notgillcup

One of Christie's Best, But A Narration Issue

Revisado: 10-22-22

This is one of Christie's best, if not the best. Ingenious puzzle mystery, and also wonderfully creepy.

The narration of one of the characters, however, almost takes me out of the book. Bewilderingly, Stevens voices the judge's character as torturously slow, deep, almost slurring, but the book itself characterizes his voice as light and clear. I suppose the narration sought to differentiate the characters' voices, but the ponderously slow voice for one of the characters forced me to up the playback speed to be able to bear the narration.

I overall have enjoyed Stevens's narrations that I've heard. This seems to be a one-off so far. At least it's only one character.

Overall, I recommend this audiobook.

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Buyer beware. This is not a new book.

Revisado: 03-03-16

This is not a new book by Peter Robinson. I am writing this review primarily to warn Audible customers and inform other readers this book is not indicative of Robinson’s current writing. It is not pleasant to give such a tepid rating to Robinson's work, which, had I rated them, would normally rate 4 to 5 stars.
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It was an unexpected pleasure to see a new Peter Robinson book pop up so soon after his last. I was excited to pre-order it. (I believe my exact words were “Squeeeee!”)

Alas, I should have remembered the one about things that seem too good to be true.

As I began listening to this book, the first thing I noticed was the stilted prose and copious exposition. At first, I thought perhaps it was merely due to the jarring experience of hearing Robinson in “American” coupled with the odd narration. But, no. Surely it was more than that. Then it began to sink in when I mentally catalogued the seemingly anachronistic references: wall phone, pager, Mighty Ducks jacket, Married With Children, car phone, pay phone, renting a video ...

Wait. What? RENTING A VIDEO? Did the characters live in a time warp? Am I losing my marbles?

I looked up the Amazon reviews of the book, and lo! Answers. Evidently in the print version there is a forward by Michael Connelly which explains this is a 20 year old book.

Nowhere in Audible's description of the book did I see mention of this. Nor is the forward included in the audio version. Indeed, Audible’s description is arguably a tad misleading. Tsk, tsk, Audible.

I should say this early offering from Robinson is far better than some quite dreadful current selections I’ve tried to read from best-selling authors.

But, the odd narration on this one isn't helping matters. Thank the ear gods a different narrator was used for the Yorkshire segments in the book. While switching narrators back and forth seems bizarre for a story written in third person omniscient point of view, on balance I can only be thankful the narrator for the bulk of the book was not used for Yorkshire sections. To be fair to the main narrator, I gather mastering different accents is quite a tall order. In this respect, it may be regarded as fortunate there was so much exposition that the Yorkshire-turned-plummy-speaking Sarah/Sally, as well as the few other female characters, didn’t actually say much.

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