Meep

This is my last Horowitz.

Revisado: 03-31-25

One thing I have valued about Horowitz is that of the books of his I have read, he has never used the murder of an animal as a component in his stories. TRIGGER WARNING. In this book, however, a sweet and innocent young dog is murdered quite horribly to further the plot. I had been enjoying this series quite a bit until the book just previous to this, but I had hoped that the series would get back on track with this one. Sadly, that is not the case, and I will not be reading or listening to any more Horowitz, as he has resorted to this cheap and cruel trick to move his story along. This is the way second rate writers work, any writer worth listening to can indicate the presence of evil without slaughtering innocent members of the animal kingdom. I had thought Horowitz was better than this, but clearly I was wrong. I do not care at all who murdered the so called human "victim" and all I can hope is that they got away with it. I would return all my Horowitz books if I could, but sadly I have read the rest of them so I can't. This one is going back, though.

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What about BISCUIT AND HIS PERSON?????????????

Revisado: 05-23-24

SPOILERS AHEAD. I have never, ever, ever, ever been so disappointed in the ending of a book. I have read all the previous books and have really enjoyed the series. You build up a sense of trust with an author when you have read 12 of his books one right after the other in quick succession. I have enjoyed the complexity of the characters, the adventure, the historical research, the mysteries, the supporting caset, and the way the story of the characters has developed over time. I was coming to find Llewelyn pretty tedious, but the stories and the supporting cast were still great and some interesting female characters had finally been added in the persons of Rachel and Sarah.
However, when an author you trust suddenly breaks the mold without warning and closes a book the succession of catastrophically bad decisions Thomas did here, I don't think that trust can be rebuilt. SPOILERS; I can not BELIEVE what happened to the brave and gallant Biscuit! I can not believe it. Eleven books where nothing like this happened, and then this, out of the blue, at the end of number 12. I am heartbroken. And THEN, after this, all we are told about the fate of his poor person, who had everything taken from him due to the complete incompetence of our heroes in not foreseeing this quite obvious possibility, is that Barker threw his card on top of the pile of rubble, and later says to Llewelyn that they must decide how much they are going to spend on this particular situation. How much they are going to SPEND???? REALLY???? They dang well better buy the best cab horse in London, and the best cab for him to pull, and pay for having poor loyal Biscuit buried properly instead of just scraped off the street and made into tallow and dog meat or whatever they did with dead horses in the city in those days, and put a significant chunk of change on top of all that. But we never hear what happened, what they did, how the poor man was doing, NOTHING. It's like the story just forgets about it completely, even though it ruined everything that had been built up over 12 books. . There's more garbage after that, which I can't even bring myself to mention because it's just so stupid, and it foretells the absolutely stupid direction the story is going to probably go in from here. I don't think I'll be reading any more of these books, and I feel very sad about it, because they were so good up to now.

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Garbage

Revisado: 05-06-24

Contains the savage murder of a sweet good dog, completely unnecessary, just there for the brutality of it. Stupid and boring in general, but I would have kept on with it if not for the animal abuse which I do not tolerate. I will not read anything further from this author.

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Vile, predictable, trigger warnings. Great reader.

Revisado: 03-10-24

I can not believe this book has so many good reviews. The ONLY good thing I can say about it is that the reader is excellent, and I will look for other books read by him. The actual story, however, is vile. SPOILERS. First, we are treated to a description of what can only be be years of childhood sexual and psychological abuse. She says "he never does anything" but it's clear from the behavior described and the state she's in that he absolutely HAS been doing absolutely vile things, and for years. Then we are treated to the theft of a mother cat and her kittens and the horrible and extended torture death of one of the kittens. The other characters, hypocrites that they are, are horrified by what is done to the kitten, but they'd be just FINE with it if it was a rat or a mouse. THEN we get a guy who gets his face melted off by acid, gets a tree dropped on him and dies a horrifying slow death right in front of us as a result. At this point, I stopped and skipped briefly to the end where I found that the gaggingly obvious person was indeed the culprit, and stopped without waiting to hear the back story because I so emphatically don't care. This story deserved to be lost to oblivion and I am shocked and distressed that it has been dragged back into the light. This is the not what I expect from golden age mysteries.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Avoid if you love or even mildly like animals

Revisado: 10-21-23

This started out as a great haunted house story, and the reader is excellent, I wish he read all the selections in this series. The story quickly takes a turn into the absolutely ghastly, and I truly wish the guy who was staying in the house had gotten eaten by the ghosts. This could have been something like E. F. Bensons "How Fear Departed From the Long Gallery", (which I still find terribly difficult because the setup to the ghosts being where they are in that story is appalling, but at least it goes somewhere good) but this story elects to just stay with the appalling part and build on it. It's horrible, it offers nothing, and I do not recommend it to anyone at all. Of all the Elsie Norris stories, why did they have to choose THIS one to make into an audio book? I hated it, and I now also loath Elsie Norris for writing it and will actively avoid anything by her in the future. I will say it's still, sadly, quite relevant to the state of animals and how they are treated to this very day, which makes it even worse.

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First story is OK, different narrator ruined 2nd

Revisado: 06-24-23

I listened to the first story and pretty much enjoyed it. It's not wonderful, but it's relaxing background listening while you do other things, no animals or kids were harmed (at least in the present, I admit I dozed through part of this, so there may have been some murders in the past that I missed) , and I liked the wrap up. It was mildly spooky without being at all scary. The narrator for the first story is a little difficult in that she has odd pacing, and tends to cut sentences in half and read them as if there's a period in the middle and the second half of the sentence is a whole new one. It's like she's never seen the material before and occasionally it gets away from her. She has a nice voice, though, and is overall decent. So, I'd recommend the first story. Sadly, the first story is only a tiny fraction of the entire book, the rest is apparently made up of the saga of Saxon Grange. I say apparently because I was absolutely unable to listen to the second reader. . Her voice is so high pitched, so nasal, and sounds so much like she needs to just take a deep breath and read from her diaphragm instead of from the back of her nose that I simply could not stand to listen to her. Also, there was mention of a dog arriving in the first part of the Saxon Grange story (part 0) that I heard before I gave up, and I never listen to any horror story with any animal in it, because you know what's going to happen to them. Overall, therefor, I would not recommend this book, since it's only possible to listen to a tiny fraction of it (being the first story).

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Vile

Revisado: 02-16-23

It turns out what people mean when they say this book is a throwback to the horror of the 70's and 80's is that it's absolutely nauseatingly misogynistic. Not only did I not finish this book, but I didn't skip to the end to see how it came out, which is really rare for me, and it's because it's such a vile book I didn't care how it came out. I stopped listening around the half way mark, and in that time I had been subjected to descriptions of gang rape, child rape, childhood sexual slavery, domestic violence, domestic partner rape, about a million vile words used to describe women, and a domestic partner who had been raped, beaten, almost murdered and then takes her abuser back no problem (supposedly because her own father had been an abusive alcoholic, and somehow that makes it ok for her to just accept the vile attack that had been committed on her without even trying to save herself or her daughter). Things like these can appear in horror stories and I can tolerate them, but only if they are PART of the story, not the ENTIRE flipping story. There should be other horror aspects to balance these things out, to create atmosphere, to create depth and character and draw the reader into the story so that we actually care about it. This is not the case in this story, it's just abuse against women and that is pretty much the only trick this pony has.
Additionally, the main character started out as a whiny self pitying alcoholic has-been, and then becomes a violent abusive jack-a$$ as the story goes on. How am I supposed to care about this guy at all, he's a navel gazing narcissist from the beginning, and then he gets worse. That's a storyline? The only good thing I can say is that at the time I stopped listening no animals were involved, so an extra star for that, although I expect that the author got to that in the second half of the book. The haunted, possessed, evil desk that takes possession of an author was an idea that could have been BRILLIANT in the right hands, but sadly in the hands of this author it's just gross.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Disappointing. Also, not a ghost story.

Revisado: 02-10-23

Part of my disappointment is that I thought this was going to be a haunted house story, since I found it under, "Horror; Ghosts". It should be under, "Crime Fiction; Stupid". This is not the books fault, since it should have been found under crime fiction rather than ghost fiction. Buyer beware.
Another part of the problem is that there are so many reviews saying how good the twist was and how good the ending was and how they never, ever, ever saw it coming. Because of this I knew when I started that the obvious red herring was a red herring, and I immediately started thinking of other things the twist could be. I like to think, though, that even without that, I still would have been suspicious, just because of the way the characters are written, and I absolutely was not surprised at the "twist" at the end. Also, a little editing would not have gone amiss, it's quite repetitive.
It's an ok read if you want something to pass the time, and you won't miss out if you're doing something else while listening, because it's slow and repetitive so if you miss something you'll get it again later, but it's not a great book and I wish I hadn't spent a credit on it.
The reader, on the other hand, is very good, I would absolutely listen to her again.

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Don't read if you like dogs

Revisado: 09-25-22

Why the author felt the need to put the dog in, just so she could do that to it, I don't know. I bought the book because it was on sale, a short listen and it had great reviews. I now think the great reviews were all from family members and friends. I would never recommend this book under any circumstances.

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Course, vulgar, ugly, and vile

Revisado: 03-16-22

If I want course, vulgar, ugly and vile I'll listen to the news. I come to fiction to escape it, not to have my nose rubbed in it. Maybe it gets better as it goes on, I stopped listening pretty fast, but I would advise anyone looking for escape listening to look elsewhere. The performances were very good, it's just the story that was vile.

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