{"id":7290,"date":"2018-06-06T09:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7290"},"modified":"2018-06-06T09:01:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T13:01:52","slug":"listen-up-3-terrific-thrillers-in-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7290","title":{"rendered":"Listen Up! 3 Terrific Thrillers in Audio"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"earphones\"

photo: John O’Nolan, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Catching up on highly regarded crime thrillers of the last year, I\u2019ve turned to audio for these:<\/p>\n

*****Prussian Blue
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/span>By the late Philip Kerr, narrated by John Lee. This was Kerr\u2019s next-to-last historical crime novel featuring Berlin detective Bernie Gunther, and takes place in 1939 and 1956. Lee\u2019s reading imbues Gunther with every sly hint and ironic twist in his attitude toward the Nazis. Some of his colleagues at the time were aware: \u201cI don\u2019t know how you\u2019ve survived this long, Gunther, feeling as you do.\u201d But survive he has, and 17 years later, he\u2019s working in France when a former colleague\u2014now head of the East German secret police, the Stasi\u2014demands he murder a certain woman. Rather than comply, Gunther goes on the run. Scenes of his flight across France are interspersed with recollections of a 1939 murder case at Hitler\u2019s famous mountaintop retreat in Obersalzberg, which he was brought in to solve and which put him right in the middle of a power struggle between two of Hitler\u2019s top men. It would be a hard job to choose which tale is more nerve-wracking. Lee\u2019s Gunther is just right, his Nazis odious, and his Stasi enemies no better. Nominated for a 2018 Edgar Award and five stars from CrimeFictionLover.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

****Bluebird, Bluebird
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/span>By Attica Locke, narrated by J.D. Jackson. In northeast Texas, a black man\u2019s body is found floating in the bayou behind the only black-owned business in the tiny fictional town of Lark. Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is on suspension, but decides to poke around. One of the few black Rangers, he\u2019s worked before on race-connected deaths and believes this is one. When he arrives in the town, the sheriff\u2019s men are fishing another body out of the water\u2014this one a white woman. Surely the deaths are linked, but how? And can he prove it? As he tries, Jackson\u2019s narration expertly conveys not just Matthews\u2019s determination, but the sheriff\u2019s weakness, the malevolence of local Aryan Brotherhood of Texas members, the shifting moods of the dead man\u2019s elegant wife from Chicago, who is the sort of Bluebird (messenger) of the title, and, finally, the townspeople black and white who are protecting a decades-old wall of secrets, all of whom are intriguing if just a bit predictable. Winner of the 2018 Edgar Award for Best Novel. TV series in the works.<\/p>\n

*****The Marsh King\u2019s Daughter
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/span>By Karen Dionne, narrated by Emily Rankin. Helena Pelletier is the protagonist in this thriller, set in the Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula. She\u2019s trying to live a normal life with her husband and two daughters, while keeping her bizarre past a secret. Rankin\u2019s reading makes it clear this isn\u2019t easy, and it becomes impossible when her Native American father kills two guards and escapes from prison, \u201carmed and dangerous.\u201d Years before, he kidnapped a fourteen-year-old girl and took her into the remote marshlands as his wife. There they lived off the land and had a daughter\u2014Helena. Rankin conveys how much the young Helena adored her father and what he taught her about hunting, fishing, and survival. Eventually, the girl and her mother were found, and her father ended up in prison, an outcome that has left Helena deeply conflicted. Now that he\u2019s on the run, she\u2019s has to see whether she can live up to his nickname for her, Bangii-Agawaateyaa<\/em>, \u201cLittle Shadow,\u201d and find him before he finds her and her daughters. An international bestseller, it was frequently named one of the best books of 2017. Movie in the works.
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Catching up on highly regarded crime thrillers of the last year, I\u2019ve turned to audio for these: *****Prussian Blue By the late Philip Kerr, narrated by John Lee. This was Kerr\u2019s next-to-last historical crime novel featuring Berlin detective Bernie Gunther, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Listen Up! 3 Terrific Thrillers in Audio - weeding the garden? taking long walks? immerse yourself in these great books","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[77,52,54,40,21,632,126,32],"tags":[1330,1332,128,1329,1334,1195,1333,285,1331,446],"class_list":["post-7290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-narrator","category-police","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-attica-locke","tag-bluebird-bluebird","tag-history","tag-karen-dionne","tag-michigan","tag-philip-kerr","tag-prussian-blue","tag-texas","tag-the-marsh-kings-daughter","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1TA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7292,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290\/revisions\/7292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}