Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Simple Plan
    A Simple Plan
    A Simple Plan
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    A Simple Plan

    Written by Scott Smith

    Narrated by Griffin Dunne

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the author of The Ruins comes his debut New York Times bestselling thriller

    A SIMPLE PLAN
    Read by Griffin Dunne

    Hank Mitchell thought he lived an ordinary, ordered life. But on one chilly afternoon, Hank, his brother Jacob, and Jacob's unsavory pal Lou, make a discovery that offers a chance for a life filled with riches beyond their wildest dreams. And in a fateful moment, Hank lays a plan to claim that life . . . and the horrific crumbling of his ordered world begins . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 1, 1993
    ISBN9780743546126
    A Simple Plan
    Author

    Scott Smith

    Scott A. Smith is a fisheries biologist at the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

    More audiobooks from Scott Smith

    Related to A Simple Plan

    Related audiobooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels

      Jun 19, 2019

      A list of books so scary you definitely won't keep them on your nightstand. The post Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hide

      May 18, 2022

      RELEASED 24 MAY 256 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Kiersten White Publisher Del Rey “The book you need after Squid Game!” yells the hype for Kiersten White’s latest. Well, sort of. In fact this well-written horror novel feels closer to The C

      1 min read

    • Article

      Killer instinct

      Oct 24, 2019

      Killer instinct
      3 min read

    • Article

      Crimes of the Heart

      Nov 5, 2016

      Like many of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marías’ new book, Thus Bad Begins, isn’t exactly a mystery, though it is mysterious. Here, the 65-year-old perennial Nobel favorite tells the story of Juan de Vere, a young man working for a film directo

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Quiet Boy

      Jan 28, 2019

      The Quiet Boy
      29 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Paul Tremblay

      Dec 3, 2020

      For the first time in weeks, I was swept along into that trance, that magic inner space where stories live. The post A Year in Reading: Paul Tremblay appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Stoker Winners

      Jul 1, 2021

      The Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards. The winners were: Superior Achievement in a Novel: The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones; First Novel, The Fourth Whore, EV Knight; Young Adult Novel, Clow

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Girls off the Cliff

      May 6, 2017

      The Girls off the Cliff
      1 min read

    • Article

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men

      Sep 10, 2020

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men
      8 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Dec 2, 2021

      My dad and I were celebrating some of lockdown being lifted by trying out his new car on a trip to the Cotswolds. It was late on a blustery night when we slowed down in Chipping Norton, on the Oxfordshire borders with Gloucestershire, to navigate the

      8 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Aug 12, 2021

      It Happened to Me…
      8 min read

    • Article

      Winning Through

      Jul 12, 2019

      JOE, ROBERT AND I climbed from the truck in the pre-dawn gloom and were immediately hit by an Arctic chill. “This won’t help,” Joe said, loading his .270. We were parked in an island of trees in a massive paddock near a dam. All around on the edge of

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dog Days

      Jan 23, 2022

      Dog Days
      2 min read

    • Article

      An Unsafe Safe

      Feb 1, 2022

      An Unsafe Safe
      4 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Jan 28, 2021

      Regarding the Aintree Spectres [FT399:38-42], I feel compelled to share an experience I had at Woolley Edge near J38 on the M1 near Wakefield on 20 November 2020. Because of the COVID 19 situation, I was working from home at Hall Green in Wakefield,

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Simple Plan

    4/5

    558 ratings28 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Great story but the breathing and mouth sounds of the reader make it hard to listen to.
    • 3/5
      I thought the basic premise was unique. I enjoyed the beginning of the story, and found the characters interesting and believable. However, as the story developed it became more contrived and hard to believe that the unassuming bookkeeper and his wife were capable of some pretty horrific stuff. I made it to the end. Now I'll have to watch the movie and see how it compares. Although movies have a tendency to be more over the top than the book. We'll see.
    • 5/5
      I read this book as a Blind Date With a Book read and I'm glad I did. It is a captivating book that reveals how human instincts and greed can turn even the best of us into deadly predators. A page-turner of a suspense novel that is nearly impossible to put down. It captures your whole being and won't let you go until the last page. If you like a book with a great plot and lots of complex twists then you should read this book. Can't wait to read another book by this author.
    • 5/5
      WOW ... murder, greed, plotting. The movie (which was terrific) has a somewhat different ending. I'm torn as to whether the movie or the book is better. But the book is fantastic.
    • 4/5
      This review contains spoilers.

      This took me something like 25 days to read. I read the first 100 pages in one day. The beginning and the end were great, gripping. Middle got slightly boring. Never hard to read or anything, but didn't compel me to read on like the beginning and end did. I suppose a few things didn't seem terribly believable, like the main character and his wife's lack of shock at some of the things. I'm pretty sure I would have more than "a tight knot in my gut" if I killed six people in a couple of months. Overall though I was convinced and it was interesting seeing how it turned out.
    • 4/5
      After reading The Ruins, I sought other work by this author, who appears to have written only one other fiction book. Most stories require the reader to root for the antagonist. Oddly, this book required no such investment for me. The characters are quite unpleasant, taking things that would shake many of us to the core in too casual a stride. It’s the excellent writing, and the swiftly escalating events that kept me riveted to this story. Having said that, it practically pushes those events to their limit. The reader needs to set disbelief on an extremely high shelf. With The Ruins, this was easier to do because of the supernatural circumstances, but this story is a thriller with a setting of reality making that harder. Still, I enjoyed the book to the last 100 pages where the repellant characters, particularly that of the lead, became far too irksome. I enjoyed the story, and appreciate what the writer did, but also found myself irritated even though I feel it was well worth reading. The closest person to an innocent (other than the baby and dog) is Jacob, owing to his childlike and easily led nature. Still… it’s something to create work that pulls the reader along when there isn’t a main character to cheer on. NOTE: It’s only one scene and over fast, but those who cannot abide animal cruelty possibly should avoid this; for me I struggle, though it ‘depends’ on the story. Here I felt the author made a terrible mistake, and it’s unnecessary. I get the function of the scene, but by then the reader doesn’t need to be reminded how low the character has sunk. I want to give this book 5/5, but because of a few quibbles, I must knock a star off.
    • 3/5
      A decent thriller with a storyline that on the whole isn't too predictable. It does end a little anticlimactically though. The main protagonist's decent from decent normal person to heartless killer seems a bit unrealistic.
    • 5/5
      This was another of Bill MacDonald's recommendations (and my friend, Jeanie, says she told me to read it months ago)... so I read it. Really interesting. Hank Mitchell and his brother and his brother's friend find $4.4 million that no one is looking for. Hank is an accountant, married to Sarah who's expecting their first child in mere weeks. His life is fine, well-ordered. Until they find the money. This story is not at all predictable and one I'll be thinking about for a while.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book a lot!

      It was very easy to identify with Hank, the protagonist of this story. Imagine that you and your two siblings find a bag full of money in a plane that crashed that no one has yet discovered. Would you keep it or not? That is the gist of this story.

      Just think about how one simple lie in your life could spiral out of control...into more lies and things MUCH worse than that, even. That's exactly what happened here, It was very easy to take the next step with Hank, and then the next, and so on. At first, the reader feels sorry for him, but not for long as he tangles himself up further and further by the minute. The last quarter of this book turned into a nightmare from which I could not pull myself away. I did feel that the last scenes slightly stepped over the line of believability and for that I deducted one star.

      Overall, I enjoyed this story quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys a fast paced thriller with some blood and gore. Good times, good times.
    • 5/5
      While hunting a fox who caused their truck to swerve and crash, three men make an astonishing find in the wintry Minnesota woods. Jacob, his buddy Lou and Jacob's younger brother Hank discover a crashed airplane covered in snow. Inside are the dead pilot and duffel filled with four million dollars in cash. Hank wants to alert the authorities, the others want to keep it. Hank yields on one condition: that he keep the money until the plane is discovered in the spring thaw. If no one comes after the money, the three will divide the cash.

      Despite swearing the others to secrecy, Hank tells his pretty wife Sarah. She says they shouldn't take all the money so Hank agrees with her and returns some of the money to the plane to avert any suspicion. On lookout duty, Jacob panics and nearly fatally hits a farmer named Dwight who's hunting a fox. Hank prepares to dispose of the body but Dwight regains consciousness. Hank smothers Dwight with his own scarf and stages the death as a snowmobile accident despite. This is believable.

      Unemployed Lou threatens to tell the sheriff the truth about Hank killing Dwight unless he gets his share of the money now. Sarah tells Hank to frame Lou for Dwight's death. Jacob reluctantly agrees to double-cross his friend and gets Lou to fake a confession to Dwight's murder. Hank reveals he secretly recorded Lou's confession. Lou threatens to kill Hank, so Jacob shoots Lou dead. Hank kills Lou's wife Nancy makes it look like Lou did it.
      Yes it goes on like this; one tragic decision after another. Will anyone get the 4 million and will it be worth it?
    • 5/5
      Tale of men who find a lot of stolen money and try to figure out how to keep it is very well done, although it has an inevitability about it that casts a bit of a pall.
    • 3/5
      Imagine a life spiraling down to it darkest depths. Imagine now that it gets worse. That is this book.
    • 4/5
      You know that phrase, circling the drain? That’s the best way to describe this novel about greed and the lengths people will go to in the name of it. Recently I was involved in an inheritance process that involved more money than at first suspected. It brought out the worst in some family members so the actions and attitudes of the people in this novel seemed on the money to me. I was a bit surprised by the fluidity of criminal schemes that Hank and Sara came up with on the spur of the moment and also their lack of caution in some areas (keeping the money under the bed? with a newborn in the house???), but mostly the book hung together. It’s basically one bad decision after another with things getting worse and worse, scene by scene.Spoilers commencing -There isn’t anyone to root for in this book, but there are degrees of dirt-baggery to be plumbed and not all the deaths are lamentable. Most are though and by the end I was hoping Hank would get caught. He and Sara deserved it. They don’t, but neither do they profit by their crimes and they seem pretty comfortable with them on the whole (all that self-serving justification must have gone down well). The FBI logged about 10% of the serial numbers and without knowing which bills are on the list, the whole pile is worthless. Sara tries everything in her power to hang onto it, right to the bitter end. In a way, I’m glad there wasn’t much denouement to the book since it would have meant spending more time with the two of them. I’m not sure the kid’s accident and subsequent near-vegetative state is effective as a sop to justice though. And I can’t imagine the law ignoring so many deaths in such a short time period, especially when there’s no GSR on Lou’s body. But other than those things, the story is good, compelling and reasonably believable if a sad testament to one of humanity’s least admirable traits.
    • 4/5
      I picked this up to fill some time and it's a real page-turner. If you've seen the movie you probably know the plot. Two brothers and a friend discover $4 million in cash in crashed plane. The moral dilemmas escalate from there as they try to hide that they have the money and then kill to keep the secret. An all too-believable story of how otherwise "normal" people get caught up in events that escalate out of control.

      A telling quote from Sarah, Hank's wife. Hank is the accountant whom we would assume to be the more moral (why in heaven's name we would assume that is beyond me given the accounting failures of recent years). This comes - SPOILER ALERT - after Hank has shot his friend, his friend's wife, his brother's friend, and his brother, in a plan, now fully supported by Sarah, to keep the millions they found in the plane secret. She says: "What we've done is horrible, but that doesn't make us evil." Yeah, right. They then rationalize how they were "forced" by external pressures to be horrible.

      If you get the audio version, avoid the abridged, and get the Recorded Books unabridged read by Peter Bradbury who does a brilliant narration. Audible used to have it available but now lists only the abridged.
    • 5/5
      Wow. Um, talk about an unreliable narrator. This novel sickened me more and more while I was reading it, but it fascinated me, too. I detested the narrator by the time I was a quarter of the way through, but of course I had to keep reading to see what he'd do next.
    • 4/5

      A few years back I watched the 1998 movie based on this novel, and loved it to pieces: it's the most wonderful noir tragicomedy, eliciting bleak laughter at the same time as a profound sorrow at the way potential human destiny and dreams are forever thwarted by human stupidity. So, although I picked up my copy of the novel a while ago, I fought somewhat shy of actually reading it in case I found it a let-down.

      Not so: it's wonderful. And here, too, we have one of those very rare instances where, even though the movie is (according to my memory) very faithful to the book, the two also complement each other. Part of this may be the movie's casting of Bill Paxton in the central role of Hank, the upright and uptight accountant who with ne'er-do-well brother Jacob and Jacob's even ne'er-do-weller pal Lou comes across, in the midst of an Ohio snowfield, a crashed light plane containing a dead pilot and four million bucks. The three reckon the money must be illicit or there'd have been a hue and cry about the lost pilot; so Hank and his wife Sarah decide the best course is to sit on the money for a few years before leaving the area and living the life of Riley somewhere safely afar. Unfortunately, this simple plan starts unraveling pretty soon because, essentially, Jake and Lou are too stupid to follow through on it.

      Not that Hank's any genius; indeed, when blood starts to be shed, Hank proves to be the most ruthless member of the little gang, a trait that brings problems and complications of its own.

      A Simple Plan is something of a white-knuckle read, which may tend to obscure the fact that it's also quite beautifully written. And, once you've read it, get hold of the DVD -- or vice versa.
    • 5/5
      A SIMPLE PLAN is a modern-day morality tale. In a relentless progression, the novel demonstrates how quickly ordinary people can stoop to committing the most horrendous acts, and how easily they can justify it to themselves. It begins with a situation that we can all imagine ourselves in: Three guys discover a downed plane with a duffel bag full of money and a dead pilot on-board. Once they decide to take the money -- concocting a "simple plan" to make sure they don't get caught -- they become enmeshed in a series of escalating events that seem inevitable.SPOILERS AHEADThis book is a fast, suspenseful read, and my only quibble with it is that the climax seems a little off. It seems like too much when Hank commits the two murders in the liquor store, and any remaining sympathy for him dissipates when the reader realizes that he comes pretty close to being a psychopath. I think the movie adaptation's climax was more effective, as it ties up all the missing ends. Despite that, the novel was both entertaining and stomach-churning, and I enjoyed reading it.
    • 3/5
      A violent page-turner let down somewhat by a writing style that occasionally jarred me as simplistic and perhaps patronising. I did, however, finish the final third at top speed - the plot will get its hooks into you.
    • 2/5
      I liked the premise of this book but unfortunately, for me, I couldn't believe the main characters actions. Also some of the deductions made make Columbo look slow.
    • 5/5
      Life in a midwestern town, turned on it's ear by unlooked for treasure, mystery, and a Dostoevsky-sense of foreboding in Mid-America.
    • 5/5
      "A Simple Plan" has a simple premise - a group of people come across a whole bunch of money and then devise a plan to keep it - and not get caught. Smith turns this premise into a riveting suspense novel, with prose that is crisp and fast-paced. Smith is talented at plotting and setting a scene, but I think his strongest suit is the way he describes his characters - they are believable and relatable. If you've already seen the also-excellent film adaptation, the book still has some surprises in store. The movie differs from the book in several key plot points; about three quarters in, the book takes a pretty different (and pretty shocking) turn. Towards the end, the plotting got a bit excessive and strained believability, but overall, I think this is an excellent novel, and definitely impressive for a debut novel.
    • 4/5
      I loved the book but the movie did not do it justice. Also living in the area where the book takes place made the experience even better for me.
    • 5/5
      A Simple Plan is one of the best books I've read in recent years. Not only is it well-written, it takes a close look at the impact of our choices and explores the gray area of ethics. There are so many angles in this book - it just makes you think for months after you stop reading it. A sense of foreboding permeates the entire novel. It proceeds like an accident that you can't look away from. You want to scream at the characters - don't do that! - because some of the actions are painful to watch, yet utterly human.
    • 3/5
      A Simple Plan was definitely a fast read, which is wonderful on those I'm-so-sick-of-the-television-but-I-don't-feel-well days.The story is full of twists that you know you should see coming, but still don't until the paragraph where it is revealed. Boiled down, normal man finds (a lot of) money; man tries to plan keeping the money; man's plan falls apart, time after time after time; man has to take another step in order to meet goal of keeping money.It is a well written exploration of the evolution of greed and human desire. I found myself questioning my own choices, though not on such a grand scale, wondering if the snowball effect that Hank is put through is something that I could ever survive. Would I ever be driven to take the same type of line of action, or would I be able to stop myself? How much would it depend on the grandness of the promise of my future?It got to a point where I wanted to just be done with the book, but that wasn't until about page 360 of 400. When I hit that point, I knew that I wanted the main character to be punished for the story line, but I have to admit it was nice not knowing for sure which resolution I wanted until that close to the end of the book. I found myself respecting the punishment which was dealt out, too, realizing it was a more perfect fit than I could have hoped for.I would recommend it, if not highly at least with some earnestness, to those looking for a good summer read.
    • 3/5
      I thought this was a very interesting story that showed how things can get out of control very fast and shows how greed is truly the root of all evil. I was not thrilled with the ending however. I think his 2nd book, "The Ruins" is much much better.
    • 4/5
      Quick, easy read. Wasn't truly monumental...I didn't really love it. But something about it kept me attached. I'll steal from the review from the Chicago Tribune. "[It was] like watching a train wreck. There is nothing to be done, but it is impossible to turn away."
    • 4/5
      I liked the snowball effect in this story ... it starts out very simple and then gets more and more out of control. Once you take the first step in a plan, how easy or necessary is it to keep going? Very enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      This is not something I'd usually read.I bought it at an airport many years ago when I was afraid I was going to run out of the reading material I'd packed. That didn't happen, so it sat around for a number of years till I got round to reading it.Not much to say: it's a well-written thriller, better than most in the genre.