KateM

Highly entertaining…up to a point

Revisado: 07-26-21

The narration is excellent; the style is light and charming; and I give the author credit for cleverly managing to obscure the mystery's central theme for much of the book. About half-way through, however, the solution seemed obvious to me, and it felt like it should have been apparent to the main characters too (to Georgie, at the very least). The Royal Spyness series has comfortingly predictable protagonists (even their dialogue is basically the same from book to book), but it was disappointing that the author couldn’t find a way to sustain suspense other than making the investigating characters even more obtuse (or lacking in curiosity) than usual. The book ends up being like a sort of Panto, where at some point, one knows more about what is happening than the characters themselves. I rather enjoyed the book and it finished up nicely, but the third quarter was rather a slog.

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Not the best in the series

Revisado: 07-19-21

I wanted to like this one more than I did. However, for me, the author was just too heavy-handed with the clues. Overly 'clever' plots is one of the flaws (and sometimes delights) of this series, and the books tend to offer a few surprises and red herrings along the way. This time, I noticed the clues, guessed their significance correctly, and found myself rolling my eyes whenever Posie would exclaim 'Oh!' and rush off to pursue a hunch, since her sudden realizations seemed obvious to me chapters earlier. It felt tedious having to wait for her to catch up. Perhaps, however, this is the effect of listening to a few books in this series in a row.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Too heavy handed

Revisado: 10-18-20

Although the story is developed competently, the conceit of using Christie's Poirot is getting tired. The author takes what I can best describe as a 'mood' of Christie's Poirot (excited, arrogant, enigmatic, insulting to his companion), one which Christie used at relevant places in a story or novel to heighten suspense or mislead the reader, and makes it Poirot's only mood. It is tedious. I felt it was overused in Hannah's previous "Poirot" novels, but hoped that the author was just finding her stride. This is by far the worst. Rather than feeling compelled by the suspense to keep reading/listening, I repeatedly rolled my eyes and turned it off. I also found the first-person narrator (Poirot's companion) distracting. When Christie paired her detectives with a companion or helper of some sort, she used a character slightly more clueless than the reader. From what I remember, however, in Christie's books that helper is either a layman tagging along with her detective (a naive friend/temporary ally) or a police detective (someone with crime-solving experience and authority who is in competition with her detective and slightly antagonistic). The way Inspector Catchpool is written, he comes across as too dense and too timid to plausibly be a Scotland Yard detective. Or rather, he seems to be an otherwise intelligent and educated fellow, but bizarrely lacks any capacity for reasoning, decision-making, or personal initiative specifically when it comes to the solving of crime. While Christie effectively used the device of Poirot teasing, insulting, patronizing, confusing, etc. his companion in order to advance a story in key places, here it is incessant, tiresome, and ultimately implausible. I guessed key 'mysteries' early on. While it is fine that the 'companion' is slow in that regard, Catchpool's failure to catch on immediately once they are revealed to him is absurd. I appreciated this book as competent and as an imaginative reworking, but felt it wasn't skillful. You can feel the author working and it's exhausting.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Entertaining story, poor narration

Revisado: 09-11-20

I almost quit after the first couple chapters (which all centered around a minor character), but once it got going, I found the recording to be good entertainment when engaged in other activities (walking, driving, gardening). Like the other books, it is a quite decent mock-classic cozy mystery with engaging storytelling and likeable protagonists. However, although I've gotten used to some of the new narrator's shortcomings (difficulty making different voices distinctive, inconsistent and inaccurate accents, unconvincing male voices, etc), I continue to be distracted by her mispronunciation of words. Although English has many different regional accents, that's not the issue in this case. It seems as though the narrator is unfamiliar with the pronunciation of some less common English words and doesn't bother looking them up. Some mangled pronunciations made me laugh out loud — but I don't think that was the point.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Narrator Problems

Revisado: 09-07-20

The book itself is up to the same standards as the others - competent, pleasant, and engaging, but the new narrator is not. She has difficulty finding ways to distinguish between characters and doesn't do very convincing male voices. Except for that of the protagonist, none of the accents are very consistent or convincing either. Since the narrator doesn't have much range in terms of tone, she distinguishes between characters often by subtleties of accent (even when none is specified by the text), but doesn't do so very expertly so it is more distracting than helpful.

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A light mystery

Revisado: 12-10-17

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The story has Christie's usual cleverness, but is much lighter in tone than most of her other novels. Emilia Fox did a competent job narrating, but in a good performance, the voice actor or actress disappears; however, at various points (especially with older male characters), all I could hear was an actress doing a funny voice. Her voice for Superintendent Battle was particularly distracting, which made key scenes less effective. I still enjoyed it overall, though.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Familiar but doesn't get old

Revisado: 08-31-17

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With this book it struck me as interesting that each of Tana French's novels manages to feel unique even though they have the same basic premise: Dublin detective becomes involved with case intertwined with their own past (childhood/past case/family,etc) and as a result, acts reckless or unprofessionally, and/or just plain burns out. Furthermore, it's notable that the writing is so lovely that it doesn't matter that all of the central protagonists/narrators end up talking/thinking the same way (in the highly descriptive and emotionally raw way that French writes). There's also a pattern with the resolution of the mysteries as well – and yet again that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of them.

For the most part, the narrator was very good and quite pleasant to listen to – with one exception. With Broken Harbor (as with Faithful Place), it felt like there was something a bit off with how the male narrator interpreted the voices of some secondary female characters. Characters written as being often overwrought were played in an always-overwrought tone, and thus came off as more one dimensional than the author intended, I think.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Light on detection

Revisado: 07-11-17

Any additional comments?

Increasingly this series tends to focus on rather banal family dramas among its central characters. As with the other books in the series, spending time with its characters was quite pleasant, but this storyline was particularly notable for how comparatively little detection actually went on. Mysteries were presented, but solving them seemed to be fairly haphazard, and the main protagonist had more of an accidental (and incidental) relationship to the crimes than in previous books. Sufficiently enjoyable for fans of the series, but this would not be a good one to start with for those new to it.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Not my favorite Tana French

Revisado: 05-03-17

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As usual for Tana French's books, the writing was great. Her books tend to be focused on the exploration of a character and his/her relationships with elements of both psychological thriller and procedural. This one was heavy on the first part, however, and dragged in places. Unlike her first two, I had to keep forcing myself to go back to it. As for the reading - it was great for the male voices, but less so for the female ones.

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Painfully dull

Revisado: 02-13-16

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The reading was perfectly fine, but the story was a plodding, predictable and clichéd procedural with characters that lacked any defining qualities. I'm sad to have wasted the money on it.

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