Narrated by Darcy Stark

Another deep-dive into the Audible library of-the-as-yet-unlistened-to produced the box set of the first three books in Eden Winters’ Diversion series (there are nine books in all, available individually or in three sets of three) – aptly entitled, Diversion. It’s a well-plotted, fast-paced tale of romantic suspense featuring two complex, damaged leads; it’s funny, sexy and full of terrific banter (so it’s basically my catnip!) and I was hooked in pretty quickly by both the intriguing premise and by Darcy Stark’s excellent narration. All in all, my reaction when I finished listening was “Why the hell did I wait so long???”

As the story opens we meet Richmond E. Lucklighter – Lucky (don’t ever call him Ritchie!) – as he plans the theft of a delivery truck due to depart from a warehouse facility in Raleigh. It’s clear he really knows what he’s doing; it’s also clear he’s cantankerous, sharp-tongued, prickly and intolerant – in other words (and his own) a “card-carrying asshole”. Lucky’s careful and clever planning means he gets away with the theft of three-point-five million dollars’ worth of pharmaceutical products – a serious blow to the company who owns it, Regency Pharma Inc.

However. As it turns out, Lucky’s heist wasn’t really a heist at all. He’s a member of the Southeastern Narcotics Bureau’s Department of Diversion Prevention and Control, a government agency tasked with preventing and investigating the ‘diversion’ of controlled substances from legitimate sources into the black market, and the SNB was brought in by the CEO of Regency Pharma to look for and expose potential holes in their security logistics systems. And it seems Lucky found several that were big enough to *ahem* drive a truck through.

Bo Schollenberger is the SNB’s latest recruit, and Lucky is… unimpressed (mostly.) “Newbie” aka “Short-Timer” (recruits to the department never stick around for very long) may be some college-educated hotshot living on Mummy and Daddy’s dime, but he’ll never be able to do what Lucky can do and Lucky is looking forward to irritating the hell out of him and putting him in his place like he always does. Except it seems that Bo didn’t get the “Lucky is an ill-tempered son-of-a-bitch best left alone” memo and answers back when Lucky grumbles about the fact that his coffee is cold (it isn’t) – and Lucky takes notice. It’s not often someone he just met has the balls to snark back at him.

I do like a good odd-couple pairing, and Bo and Lucky are a really good one. Bo is clean-cut, well-organised and easy-going – but no pushover; he’s careful about what he eats, he’s a good cook, and exercises regularly. By contrast, Lucky is a slob, eats like crap and swigs coffee like it’s going out of fashion; he’s a sarcastic pain in the arse and takes great pleasure in being so. But as the story proceeds, it becomes apparent that these two opposites have a lot more in common than either of them would have thought. Lucky was a petty criminal who got caught up in a lot more than he bargained for when he tried to boost a luxury car belonging to a man he didn’t know at the time was one of the biggest drug traffickers in the country. Lucky was ‘invited’ to work for his organisation and did so for several years before things went south and he turned state’s evidence, getting a reduced prison sentence of ten years in return. When he’d served just two, he was approached by his now-boss, Walter Smith of the SNB, and offered a deal; work for them for the next eight years and then be free to go his own way. Complaining and snarking all the way, Lucky has almost reached the end of his eight-year stint with the SNB and is pretty much counting down the hours until he regains his freedom. His final job? Train his replacement.

And while Bo seems like Mr. Perfect, nothing could be farther from the truth. A former marine, he’s a qualified pharmacist, but PTSD and an abusive childhood have left their marks and he became too dependent on prescription drugs. A brush with the law saw him joining the SNB in a similar way to Lucky, and he proves to be the perfect match for his new partner. The banter between them is fabulous and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny (the same is true of Lucky’s inner monologues) and while the romance certainly starts out as mutual lust, the author lets it breathe and gives it time to develop, Bo taking care of Lucky and showing him that no matter the bad decisions he’s made in the past, he still deserves to be loved, while Lucky tries desperately to convince himself that all he wants is Bo’s fine arse and there’s none of the mushy stuff going on between them. But Bo’s persistence and care slowly start to break down all Lucky’s carefully constructed walls – and I do love watching a grumpy badass gradually revealing his marshmallow centre once he’s met the right guy.

While the storyline in Diversion is both unusual and really interesting, with the focus being the trafficking of prescription drugs rather than illegal ones, it’s the two leads who really made the book for me. Lucky is a terrific character – he’s tough, clever, scrappy, and deliberately rude, but once you start to understand him and to know his backstory (which the author slowly drip-feeds throughout), it’s clear that he’s cultivated that deliberately abrasive personality to keep people at arm’s length and protect himself. And although Bo is less flamboyant when compared to Lucky’s star-turn, he’s not merely a bland foil and he more than holds his own.

Darcy Stark is another of those narrators I’ve been meaning to listen to for ages and haven’t managed to get around to – and, as with the book itself, I’m wondering why on earth I took so long to listen to him! His voice is somewhat ‘lighter’ than I expected – a tenor rather than a baritone – and I confess I wondered initially if he’d have the range to be able to pull off a story like this one, but I’m happy to admit that I needn’t have worried, because he delivers a superb performance. His pacing is just right, his enunciation is clear and his characterisation and differentiation are excellent, with clearly identifiable voices for the leads throughout and a wide variety of tone, timbre and accent used to portray the secondary characters. The story is told entirely from Lucky’s point of view, and Mr. Stark absolutely nails the character; his comic timing when it comes to all the snarky asides and one-liners is perfect and he also brings out Lucky’s hidden vulnerabilities and the softer side he tries so hard to hide. And given we’re in Lucky’s head all the time, I was pleased to hear a clear distinction between thoughts and actual out-loud speech. The story is set in Florida (mostly?) and to my British ears, Mr. Stark’s accents sound right; Lucky and Bo both have southern accents, but they’re subtly different (Lucky’s is from North Carolina), and the gravelly note in his voice perfectly fits his gruff, grumpy nature. Bo’s speech is softer and more ‘rounded’ while Walter’s “upper Boston twang” has a definite Katharine Hepburn thing going on.

With memorable and expertly crafted characters you can invest in, an unusual storyline and terrific narration, Diversion proved to be an unexpected gem all round, and I’ll definitely be listening to the rest of the series.

Note: Box set was released May 2019. Link is to the 3-book box set.