From the moment Anthony Heald begins reading When the Killing’s Done, the energy of the novel bursts to life, creating an experience that will have lucky listeners believing that they have survived shipwrecks, chased feral pigs through the underbrush of island wilderness, faced the wrath of hostile protesters, and dined with one of the most irritating individuals ever.

So vibrant is T.C. Boyle’s prose that Heald has a seemingly limitless reservoir of characters and experiences from which to draw. The novel pits passionate animal rights activists against the park service ecologists who are equally passionate about preserving the flora and fauna of the Channel Islands, located just off the coast of California near between Ventura and Santa Barbara. When the Killing’s Done manages to state the case for each side while pointing out the hypocrisies inherent in trying to maintain a black-and-white, take-no-prisoners adherence to any cause.

Where Boyle excels and Heald triumphs is in the vivid descriptions of life on the islands of Anacapa and Santa Cruz and the voyages various characters, past and present, have made to the islands’ rocky shores. Heald’s performance of the wreck of the Beverly B and survival of Beverly Boyd, grandmother of the novel’s female protagonist, Alma Boyd Takasue, will have listeners reaching out to walls or handrails to steady themselves, so realistic is the depiction of the capsizing. There are idyllic journeys led by coastal dolphins and furtive cat-and-mouse chases between activists and Coast Guard boats. Heald relays the imagery in such a realistic manner that sounds and smells of the open ocean are palpable to the mind.

Heald’s tour-de-force is his characterization of wealthy, self-absorbed animal rights activist David LaJoy, a man of unrelenting ego who has embraced his cause with the unbridled zealotry of the newly converted. The man has the money to make his desires reality and the personality to insist upon it. Witheringly rude to all he considers beneath him, mostly everyone, LaJoy is an extremist whose commitment veers off into deadly irrationality. Boyle playfully jabs at LaJoy and Heald perfectly captures the outraged exasperation as the animal rights activist sees his newly-sodded lawn done in by invasive raccoons. An equal opportunity jabber, Boyle also has a final zing for Park Service biologist Takasue as well.

Heald’s tempo and energy keep When the Killing’s Done constantly bounding forward. Boyle’s writing is so crisp and Heald’s delivery so exuberant that listening to the audiobook will be a temporary obsession for all who choose it. —Carole Chouinard