The Birthday Party
A Memoir of Survival
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Narrated by:
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Richard Powers
About this listen
On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present".
As Alpert talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, and memorized every detail he could, his law-enforcement colleagues launched a major police and FBI investigation that would take many strange twists and turns.
Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller - but every word is true.
©2007 Stanley N. Alpert (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"One of the most exhilarating, improbable New York stories ever told." (The New York Times)
"Harrowing....An effective, one-two punch of a memoir." (Booklist)
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Wonderful book
- By Michelle B Ouellette on 06-10-21
By: Jameel McGee, and others
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Kill for Me
- By: M. William Phelps
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Aspiring model Sandee Rozzo's big mistake was being kind to Timothy "Tracey" Humphrey. After Rozzo refused the 'roided-up ex-con's advances, she described how he imprisoned, raped, and brutalized her for two days. When the courageous woman pledged to testify against him, Humphrey knew he had to silence her. That's when he turned to 19-year-old Ashley Laney. She had fallen in love with Humphrey, her personal trainer, and would do anything for him. On their wedding night, he made a strange request - one that would end with eight gunshot wounds and a dead body.
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ONE OF THE AUTHER'S BEST
- By Steve on 09-04-18
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Operation Family Secrets
- How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family
- By: Frank Calabrese Jr., Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman, and others
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.
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Riveting Listen!
- By ahippieadventure on 02-06-13
By: Frank Calabrese Jr., and others
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No Lesser Plea
- Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi, Book 1
- By: Robert K. Tanenbaum
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Roger "Butch" Karp has been around New York long enough to realize that the judicial system can be dirty and cynical. But he still believes in justice. So when a vicious sociopath tries to dodge a brutal murder charge by convincing the court he is incompetent to stand trial, Karp teams up with firecracker Assistant DA Marlene Ciampi to unleash the full force of their relentless energy, hardboiled wit, and passion for the truth to put the killer away for good. They will accept no lesser plea.
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A Decent LIsten
- By Ted on 08-31-14
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Sex Money Murder
- A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal
- By: Jonathan Green
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on years of research and extraordinary access to former gang members, reporter Jonthan Green creates an epic character-driven narrative, drawing on first-person interviews, police reports, and court transcripts to offer a unique and engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers an extraordinary perspective on modern-day America.
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Narrator using the N word was cringe worthy
- By Bmac on 09-07-18
By: Jonathan Green
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A Certain Justice
- By: John Lescroart
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Somewhere in the once-placid streets of San Francisco, a young man is on the run, charged by the media with a crime he didn't commit, hounded by demagogues, hunted by a desperate police department. One cop knows that Kevin Shea is innocent of a brutal racial murder. An ambitious politician will use Shea for her own ends. And a down-and-out lawyer is all that stands between Kevin Shea and an even more atrocious crime. For when there's no law left, justice is the only hope.
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Race riots ... in San Francisco?
- By Snoodely on 02-10-10
By: John Lescroart
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Picking Cotton
- Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
- By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Erin Torneo, Ronald Cotton
- Narrated by: Richard Allen, Karen White
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After 11 years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.
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Listen for the story not the writing
- By Professor Sombrero on 06-13-09
By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and others
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Flood
- A Novel (Burke, Book 1)
- By: Andrew Vachss
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her - so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements.
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Noir!
- By Snoodely on 03-06-14
By: Andrew Vachss
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Son of a Grifter
- The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the Most Notorious Con Artists in America: A Memoir by the Other Son
- By: Kent Walker, Mark Schone
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1988 a troubled young man and his flamboyant mother were arrested for murdering a wealthy widow in her New York City mansion. Suddenly America was transfixed by a pair of real-life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her 23-year-old son Kenny. But the most chilling story of all was never told - until now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived 40 years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away.
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CON PEOPLE AT THEIR WORST!
- By jaye on 07-03-17
By: Kent Walker, and others
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Wasted
- Inside the Robert Chambers-Jennifer Levin Murder
- By: Linda Wolfe
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On an August night in 1986, Jennifer Levin left a Manhattan bar with Robert Chambers. The next morning, her strangled, battered body was found in Central Park. Linda Wolfe goes beyond the headlines and media hype to recreate a story of a teenager whose immigrant mother was determined to make a better life for her son, a petty thief and drug user who'd been expelled from the best schools. Wasted powerfully depicts the freewheeling 1980s society that spawned a generation steeped in violence and the fatal impulses that drove Robert Chambers to kill.
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A very thorough reporting for the time
- By Amazon Customer on 12-28-16
By: Linda Wolfe
What listeners say about The Birthday Party
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Barry
- 11-16-15
Brilliantly chilling story, artfully told.
An unusual story, well told, in an authentic stream of consciousness grounded by riveting facts. Part novel, part legal thriller, part philosophy, part theological musing, part love story, part comedy, and part tragedy that explores a brilliant soul who has been forced to play teeter-totter on the edge of the abyss with some terribly misguided New York street youths. You are left feeling a joy in the simple pleasures of your own life as you see them through the eyes of a man who very nearly lost his.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sylvia
- 06-21-24
Not dated as of June 2024
Usually audiobooks this old feel creaky and outdated. This one could have been released yesterday. Well, except no cell phones is a dead giveaway. Amazing how much hasn’t changed in our society. The production values have held up perfectly. The narrator sounded like 90% of the New York lawyers I’ve heard speak, so his hometown voiced delivery didn’t bother me at all. Great story. Hope he has found a wife in the meantime.
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- Balance5150
- 09-10-15
Smart decisions until he's released
Would you listen to The Birthday Party again? Why?
Yes, it was an interesting and entertaining read
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
-- SPOILER ALERT --
The author/victim made very good decisions while in the hands of his captors but the moment he is released he turns into a complete dunce.
For example, the first thing he does when released is try to call his father, then his friends... then more friends... then his father again! How about this, dumb-ass, call the f-ing cops!
Later, he gets a threatening voice mail from one of the criminals and, yet again, we can rely on our hero to ignore it and make no mention of passing this onto the cops! This is even worse because if a snitch hadn't alerted the cops, the criminal would have, at the very leased, attempted to kill his own lawyer.
He has no excuse for acting in such a cavalier manner. He's a lawyer for f-cks sake! He should know better!
It moved me in the wrong way and made me incredibly frustrated with the author.
Any additional comments?
I would definitely suggest reading this book with the caveat that the end has a good chance to frustrate the reader.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Douglas
- 04-30-15
Since there haven't been any SERIOUS...
Audible reviews on this audiobook yet, I get to be the first to give one. First, forget the narrator--okay, you don't always get Charlton Heston, but hey, someone is reading you a book, all right?... Now... I first encountered Stanley Alpert's story on 48 Hours Live To Tell. I instantly went looking for the book. This thing is great! It's terrifying, hilarious, engaging and so wacky and off the wall that when Stanley first told the tale to police, they thought he had to be making it up. Movie-style thugs with guns, drugs, sex, compassionate prostitutes who offer hostages freebies, fancy cars, wild rides--all after a simple ATM robbery goes awry. Unless you are obsessed with voice intonations, you can't help but love this audiobook. If you ARE obsessed with voice intonations, get it in print. Great story!
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jonathan kalkin
- 12-29-09
Surprise!
The content isn't bad, but the reader is horrible. He sounds like he's reading a children's book. I had to bail out after about ten minutes. I tried to give it another shot and lasted another five.
I may try the hard copy, because I would like to hear the story, but there's no way I can listen to this guy for another ten minutes, much less ten hours.
I love my audiobooks, and there are some great readers out there. Then there are some okay ones, and some that are below par. And some just grate on you. This reader, I am sad to say, falls into the latter category.
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2 people found this helpful