J. Campbell Bruce Audiobooks

Escape from Alcatraz: reported non-fiction with the pace of a thriller

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.3/5 average

304 listener ratings

Who is J. Campbell Bruce?

Four shelves at once, and every one of them defensible. Our catalogue files Escape from Alcatraz under biography, under classics and heritage, under crime and thriller and under politics and society, which tells you the sort of book it is: non-fiction built to hold the nerve of a thriller, about an institution that long ago passed from fact into folklore.

That is the ground J. Campbell Bruce occupies here. Not the novelist’s version of a prison, and not the historian’s dry inventory either, but the reported account, the one that has to keep a reader turning while staying inside what can be established.

Alcatraz has been retold so often that the earlier tellings are easy to overlook. The heritage shelving feels about right.

J. Campbell Bruce in audiobooks

The audiobook runs to a little under nine hours in the voice of Patrick Cullen, and it has drawn a warm average from several hundred listeners, which for a title of this vintage is a genuinely useful signal. Work that keeps collecting verdicts long after publication has usually earned them.

There is no sequence to navigate and no reading order to worry about. Start where the book starts.

If true crime with a documentary spine appeals more than the invented sort, this is a strong evening’s listening. The listing is below.