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The Chemical Detective

Jacqueline Silver Adventures, Book 1

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The Chemical Detective

By: Fiona Erskine
Narrated by: Ana Clements
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About this listen

Dr Jaq Silver. Skier, scientist, international jet-setter, explosives expert. She blows things up to keep people safe.

Working on avalanche control in Slovenia, Jaq stumbles across a problem with a consignment of explosives. After raising a complaint with the supplier, a multinational chemical company, her evidence disappears. Jaq is warned, threatened, accused of professional incompetence and suspended. Taking her complaint further, she narrowly escapes death only to be framed for murder. Escaping from police custody, she sets out to find the key to the mystery.

Racing between the snowy slopes of Slovenia and the ghostly ruins of Chernobyl, can she uncover the truth before her time runs out?

©2019 W. F. Howes Ltd (P)2019 Fiona Erskine Crime Thrillers Suspense Thriller Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Mystery
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I think this book may be quite interesting. Unfortunately, I stopped listening after about four hours, despite a heroic effort to persevere, and unless I buy the printed version, I’ll never know. The narrator, whose delivery verged on sulky boredom, drove me demented by putting silent commas and full stops into the text where there weren’t any to start with. As a result, the book is littered with odd pauses and the strangest emphasis on words I have ever come across. Almost as if the book was being read by an AI robot whose audio programming was still in development. For instance, the following sentence: “Jaq slumped on an old leather chair and closed her eyes.” The narrator reads it like: “Jaq. (PAUSE) (NEW SENTENCE) Slumped on an old leather chair and closed her eyes.” Almost every sentence that starts with a character’s name follows this pattern. It’s horrible to listen to.

Off-putting narration killed the story

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