Review: The Listeners

The Listeners by Harrison Demchick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Daniel Raymond is alone. His mother left their apartment for toilet paper and never returned. If that is not bad enough, the borough has been quarantined because of a plague with zombie like symptoms. The only information he receives is from the television which reported the doctors and medical personnel being removed by helicopter after the government decided it was too dangerous to assist the local residents.

Danny doesn’t know who to trust. The police offer food and protection in exchange for guns and anything else they want and a group called the Listeners offer protection and a new family. Daniel chooses to leave the apartment and join the Listeners, but he continues to doubt his decision and their motives. The Listeners say the police are corrupt, but some of their own members are testing the limits of their new power.

Harrison Demchick leads the reader to question the power of local government and to realize the difficulties in containing a plague in a modern city. Daniel has lost the only family he has known and must learn to make choices in a world where all the choices are tough. Will the plague be cured, will the quarantine be lifted, and will Daniel live long enough to find out? The Listeners spins many tangent story lines that slowly weave into a cohesive tale that leaves the reader with many aha moments.




View all my reviews