Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Chaos Man by Andrew Mayne Narrator: Susannah Jones, Will Damron, Jennifer O'Donnell, James Anderson Foster
Series: The Specialists #3
Published by Brilliance Audio on March 24, 2026
Genres: Mystery
Length: 10 hours, 3 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Source: NetGalley
Goodreads
Amazon, Audible
A train derails in Idaho, nearly causing a nuclear disaster. An inferno at a battery facility in Florida disrupts the electrical grid for days. A potentially devastating failure is discovered at Virginia’s Mud River Dam. To computational biologist Theo Cray, these aren’t mere infrastructure accidents. They are virtually undetectable acts of sabotage.
Theo sees a mathematical pattern to the madness that few others can comprehend—except for his rogue FBI agent Jessica Blackwood, private security specialist Brad Trasker, and Florida underwater investigator Sloan McPherson. If Theo’s intuition and calculations are correct, the disasters are just a warm-up. The worst is yet to come—a catastrophe that could trigger the deaths of millions across the country.
Now Theo and his team are on the hunt for a mysterious saboteur whose only motive is to spread panic and chaos. And with every tick of the clock, his unthinkable endgame is getting closer to becoming a terrifying reality.
I love the books of Andrew Mayne. They have action and mysteries with lots of science / math type aspects. The Specialists is the combination of 4 series, the Underwater Investigation Unit series, the Theo Cray & Jessica Blackwood series, which is preceded by a Jessica Blackwood and The Naturalist series, and the Trasker series. The chronology seems to be the Jessica Blackwood series, then The Naturalist, the Theo Cray & Jessica Blackwood series, then the UIU, and newest Trasker, and now The Specialists. So if it’s not clear from all those series, I would not recommend this series without reading at least one of the previous series. I’ve gone back and read all of them now, having started with the UIU.
This Specialist series stories begin with one of our main characters and then as things blow up, they call in the rest of their “friends”. Sloan has a job, plus a husband to support herself. But then how can she just leave the job at a phone call and travel across the country? Brad is a little easier to believe as he works for an aviation technology company and has money and flexibility through them. He also has ways to get what he wants through contacts from his previous government work. Right now I don’t know how Theo or Jessica support themselves.
Theo has gotten fixated on an algorithm and its relationship to disasters which seem random but he thinks are sabotage. He has a feeling about the next one. So he and Jessica go to the site, which did have a train derail to gather evidence. The responding agencies are not pleased with them and arrest them but Brad arrives to bring them into the investigation. It isn’t long before they call Sloan to join them.
I am giddy over all the mathematical, science and technology aspects to the problems and how they have to apply their knowledge to figure out the bad guy. It’s kind of like Numbers I loved that TV show. Theo is like Charlie and Jessica and Sloan are like Don. Brad is more like Reacher. Their little found family team really supports each other without question.
They approach their investigation from multiple angles. There is a profile of the evil doer. They figure out his traits and skills and what type of person who could do this and narrow down the population as they get evidence to assist on that. Some is also based on where the events happened. They figure out how he could be traveling and why no one sees him in the smaller town. The Chaos Man doesn’t seem to see people, only systems.
From the other end, based on computational patterns and evidence based general locations, they work to predict what and where the next sabotage will occur. They comb through various types of surveillance video to try to see a suspect who is working the damage a system.
It’s exciting and fun to follow along on their deductions and exhilarating as it becomes increasingly dangerous. I’ll always enjoy these mysteries. Plus Theo may have found a job that suits him!
Narration:
I enjoyed the different narrators that are the usual ones for the two characters featured here. Susannah Jones is a talented narrator and the one I know from the UIU series. Jennifer O’Donnell was also very recognizable from the two series with Jessica Blackwell. I easily recognized their voices for Sloan and Jessica. I was able to listen at my newer 1.75x speed.
Listen to a clip: HERE
About Andrew Mayne
Andrew is the founder of Interdimensional, an artificial intelligence service consultancy that helps companies deploy AI solutions. Prior to founding Interdimensional, Andrew was the Science Communicator for OpenAI and their first prompt engineer. At OpenAI he worked on GPT-4, ChatGPT and GPT-3, creating many of the original prompts and examples used today.
Alongside his AI contributions, Andrew writes mystery-thriller novels. His works have been nominated for the Edgar and Thriller Awards, with series featuring characters including Theo Cray, Sloan McPherson, Jessica Blackwood, and Trasker.
Andrew was also featured in the Discovery Channel Shark Week special Andrew Mayne: Ghost Diver where he used AI and stealth technology to swim next to great white sharks in the Isle of Jaws.
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I read all types of books but my favorites are urban fantasy and romantic suspense.I like some romance and some action / adventure / mystery in everything.I like sex in my books but please, only between TWO people.Intimate conversation is equally important to the sex in a book.It lets me see the characters.The other thing I enjoy is humor.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 25-Audio
- 25-COYER
It’s crazy that all these characters come together in this series! I have only read The Naturalist series and one Jessica and Theo book, but I need to read more! I also love the math and science that Theo is so good at😁
I really like them together, kind of a found family. I like the fast pace, science and tech stuff.
I’m looking forward to reading this author. Great review, Anne💜
I hope you enjoy them. There’s more science than most mysteries but that makes me love it even more.
I can see why this really grabbed you. I love how he tracks the bad guy using statistics and probability. And, thanks for the road map to reading the combined series.
yes it’s much easier if you read the series somewhat in order. I suppose you could read the feeder series in any order but I think the order they were released is easiest to stay with the characters.
I want to try this author at some point.
I hope you love them as much as I do!
Will Damron is excellent! It’s been a while but I really should listen to one of his pieces.
Will Damron is excellent here.