Engaging story

The narration by Julie McKay is agonising. The affectation of the long drawn out slur of words drove me crackers but the story was good enough to continue to the end....but only just.

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Enjoyable Thriller That Turns on the Reader

A new series for Audible with another rather different lead to enjoy. Shaye Archer has a twisted and mysterious past which looks set to unravel through the series like many others we've seen before. Less usual is that she is a young female PI setting up for business on the streets of New Orleans. I quite enjoyed her as a character, she's feisty, intelligent but naturally makes mistakes occasionally too.

After an intriguing prologue which sets a tense scene for the central story the whole thing moves along briskly and the tension builds nicely. A woman is being stalked after killing her ex-husband for reasons she can't fathom. She hires Archer to investigate!

If Archer is let down by anything though it is the rather wooden supporting cast among the minor characters. They seem rather too easily impressed and just a little bit too accommodating in terms of how they interact with the young PI. The final reveal when it comes appears from way out in left field coming perilously close to a Scooby Doo ending - you'll see what I mean!

The narration by Julie McKay at first jarred to these Anglophile ears, strongly accented and with a strange cadence that emphasised a lot of the last syllables in a sentence. However, I think I'm quite adaptable and once I got into the rhythm of it I found it very enjoyable. Those who perhaps are a bit more selective with their narrators might want to listen to the audio sample first.

Refreshingly there are no or at least virtually no swearwords which made a change. I don't mind them but you can indeed write thrillers without cussing it seems. Don't be fooled though, this is a wolf in sheep's clothing because after about half way it does start to cut up rough and the body count rises rapidly.

In summary this is a relatively short, brisk and enjoyable thriller and Archer is an interesting lead. It's not perfect though with the rather easily impressed and wooden minor characters and that touch of Scooby Doo at the end. I think I'm probably intrigued enough by Archer to maybe go further in the series in the future - for those even more enthusiastic there are another three books already available at the time of writing this review!

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Brilliant!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Different from what I normally read but I loved it. Can’t wait for the next one.