Mel Johansson

A good story that needed a good Britpicker

Revisado: 07-10-22

I was so excited about this work, and greatly anticipated listening to it. Having listened to the first episode, I can tell it's going to be a ripping yarn, and the acting and sound effects are excellent. I look forward to listening to the rest of the series.

But.

Before the first chapter was over, it was painfully obvious that the writer is American, and hasn't done his linguistic homework. No Victorian woman would have called a man's suit a "tuxedo"; neither would she have used the word "hopefully" in the sense of "it is to be hoped that."

Both of those expressions developed in the US, and neither of them was in use in Sherlock Holmes's day. As soon as I heard them, SNAP! went my disbelief suspenders.

I love the series, but errors like that are jarring, and would have been corrected by a good editor.

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Scott Turow doesn't disappoint

Revisado: 07-03-20

I was excited to learn that Scott Turow had written another Kindle County book, and it was every bit the treat I had expected. Like others in the series, this story unravels one thread at a time, with one surprise after another. Pinky is a delightful addition to the cast, and I found myself hoping that Turow decides to give us a Pinky-centered PI novel.
The narrator makes a good job of reading a text that contains a lot of accented-English dialog, and my one (very substantial) gripe is that he doesn't know how to pronounce Spanish. There are a few place names and lines of dialog that he makes a right hash of, and it put an occasional strain on my disbelief suspenders.

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Loved, loved, loved this book!

Revisado: 08-27-17

The premise of this book--a con man who marries into a family of psychics--really intrigued me, and it did not disappoint. The author weaves together a complex fabric of the different family members' points of view in a way that's challenging to the reader but ultimately deeply satisfying.

I'm not normally a fan of books about the paranormal; I'm really tired of zombies and vampires. But this book doesn't go neatly into that genre, and I read it with fascination to the very last page.

Ari Fliakos' narration is perfect for this book, and a pleasure to listen to.

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Fascinating story that needed a good editor

Revisado: 09-10-16

I'm a huge true crime fan, and this book didn't disappoint. The story is morbidly fascinating, and it's well structured; my interest never flagged. The reader is excellent.

I especially appreciated the unique point of view that the writer's position as prosecuting attorney in the case brought to the narrative. The thing that kept me from giving this book 5 stars is that the author needed a good editor. He often misuses words ("tout," for instance) and makes rookie mistakes like telling us what the victim--now deceased--was thinking at some point.

Overall I enjoyed this book very much, but the writing flaws got in the way what was otherwise a ripping good read.

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Fascinating book. Irritating narrator.

Revisado: 08-21-16

This is a captivating and detailed account of multiple murders in two distant Southern towns, and the threads that weave them together. The research that went into it must have taken years, and if you're a true crime fan, it will not disappoint.

I grew up in Winston-Salem, the city where part of the story takes place, and it was really fascinating to read about crimes that had been committed there while I was still a child.

The narrator, though, annoyed me so much that I couldn't finish the audiobook--I bought the Kindle book and read the second half. He reads everything in a Beverly Hillbillies accent that makes no distinction between dialogue and narration, using pronunciations like PO-lice, and for some reason emphasizing every single preposition. It drove me nuts.

Now I know how the Brits must have felt listening to Dick Van Dyke play a cockney.

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Great book; needs a better narrator

Revisado: 04-24-16

I love Two Years Before the Mast--it's a fascinating historical account of the real way that merchant sailors lived. The thing that bothered me about the narration is that the reader doesn't know how to pronounce many of the nautical terms--foresail mainsail, leeward--which is essential to an effective reading of this book.

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Lovely book & narrator; frustrating noises

Revisado: 01-19-15

Herriot's stories are wonderful classics, and Christopher Timothy is the perfect narrator for these splendid books. But the bizarre background voices sometimes made it seem like watching a theatre performance with people chatting in the row behind you.

Add to that the oddly random music occasionally pasted in at chapter transitions, and you have an excellent performance marred by bad production.

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Great story, unfortunate narration

Revisado: 09-10-11

I actually stopped listening to this and bought an alternate version because the narration had begun to bother me so much that it interfered with my enjoyment of the stories. Griffin has a fine reading voice, but he is clearly not a native Briton--his non-English pronunciation of such words as "inquiry" (a word that occurs frequently in Sherlock Holmes stories!) "clerk" and "secretary" repeatedly punctured my suspension of disbelief. A real shame, as the stories are classics.

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Pure pleasure

Revisado: 09-10-11

A book revisited from my youth, and it did not disappoint--surely one of the great adventure stories of all time. Britton is a truly superlative narrator, a master of voices and dialects; I'll download other books based on his narration alone.

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Entertaining story marred by the narration

Revisado: 07-16-11

I realize I'm in the minority here, but the otherwise excellent John Lee's insistence on rendering the non-English speakers in heavy foreign accents really interfered with my suspension of disbelief. In the numerous sections of the book that are set in Germany and Russia, the characters talk to each other in comic-opera accents, as if they were not speaking their own native tongue. I found it very off-putting. And his rendition of the main American character sounds jarringly like a parody of William Shatner.

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