This was a free book from Amazon. The book was good, more like average. It never got too boring with details about accounting and the story line and the characters held up nicely. I gave it 3 Stars because it was good, not great or extraordinary, but average good. ( )

Allie Whitman is a professional whistleblower with a knack for sniffing out fraud in government contracts. Conner Norman is a gifted litigator and together they form Devil to Pay, Inc., a shell corporation that files lawsuits based on Allies investigations. They soon find themselves fighting potentially fatal battles in and out of the courtroom, going great lengths to protect secrets that could ruin them both.
*I enjoyed this book. Can't wait for Rick to write another one.* ( )

I am slowly making my way through the many books I have downloaded on my Kindle. It is hard to resist a bargain, but I have so many I am not sure I will ever be able to read them all! To whittle the pile down, I am randomly choosing books. I just finished When The Devil Whistles by Rick Acker. A legal suspense/international thriller, the book was just the ticket for a fast-paced escape novel.

Allie Whitman is a professional whistle blower who, through her company Devil to Pay, provides the California Department of Justice with evidence on companies that cheat in their state contracts. Her attorney, Connor Norman, loves helping Allie bring down corrupt businessmen. But Allie gets in over her head when her cover is blown and she is blackmailed into investigating a marine salvage and construction contractor. What starts as a look into some cooked books becomes a deadly game involving foreign governments and terror plots.

As a legal suspense novel, When The Devil Whistles follows a standard formula, but Acker diverts from the expected when he introduces terrorists, nuclear weapons and a twisting plot that has the reader guessing. Yes, the plot is a bit implausible (how does the US government not know there is a Soviet-era nuclear sub on the bottom of the sea floor off the west coast?), but it is not so different from action adventures so popular in theaters. I liked the twisting action and I liked the characters. I took the plot devices at face value and just went with the story. The biggest negative in many of the reviews I read was that the book was blatantly Christian, which annoyed or disgusted some of its detractors. What I found was a book with some Christian characters and others not. The Christians were never preachy. In fact their faith was exhibited in natural ways — they prayed or spoke of God’s help. I would say the message portrayed was subtle.

When The Devil Whistles was a fun, quick read and I would definitely read another by Acker.

Recommended. ( )

I liked this book pretty well. It was a quick, light read. I haven’t read many legal thrillers, so I enjoyed reading something that was a little different from my usual genres. The plot wasn’t particularly complex or thought-provoking, but it was quite interesting.

I liked the characters, but sometimes I was annoyed by the decisions they made. Occasionally it felt like they made bad decisions just to increase the drama of the story rather than because their decisions made logical sense. On the other hand, sometimes I feel the same way about people in real life, so I guess this wasn’t unrealistic.

Although this book seems to be classified as Christian fiction, don’t let that turn you off if you prefer to avoid religion-based books. I noticed very little content that I would consider to be Christian-specific and I would never have considered it to be a Christian book if I hadn’t seen that it was tagged that way. There is some discussion of morality, but concerns about morality are hardly limited to Christians. ( )

*Thanks to Abingdon Press for providing an ARC for review*.