner, Knox and Grace can't tell the good from the bad.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9781455854691
    Unavailable
    Choke Point
    Author

    Ridley Pearson

    Ridley Pearson is the bestselling author of over fifty novels, including Peter and the Starcatchers (cowritten with Dave Barry) and the Kingdom Keepers and Lock and Key series. He has also written two dozen crime novels, including Probable Cause, Beyond Recognition, Killer Weekend, The Risk Agent, and The Red Room. To learn more about him, visit www.ridleypearson.com.

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    Reviews for Choke Point

    3.5/5

    58 ratings19 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Began in an interesting way but I lost interest half way thru the novel. Disappointing.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this one. The premise seemed interesting. A murder involving sex worker from Eastern Europe. The protagonists seemed interesting enough. An Asian woman both sexy and smart and her male counterpart undertaking missions to support his handicapped brother. Unfortunately the writing crippled this one. Stock full of cliches and clunky writing. A thrill ride turned into a trek across the desert. Painful.
    • 2/5
      I have read a couple of Ridley Pearson's previous books and have come to expect well-plotted action and suspense from his writing. Unfortunately, CHOKE POINT provides neither. In CHOKE POINT John Knox and Grace Chu are being paid by their employer, Rutherford Risk, to investigate and expose a sweatshop in Amsterdam that uses young girls to sew hand-made rugs. The girls are used because their labor is cheap (or free) and the small fingers of young girls are better adapted to tying knots in the rugs. This is the second novel in the Risk Agent series of Pearson.The writing is not descriptive at all. As the characters investigate the sweatshop it is unclear what Knox and Chu are doing and how they expect their actions to lead to the discovery of the sweatshop. In many scenes I was not sure what was actually happening. The characters were not well-drawn in my mind. I had trouble identifying with any of the characters and did not develop any type of fondness for them. One redeeming quality to the book is that it is chock full of action. Knox and Chu are all over Amsterdam in their quest. Overall, however, this is not a book I would recommend.
    • 3/5
      This is a LibraryThing Early Review. This is the sequel to the very exciting Risk Agent novel. Characters John Knox and Grace Chu return in another adventure that pits them against a group of industrialists using immigrant forced labor in Amsterdam of all places. Unfortunately as happens with many sequels, this one does not keep pace with the original. The story is a bit contrived and the characters are a little too unrealistic. I am a big fan of the author Ridley Pearson. normally his books captivate me and move at dazzling speed. But Choke Point left me a bit underwhelmed. Better luck with the next book in the series.
    • 3/5
      A good story about shutting down a sweatshop that prduces hand tied rugs using child labor/slavery. The story is confusing at times and the action is a stretch of the imagination that one could do all that was described. A lot of action.
    • 3/5
      I think I could enjoy this book if not for the writing. The author tries to use present tense, which always feels awkward to me, especially (as is the case) when the writer forgets what tense they're supposed to be using. Mostly, it makes me want to throw the book across the room in frustration.
    • 3/5
      This is the second book of the Risk series. I have to say I prefer Pearson's Walt Fleming stories to the Risk series. Risk seems to move slowerand more wordy than it needs to be. The Walt Fleming series flows along much faster. Hope he isn't done with the Fleming series. This Risk takesour main characters to sweatshops using young girls to know rugs.
    • 4/5
      Synopsis: John Knox is working to provide for his disabled brother, but rather than being able to continue as an importer, he is drawn into the world of espionage. In this case he is trying to shut down a sweatshop using young girls to make rugs. As soon as these girls hit puberty they are sold to the sex trade. Grace takes care of the technology end of the caper and Dulwich enters as back-up.Review: The narration is presented in present tense which renders the reading rather stilted. The ending two pages are lack-luster.
    • 3/5
      I read the first book in the Risk Agent series and was looking forward to Choke Point, the second in the series. Unfortunately, this story, though filled with promise, ended up lacking the ability to really hook me. The story is action-packed, but seems to drag at times and feel disconnected.
    • 4/5
      My first Ridley Pearson book but it will not be my last. Filled with action from beginning to end. Now I'm waiting for first book it this new series
    • 4/5
      Choke Point is the 2nd book in the Risk Agent series and while I like the first one, I think this one was much better written and the plot was stronger. This time John Knox is recruited to find and put a stop to a child labor ring with human trafficking involvement. Interestingly enough, it's in the Netherlands. There is a knot shop that is producing high quality Persian rugs with the labor being all done by preteen girls. One of the girls escaped and got medical attention at a hospital that just happened to have a reporter there doing a story on health care. It put the knot shop in the sights of several different groups interested in putting a stop to it. One of these hired John for the job. Better than the first, the author is getting the feel for his characters and it is jam-packed with action and it's a pretty good chess game, with the bad guy starting in the lead holding most of the Aces. It's John and Grace's job to not let them win. Both are still emotionally crippled which seems to help John do what he does but it seems to hamper Grace, though she still performs admirably.
    • 2/5
      I've tried, I really have. But I can't seem to get past the first few chapters. I generally like Ridley Pearson's books, and I was excited to have received this one via the Early Reviewers group. I finally resorted to skimming, hoping that once I made it past the first few chapters I'd be caught. No such luck. The plot was okay, but I didn't find either of the main characters particularly sympathetic, and the writing was choppy and distracting. I'll give it at least one more try, but if it was sitting on a bookstore shelf I definitely wouldn't have purchased it.
    • 3/5
      John Knox is a field operator for Rutherford Risk. One of the tools he uses to judge which cases to take is the income they provide which John needs for the care of his disabled brother.The novel is complex and we follow the action of Knox, his friend and associate, David Dulwich, and Grace Chen, a former forensic accountant trained by the Chinese.The plot takes the reader to the little known poverty area of Amsterdam and the vendor stalls where it appears that young girls are recruited into forced labor situations. When some of the girls aren't needed any more, they are then forced into prostitution.I received a free copy of this book under the early reviewers plan and was happy to read of a topic that I wasn't aware of.
    • 4/5
      John Knox and Crace Chu are in Amsterdam trying to find the location of a "knot shop", a rug-making sweatshop that uses young girls because of their small fingers to make tied knot rugs. Some of the girls are held prisoners and some are sent by their parents to work by day. They have been alerted to this particular knot shop because of an article written by an investigative journalists. All that is known is the first name of a young girl who is interviewed. The criminals who run the sweatshops are very ruthless Turkish gangsters who go to great lengths to hide their operation. John and Grace must use all of their technical skills to locate the shop. The story unfolds slowly because they learn about the operation is small steps. There are many break-ins, tailings, hacking, and violent events on the way to the freeing of the girls. The journalist is sometimes an ally and sometimes an enemy.
    • 4/5
      This is the second in a new series by Ridley Pearson. I won this book through the Early Reviewers. Because this is the second in a series I read number one first and then this one. Both are very good, I just felt they did not rate a 5 star rating for the fact that it took so long to establish the characters and the setting and then the final 150 pages was where the "meat" was. Once a reader gets to the action it is a race to the finish. The action picks up and the converging stories combine into a cohesive conclusion. The first part of both books seemed to be two seperate story lines as they follow each character in alternating chapters and it is only toward the end that they seem to be working together for the same purpose.
    • 4/5
      John Knox and Grace Chu are agents for Rutherford Risk, assigned to investigate child forced labor in Amsterdam. Prepare to be dragged into the underbelly of Amsterdam, a lot "down and dirtier" than the prostitutes in thier glass windows and the ubiquitous coffee shops billowing with pot smoke.Ridley Pearson has done a very good job with smart plotting, and tightly paced action. I did not read the first Risk Agent novel from Pearson, but it is going on my reading list now. This is a well written thriller, definitelt worth the read.
    • 5/5
      Importer-exporter and sometimes field operative John Knox and forensic accountant (and aspiring field operative) Grace Chu, accepting an assignment from private security company Rutherford Risk to investigate a child-labor sweatshop, find themselves trying to solve a difficult puzzle amid escalating violence in an unfamiliar city. Aided by their handler, damaged Army veteran David Dulwich, and by a wealthy client, they chase clues and suspects through Amsterdam, gathering an ad hoc group of collaborators and informants while dodging both the subjects of their investigation and the Dutch police.Avoiding the stock characters and tropes of the action/thriller genre, the author delivers complex, striving characters, highly moral but driven by thrills more than congealed obligations. (The conservative political sermons common to this genre are, thankfully, absent.) Snappy, believable dialog reveals them struggling to cooperate with people they need and like but don’t completely trust while fighting off their own demons. Cleverly, the narrative is written in the present tense (”Both Grace and Dulwich are standing. Grace is packing up.”) which increases the urgency and seems to accelerate the pace of the action, but we’re given a little relief as the three main characters pause occasionally to reflect and plan.This is the second in a series — I haven’t read the first but I’m picking it up later today and am eager for the third. This is a very good thriller.
    • 3/5
      Choke Point is a Risk Agent novel, the second in a new series. In this installment John Knox and Grace Chu are sent to Amsterdam to uncover a child sweatshop that makes high quality Turkish rugs. The action is unrelenting, the two agents using their unique skills to ind the sweatshop and release the 8 to 12 year old girls back to their families or to social services. Of course the case goes far beyond a single sweatshop including the sale of the girls to overseas buyers, prostitution, pornography, and assorted other illegal activities by the Dutch groups running the sweatshop. Knox and Chu make an unlikely but likable pair that have each other's backs as they try to complete the task at hand.I gave the novel just three stars because it was quite tedious throughout the middle pages as the author would constantly give the reader a step by step description of Knox or Chu crossing town, scaling a side of a building, walking down a dark alley, etc. I kept wanting to yell: "Get on with it already!" Otherwise an entertaining thriller.
    • 4/5
      Review of “Choke Point” by Ridley PearsonThis was my introduction to the Ridley Pearson books, the second in his series of “Risk Agent” novels. The copy I received was a bound, uncorrected advance proof. The Risk Agents are John Knox and Grace Chu, each equipped with the skills necessary to be successful in carrying out international intrigue although I am not quite sure what they all are. Certainly masters of arcane martial arts and lockpicking as amply demonstrated. There were several combat scene errors that I am sure the author will smooth out in the final writing but to illustrate: Grace Chu is chasing a bad guy, he glances over his shoulder and the next sentence has Miss Chu kicking him in the chest. Awkward to say the least.But these are minor cavils and I am sure will disappear in the in the first printing. Overall I think it is a good thriller, suspense is built well, resolution smooth and contains interesting sidelights of the various locales as one would expect of an author of this calibre. I intend to get the first book in the series “The Risk Agent” which I am sure will clear up some blank spots I ran across in this book.