{"id":7437,"date":"2018-08-27T06:58:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T10:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7437"},"modified":"2018-10-05T09:08:43","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T13:08:43","slug":"dont-you-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7437","title":{"rendered":"****Don’t You Cry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heimlich\"

pixabay; creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Cass Green, narrated by Lisa Coleman, Anna Bentinck, Huw Parmenter, and Richard Trinder \u2013 Cass Green\u2019s third thriller for adults deals with the power of maternal love.<\/p>\n

In recognition of the ascendant popularity of audiobooks, she chose to have this book come out in audio first. It\u2019s a hybrid of a traditional audio book read by a single narrator and one in which all the dialog is spoken by actors playing parts. Each chapter is written from the point of view of one of four characters, and the actors, who are all first-rate, read the entirety of the chapters having their character\u2019s point of view, regardless of who is speaking. I liked this way of doing it\u2014much less jarring than having a group of actors reading lines as in a radio play.<\/p>\n

Nina is a divorced English teacher living with her 12-year-old son Sam in a suburban area of England. Sam is about to go on holiday in Provence with his father and his new partner, Nina\u2019s considerably younger replacement. Nina is preoccupied by her resentment and grief over the dissolution of her marriage and is fretting about the impending separation from her son.<\/p>\n

At the book\u2019s outset, she\u2019s in a restaurant awaiting a \u201cblind date.\u201d When he arrives, late, he almost immediately propositions her. She\u2019s so shocked, she chokes, and her server Angel\u2019s timely use of the Heimlich maneuver saves her. At least near-death is a sufficient excuse to cut this disastrous date short.<\/p>\n

In the middle of the night, Nina is awakened by someone knocking at her front door. It\u2019s Angel, carrying a gun. Soon thereafter, Angel\u2019s brother Luke arrives\u2014blood on his hands and a months\u2019-old baby under his coat. Over the long hours of that night, Nina hears fragmentary news reports revealing that in a nearby town a young mother has been murdered and her baby kidnapped. Though she fears the worst, Nina is helpless, focused solely on keeping the infant safe. The intruders have disconnected her phone, taken her cell phone, and left her with no resources.<\/p>\n

If Nina is a bit of an agonized mess, trying to think of ways to escape with the baby, Angel is implacable and anticipates Nina\u2019s every ruse. The character of the brother is especially strong, as he veers between caring and desperation, and in the chapters he narrates, quite convincingly sounds on the verge of mental collapse.<\/p>\n

Nina tries to negotiate reasonably with this difficult pair, encouraging them to be on their way and to leave the baby with her. For her, his fate is uppermost and it\u2019s a difficult job keeping him quiet (which may have inspired Green\u2019s title), getting him fed, and finding diaper substitutes.<\/p>\n

Green maintains a high degree of tension throughout this long night as the balance of power between the siblings and Nina shifts agonizingly.<\/p>\n

However, between Nina\u2019s incessant worrying about the baby and tormenting herself for having to tell Sam he couldn\u2019t come home, she grows a bit tiresome. I would have liked Nina to have had a more nuanced motivation and a few more emotional notes to hit, though as the story proceeds, she shows real courage against a somewhat cardboard foe.<\/p>\n

For me, the novel\u2019s strongest characters are Luke and Angel, who have both convincing motivations and the great virtue of unpredictability. On the whole, it\u2019s a good listen.<\/p>\n

The paperback version of the book, which will be published next spring apparently has a different title: No Good Deed<\/em>, which doesn\u2019t make sense to me (nor does the cover photo below). Somebody\u2019s good idea.<\/p>\n

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Click the photo below to order this book.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cass Green, narrated by Lisa Coleman, Anna Bentinck, Huw Parmenter, and Richard Trinder \u2013 Cass Green\u2019s third thriller for adults deals with the power of maternal love. In recognition of the ascendant popularity of audiobooks, she chose to have … 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":"****Don't You Cry - a psychological thriller in which a woman struggles to save someone else's baby. Interesting in audio.","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":[77,52,40,126,32],"tags":[1394,1395,519],"class_list":["post-7437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-cass-green","tag-dont-you-cry","tag-england"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1VX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7437","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=7437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7498,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7437\/revisions\/7498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}