Agiliteve

Amazing book marred by poor narration

Revisado: 12-17-23

Only one comment on this amazing book - they should have picked a narrator with a passing familiarity with French and Italian since the names of people and places in those languages appear with great frequency. I cringed as the narrator struggled to pronounce even the most well known.

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Great Narration!

Revisado: 03-18-19

Overall I liked the book enormously - the plot, the setting, the characters. But a shout-out to a great narration by Paddy Glynn!

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Story great, reader misses

Revisado: 01-11-19

Davina Porter has a lovely voice and I’m sure she has done a splendid job with other books, but she was a poor pairing for the Scots background of this book.

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The book delivers as promised

Revisado: 12-10-18

Despite occasional lapses in prose style, Dean presents us with some interesting insights into the lives and writing of 10 very bright, very articulate and “sharp” spoken women of the 20th century. The narrator is especially good.

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Thorough Enjoyable

Revisado: 12-06-18

An engaging re-creation of a Conan Doyle story, updated for 21st century mores, and marvelously read by Derek Jacobi.

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Intriguing plot + social commentary

Revisado: 10-09-18

A good character study (as are all the books in this series), and a great exploration of the social and economic issues resulting from the demise of the "Celtic Tiger". One of the better explorations of the personality of the Murder Squad members.

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Not the best in this series

Revisado: 10-09-18

I've been a fan of the Dublin Murder Squad series since I discovered it, but I will confess to being unimpressed by this entry. Quite frankly, I'm just not that interested in the inner workings of teenage minds, which is the primary subject of 19 of the 20 hours of this volume. Since it was easy to guess "who done it" well before halfway through, what followed was pretty much of a slog.

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Clever story, sloppy production, not a fave

Revisado: 08-15-13

Kaaberbol and Friis are very adept at weaving together the stories of multiple characters and points of view into a story with good forward momentum. I have to say, though, that I find the principal character in this book and the last, Nina Borg, to be fairly unappealing and not at all an individual I can identify with or root for.

The audiobook is sorely in need of editing. The narrator will re-read a section more than once, occasionally interjecting "Oh! He's supposed to be Hungarian!" or something like that. I'm also not fond of her transition from reading to overacting in tense plot moments.

All in all, although the plot is good, I would find it hard to recommend this overall.

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Perhaps the best Gamache/Three Pines Mystery

Revisado: 05-29-13

I started reading this series with The Beautiful Mystery, which is actually the eighth (and at the time I'm writing the most recent) of the books. After finishing it, I immediately turned to the first book in the series and was a bit disappointed to find that an element of the ominous tone that hung over Beautiful Mystery was in Still Life as well, and that it continued into A Fatal Grace. A loved the plots and the richly developed characters but felt a bit uneasy about that backstory that haunted Gamache.

It was enjoyable to learn more about the principal residents of Three Pines in the next two books, which also had satisfying plots. But with The Brutal Telling Penny has given us her most complex psychological tale of the first five, existing on its own with no intrusions from Gamache's past hovering in the background. Not as disturbing as a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller, thankfully, but a thoughtful exploration of how human failings can intrude on even the most idyllic circumstances.

Ralph Cosham's narration has been pitch perfect in all these books and I look forward to the rest. I harbor the suspicion, however, that The Brutal Telling may remain my favorite.

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Successful transition to Linda Wallendar POV

Revisado: 03-11-13

Who was your favorite character and why?

Although we've met Linda Wallendar in previous books in this series, she comes fully to life in this volume. Mankell shifts easily to writing from her point of view, and shows us a character who shares many personality traits with her father, but is still uniquely her own.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Unfortunately, the narrator, Cassandra Campbell, makes Kurt Wallendar a completely unlikable character. In this book he is seen for the first time from his daughter Linda's perspective, and while the character Linda is well aware of his shortcomings, she recognizes that they are part of the package that makes him a successful detective. Not so for the narrator, who clearly finds nothing redeeming in Kurt. I suspect that anyone being introduced to the series for the first time with this volume would be disinclined to read any of the other books where Kurt Wallendar is the protagonist, given the thoroughly unpleasant personality she projects onto him.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes.

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