Lying in Wait

I’ll admit, I’ve listened to *a lot* of true crime audiobooks, and most blur together after a while—same beats, same breathless narration, same hollow promise of ‘unprecedented access.’ *Lying in Wait* broke that streak hard. Bret Bruchok’s performance is a masterclass in restraint; he doesn’t *act* the roles so much as *channel* them, especially in the sections where he voices Eric Frein’s own writings. There’s no over-the-top villainy in his delivery, just a flat, unsettling certainty that makes the killer’s delusions feel all the more real. That said, the audiobook’s pacing stumbles slightly in the middle during the manhunt’s procedural slog—Frank’s attention to investigative detail is impressive, but the listener’s patience is tested when the narrative lingers too long on radio transmissions and grid searches. Where this audiobook *shines* is in its psychological excavation. Frank doesn’t just tell you Frein was obsessed with survivalism and military cosplay; he shows you how that obsession curdled into a warped sense of destiny, complete with hand-drawn maps and practice runs. The production design deserves praise, too: the occasional ambient audio (a twig snapping, a helicopter’s distant thrum) isn’t gimmicky—it’s *geographic*, grounding the story in the Poconos’ oppressive quiet. My one real critique? The epilogue feels rushed, as if Frank suddenly remembered he needed to wrap up the legal aftermath. But that’s a minor quibble for an audiobook that otherwise avoids every true crime cliché while delivering something far more disturbing: the quiet, methodical anatomy of a man who thought he was the hero of his own apocalypse.