{"id":7970,"date":"2019-05-23T06:49:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T10:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7970"},"modified":"2019-05-23T06:49:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T10:49:34","slug":"from-authors-page-to-your-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7970","title":{"rendered":"From Author’s Page to Your Ear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"earphones\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The spring crime\/thriller\/mystery award season is for me means\nlistening to the many nominees I\u2019ve missed. Below are four recent listens. Good\nbooks, all, but these reviews focus on their strengths as spoken-word products.\nListed in order of preference, my favorite at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 – Where the Crawdads Sing<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, by Delia Owens (12 hours, 12 minutes) \u2013 I fell under the spell of this engrossing novel and Cassandra Campbell\u2019s placid narration. Yes, Owens glosses over the serious difficulties that would be faced by an eight-year-old girl living alone in the North Carolina marsh. With the help of her friend Tate, Kaya teaches herself to read and to record her detailed observations of the marsh\u2019s plant and animal life. In the background, Owens weaves in the investigation of a murder that takes place when Kaya is in her early twenties and, the plot being what it is, you know she\u2019ll be accused of the crime and totally unprepared to defend herself. I was with Kaya\u2019s story all the way up to the end. Though Owens laid the factual groundwork for it, it didn\u2019t make emotional sense. Nevertheless, the story is a fine ride, sensitively and beautifully read<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 – The Liar\u2019s Girl<\/a><\/em><\/strong>,<\/a> by Catherine Ryan Howard (10 hours, 26 minutes) \u2013 A nicely plotted thriller about Alison Smith, whose boyfriend, in her first year of college, confessed to a string of murders of young Dublin women. He\u2019s been in a psychiatric institution ever since, but now, ten years on, the murders have started again. The Dublin police visit Alison in the Netherlands where she now lives, saying her boyfriend may be able to help with the current investigation. But he will only talk with her, and they guilt-trip her into returning. Solid reading by a trio of actors: Alana Kerr Collins (mostly), Alan Smyth, and Gary Furlong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2- (Yes, a tie) – Down the River Unto the Sea<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, by Walter Mosley (7 hours, 44 minutes) \u2013 Loved the narration of this New York tale and its diversity of voices. Disgraced NYPD detective Joe King Oliver, now a private detective, sees a chance to redeem himself and his career with the takedown of a group of crooked cops. And he has the chance to rescue another possibly falsely accused black man. But, it\u2019s New York, so it\u2019s complicated. He finds himself an unlikely ally in a dangerous character named Melquarth Frost whom I liked a lot. Great narrating job by Dion Graham, capturing all the humor and subtleties of Mosley\u2019s wildly colorful characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 \u2013 The Witch Elm<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, by Tana French (22 hours, 7 minutes) \u2013 I hadn\u2019t realized this book was so much longer than the others. It sure felt that way. French is such a greatly admired author, I must be missing something when I find her tedious. Only after you\u2019ve invested \u00a0several hours does evidence of the crime at the book\u2019s center emerge. Perhaps it\u2019s a reflection of how well she wrote the dialog of twenty-something Toby and his cousins\u2014snarky, whining, self-absorbed\u2014or the pitch-perfect rendition narrator Paul Nugent gives it (\u201cToe-beeee!\u201d), but listening to their endless talk was like fingernails on a blackboard. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spring crime\/thriller\/mystery award season is for me means listening to the many nominees I\u2019ve missed. Below are four recent listens. Good books, all, but these reviews focus on their strengths as spoken-word products. Listed in order of preference, my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":"From Author's Page to Your Ear - the audio versions of four top crime and mystery novels from 2018 ","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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,52,54,40,3,126,66],"tags":[1568,1304],"class_list":["post-7970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio-books","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-suspense","tag-delia-owens","tag-walter-mosley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/earphones.jpg?fit=419%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-24y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970","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=7970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7971,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970\/revisions\/7971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}