tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58199606051624888792024-02-19T03:25:58.066+00:00AudioBooksReviewReviews of new and backlist audiobooks<p>www.audiobooksreview.co.uk</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger199125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-29871056398081960522018-02-16T17:36:00.002+00:002018-02-17T17:53:23.303+00:00Blood on the Page by Thomas Harding<br />
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<b><span style="color: red;">read by Thomas Harding</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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The death of author Allan Chappelow in Hampstead in 2006 was
widely covered in the press and on television, as was the trial of Wang Yam,
jailed in 2009 for his murder. </div>
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The eccentricity of the reclusive Chappelow, who
had lived in the house in Downshire Hill where his body was found all his life,
makes for compulsive reading. At the time of his death, Chappelow’s house was
in almost total disrepair, with a collapsed roof, a kitchen that hadn’t been
used for years and once elegant rooms filled with broken furniture, rubble,
books and (literally) tons of paper. In one room, a tree was growing through
the floorboards. </div>
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Chappelow’s body was not discovered by the police for four
days after they had let themselves into his house, smothered as he was in what
must have been page proofs of his several books. The police had called at his
address to investigate what was probably identity fraud when his bank alerted
them that someone was trying to transfer money from one of his bank accounts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He had clearly been bludgeoned to death and an attempt had
been made to burn his body. The police eventually arrested a Chinese ‘dissident’,
Wang Yam, who had been granted asylum in the early 1990s and had led a troubled
life in England. Yam was clearly implicated in some elements of fraud (he
appears to have sold mortgages to members of the Asian community, bounced
cheques and before his arrest posed as a wealthy property owner being shown around
multimillion-pound properties in North London). But there was no unambiguous evidence
linking him to the murder, and he protested his innocence from the very start. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What makes the case and Harding’s book so fascinating and
frustrating at the same time is the suggestion of Yam’s involvement with
Britain’s secret services. Much of the trial at the Old Bailey was held in
camera, unheard of in murder trials in western democracies. Harding received a warning
in writing from the Ministry of Justice’s [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>litigation department stating that they
wished to draw the author’s attention to the ‘gagging order’ which had the
effect of preventing publication of anything heard in court in camera and that
breach of the order would be punishable by imprisonment. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a website to accompany the book (www.bloodonthepage.com)
which contains more ‘speculation’ than Harding (and his lawyers) allowed to appear
in the book, most of it from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily
Mail</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mirror</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camden New Journal</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Times</i>. It is ridiculous that even to infer anything from the
facts of the secrecy surrounding the trial would be judged contempt of court. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So much for freedom of speech.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is clear, nevertheless, that there is very little in the
public domain apart from circumstantial evidence that Yam killed Allan
Chappelow. His rights of appeal have been summarily rejected. He will spend the
rest of his sentence in prison. The author has not been allowed to visit him,
but during the writing of the book he was in communication by phone. Yam’s state
of mind is, according to Harding, crushed by events. And prisons, as we know,
are not safe places. It is quite possible his life is in danger from either
Chinese gangs (Yam kept saying that it was they who were behind the identity
theft) or the authorities. Under the circumstances, don’t be surprised to read
of his death before he becomes eligible for parole.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The book is arranged, like most true crime books,
chronologically, in terms of the discovery of the crime and its early
investigation and then the life stories of the victim and the prime suspect.
There are also sections entitled ‘Case Notes’ in which the author charts the
progress of his own investigation: his interviews with relatives of the victim,
with police and counsel and with people who knew something of Wang Yam’s life.
He also documents his phone calls with Yam. The style is journalistic: the
story has its own momentum. Another commentator has noted the author’s fondness
for splitting infinitives. His reading style is not that of a professional
narrator: but one somehow always gains insights when an author reads his own words.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you like true crime, then this will not disappoint. ‘Unputdownable’
is overused praise in the book trade, but in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood on the Page</i>, I think it fits the bill.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">* * * * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018
AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood on the Page</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-88196639397479049742018-02-16T17:34:00.004+00:002018-02-17T17:51:16.302+00:00Philip Odell: Lady in a Fog by Lester Powell<br />
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<b><span style="color: red;">BBC Radio Full-Cast Drama</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Writer Lester Powell is a part of radio history. His output
was prolific, with more than sixty plays and serials to his name broadcast from
just after the Second World War in 1946 until the 1980s. Most, alas are lost,
never to be heard again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Powell started writing radio adaptations of famous novels and
short stories that went out on the BBC Light Programme, including some of G. K.
Chesterton’s Father Brown detective stories. </div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51miKeOgmGL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51miKeOgmGL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a>The detective genre was always
popular on radio, just as police procedurals are on today’s television. Listeners
to Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra will know Francis Durbridge’s Paul Temple
programmes, but some younger listeners will not be familiar with Lester Powell’s
detective Philip Odell, the Irish sleuth who starred in seven radio serials,
several novels and a feature film. Powell said that he had Raymond Chandler’s
Philip Marlowe in mind when he created Odell, and there is much of Marlowe in
Powell’s tough and dogged but fair detective played by Canadian actor Robert
Beatty. His sidekick (and lover) Heather McMara was played by a number of
actresses, including Brenda Bruce, Joy Shelton, Joyce Heron, Diana Olsson and Sheila
Manahan. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lady in a Fog</i> was
the first story to feature Odell and McMara and was broadcast in eight
instalments in 1947, possibly in live transmissions, because the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Lady in a Fog</i> in the CDs under review
is a second production, this time recorded for posterity, staged in 1958. Only
one other recording of the Odell stories is said to exist. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lady in a Fog</i>, Odell
is on his way home to Ireland, but the flight is delayed because of a heavy London
fog. He calls on Heather McMara only to learn that Heather’s brother has just
been found drowned in the Thames. So starts Odell’s investigation and his run-ins
with the police in the shape of Inspector Rigby, who thinks Odell might well be
their best suspect when more murders start to turn up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It would be interesting to be able to compare the 1947 and
1958 broadcasts, but that of course is impossible. Are the 1958 actors deliberately
stressing the huge class differences in the protagonists that would have been
evident in the 1940s? Or were they still there a decade later? It is always
slightly shocking just how cut glass the accents are of some of the actors in ‘classic’
BBC drama from the middle of the twentieth century. But that too is often the
appeal of these recordings. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is probably pointless to try to summarise the plot, which
follows a Marlowesque trail of low-life and patrician criminals, interfering
police, the odd red herring, some romance. Odell never makes it back to Dublin
but is set on his career as a private investigator in London. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is much to enjoy in this four-hour, eight-part serial,
with performances from a large cast of BBC Drama Repertory Company stalwart’s
including Mary Wimbush, James Thomason, John Bennett, Jeffrey Segal, June
Tobin, David March and Trevor Martin.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peerless.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">* * * * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018
AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lady in a Fog</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-50601964114115770612018-02-16T17:31:00.002+00:002018-02-17T19:45:54.767+00:00Classic Radio Sci-Fi<br />
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<b><span style="color: red;">BBC Drama Collection: Five BBC Radio Full-Cast
Dramatisations</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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This collection contains almost ten hours of first-class
radio ranging from the 1975 Radio 4 adaptation of Conan Doyle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost World</i> to the 1989 Radio 3 presentation
of Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1921 play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rossum’s
Universal Robots (R.U.R.)</i> and the 2007 Radio 4 dramatisation of Polish
author Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Solaris.</i>
It is a great pity that the 1941 BBC radio version of <i>R.U.R. </i>is lost, but then so much classic radio has gone forever
(perhaps to be picked up only in a distant galaxy).</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">R.U.R.</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Solaris</i> are unique, thought-provoking
pieces, important culturally and from a literary point of view. I would like to
see these issued as standalone productions, perhaps with an introduction from a
Braggian team of commentators. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Time Machine</i> are relatively recent
BBC Radio productions (1994 and 2009 respectively) and display all the great
acting and technical presentation skills that modern stereo production brings
to radio. DAB and Internet Radio quality is superb and these CDs deserve to be
listened to through good headphones rather than in the car.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps the most interesting play from the point of view of
the radio enthusiast is Conan Doyle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost
World. </i>This too might well have deserved publication on its own. The three
CDs have a cast representing the best of BBC radio drama from the 1970s, with
Francis De Wolff, Kevin McHugh, Carleton Hobbs and Gerald Harper (of BBC
television’s Adam Adamant fame). The music and special effects from the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop are especially good and, of course, the drama itself is one
of Conan Doyle’s best creations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">* * * * * </span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Classic
Radio Sci-Fi<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-31778344750823348142018-02-16T17:29:00.001+00:002018-02-17T17:43:43.546+00:00Resistance by Val McDermid<br />
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Val McDermid, the Scottish crime writer, will need little
introduction. McDermid started her writing career as a playwright, having had
her first novel turned down by British publishers too numerous to mention (the
old story). </div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61QkEoF0EyL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61QkEoF0EyL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a>Her television work is well known to British audiences and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Resistance</i> is something of a treat for fans
of radio drama. It is an original radio drama, commissioned, performed and
broadcast by BBC Worldwide for Radio 4 starring Gina McKee. Developed as part
of the Wellcome Trust and Radio 4’s Experimental Stories for Radio initiative <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">–</span> an annual two-day
workshop in which radio writers and producers work with researchers to develop
dramas to pitch to Radio 4 <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">–</span>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Resistance</i> certainly fulfils the
Trust’s brief, which is ‘to ask big questions that are stimulated by biomedical
research <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…</span> to reach
people who aren’t usually interested in traditional science programmes’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And it would be difficult to get much bigger than the apocalyptic
devastation caused by factory-farmed meat that produces a pathogen resistant to
all the antibiotics created since their discovery revolutionized medicine in
the early days of the twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Like many a good drama, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Resistance
</i>is grounded in verisimilitude: resourceful tenacious reporter Zo<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ë</span>, who just happens to be
vegetarian; rain-soaked English music festival; ‘pop-up’ food stalls selling poorly
sourced sausages; 100,000 hungry festival-goers and musicians from all parts of
the globe; festival organisers in denial. In the opening ten minutes we also
hear the soundtrack from a television report on the current shameful lack of
anti-microbials. It’s all slightly frenetic and, dare I say, predictable. But
it is polished BBC radio drama, in three fifty-minute episodes, that makes the
most of broadcast stereo and drives home the propagandists’ point. The outcome is
inevitably bleak, reminiscent of John Wyndham’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kraken Wakes</i> (McDermid adapted <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kraken Wakes</i>, updated to the present day, for BBC Radio 4 in May
2016). Humankind has little left; civilisation effectively eviscerated.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The cast is faultless, with Gina McKee as journalist Zo<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ë</span>, Jason Done as Jamie,
Nitin Kundra as Sam, Angela Lonsdale as Lisa, Henry Devas as Baz and Ashley
Margolis as Will: I hope such voices will continue to participate in audio
drama, which rarely has budgets sufficient to reward such impressive talent. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, the question remains: will humankind change its
behaviour so that antibiotics can prevail? Or will we wipe out the human race
through complacency and short-term greed? Probably we won’t know until it is
much too late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Resistance</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-10956069262405601712018-02-16T17:26:00.003+00:002018-02-17T15:50:20.709+00:00King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard<br />
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The 130 years since the first publication of H. Rider
Haggard’s African novel of ‘treasure, war and wild adventure’ have seen such
cultural and sociological change that it might be thought that his novels of
the Victorian empire would have little to attract our attention. Famously
written following the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Treasure Island</i> in 1885, when Haggard
told his brother he could write something ‘at least as good’ (or ‘half as good’),
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King Solomon’s Mines</i> was said to have
taken the author six (or sixteen, depending on one’s source) weeks to finish. It
was the start of Haggard’s lifelong and very lucrative career as a novelist. He
wrote more than fifty books. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She</i>, the
follow-up to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King Solomon’s Mines</i>, has
been estimated to have sold a staggering 80 million copies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whilst reflecting a fair few of the prejudices and givens of
nineteenth-century colonialism, Haggard does not entirely adopt the racism and misogyny
of his era. Dedicated to ‘all the big boys and little boys who read it’ (girls
read it too, but nineteenth-century parents often had firm views of what was
suitable for boys and what was suitable for girls), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King Solomon’s Mines</i> represents the memoirs of the book’s
protagonist, Allan Quatermain, as related to the author, so that Haggard’s own
opinions are at arm’s length. The book can certainly be said to show admiration
and respect for the peoples and cultures of Africa, and for its landscape, and
there is deprecating irony in the taunt by Gagool concerning the white man’s
insatiable desire for African diamonds:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-size: xx-small;">The first shock of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was
overpowering. We saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this snare for
us from the first. It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would
have rejoiced in, the idea of the three white men slowly perishing of thirst
and hunger in the company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point
of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds.</span><br />
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Kenneth Colley starred as Quatermaine in a 1990 BBC Radio 4
adaptation, which is well worth finding, if you can. It is surprising that the
novel was not broadcast in the heyday of BBC radio (there is a forty-minute General
Mills Radio Adventure Theater recording from 1977, which aired on the CBS Radio
Network in the USA), but perhaps the many feature films satisfied the appetite
for Haggard. It is the 2017 adaptation in the BBC recording under review here and
it is gripping, entertaining and, in the appropriate places, moving <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">–</span> BBC radio drama at its
twenty-first century best. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It would be pointless to rehearse the plot. Just immerse
yourself in one of England’s foremost Victorian adventure writers, whose
imagination, fired by his five or so years in parts of what is now South Africa,
transports you to an exotic and dangerous lost world. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The cast, led by Tim McInnery as Allan Quatermaine, David
Sturzaker as Sir Henry Curtis and Simon Ludders as Captain John Good, features
outstanding African actors Sope Dirisu as Umbopa, Femi Elufowoju Jr as Twala
and Adjoa Andoh as Gagool. In his essay on Haggard, fellow author Graham Greene
wrote, ‘Enchantment is just what this writer exercised; he fixed pictures in
our minds that thirty years have been unable to wear away.’ <o:p></o:p></div>
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This BBC Radio adaptation will do the same for a new
generation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King Solomon’s Mines</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-20896897710895731492018-02-16T17:20:00.002+00:002018-02-17T18:00:38.754+00:00This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay<br />
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<b><span style="color: red;">read by Adam Kay</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Adam Kay has given so many interviews and there have been so
many prominent reviews of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071GLW3TZ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071GLW3TZ&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=e682b094b3f4176c68b4fe6bd77e4f7b" target="_blank">This is Goingto Hurt</a> </i>that a lot of the best jokes and funny episodes have already been aired
many times. But don’t let that put you off. Medical students have always told
tall tales and usually have a swollen list of anecdotes about their colleagues
and patients. Medical black humour is as old as the medical profession itself <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">–</span> and the tooth-pulling, grave-robbing,
elixir-pushing mountebanks who preceded them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51XzjTQ72GL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51XzjTQ72GL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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At book signings (at which, alas, full recommended price is
usually a given), apparently, many a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071GLW3TZ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071GLW3TZ&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=e682b094b3f4176c68b4fe6bd77e4f7b" target="_blank">This is Going to Hurt</a></i> is destined for the (at the time of going to
press, as the saying goes) Secretary of State for Health (and Social Care)
Jeremy Hunt (he of a privatised NHS fame). Kay has famously shrugged off his
medical calling and opted instead for writing and comedy. And if you listen to
this audiobook you will find out precisely why.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The tall tales are good (especially as they are narrated by
the author). The funny things people do to themselves are, well, excruciatingly
funny also. However, the repeated sacrifices of a doctor’s life are saddening
and the consequences of underfunding, under resourcing and overworking are
chastening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the end, despite the jokes that are somehow not jokes at
all (‘home delivery is for pizzas not babies’) and the jokes that are, one
hopes, jokes (‘the undergraduate learning centre’ being known as the ‘early
learning centre’), this is a deepfelt cry for attention from a professional who
couldn’t carry on given the shameful and shocking demands on junior doctors of
a health service in crisis. </div>
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Shame on all of us to allow this to be.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* * * * * </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071GLW3TZ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071GLW3TZ&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=e682b094b3f4176c68b4fe6bd77e4f7b" target="_blank">This is Going to Hurt</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-45248014032227324282018-02-16T17:18:00.001+00:002018-02-16T19:01:04.387+00:00Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor<br />
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<b><span style="color: red;">read by Matt Bates</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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A <i>Guardian </i>Book of
the Year; a <i>Financial Times</i> Book of
the Year; a <i>TLS</i> Book of the Year; an <i>Observer</i> Book of the Year; a <i>Daily Telegraph</i> Book of the Year; winner
of the 2017 Costa Novel Award; longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; shortlisted
for the Goldsmiths Prize.</div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/616gvDDjrFL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/616gvDDjrFL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This story of the lives haunted by one family’s tragic loss
of a teenaged child in a rural English village has been praised to the skies by
literary critics, popular critics and the general reader. The books is
structured so that each paragraph is a month, each chapter a year, with one
extra paragraph at year’s end. For thirteen years. It is slow, thoughtful,
poetic. And anyone seeking a resolution to the disappearance will be
disappointed. There is none. Which is, perhaps, the point of the whole
exercise: often life just goes on. Things might fall apart for a few, but for
everyone else life carries on in its infinite sameness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps this is Beckett without the humour, Joyce without
the wit. Perhaps there is a touch of the emperor’s new clothes: how can the
cognoscenti be wrong, with their metropolitan nostalgia for a piece of Albion
idyll? Have any critics given less than fulsome praise?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Narrator Matt Bates produces a great performance, but the
nuances are better appreciated on the page. It is rather a flat read:
uneventful, unremarkable. Impressed by all the acclaim, I am sure many readers
and listeners will come away from <i>Reservoir
13</i> thinking: ‘what is it I missed?’ Many a Christmas present will be left
half read and forgotten. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Make up your own mind.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2B250B/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01N2B250B&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=ee13128030dc38f0d163f37aa9b46157" target="_blank">Reservoir 13</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-57762007048958806962018-02-16T17:14:00.004+00:002018-02-16T18:32:32.586+00:00The Rooster Bar by John Grisham<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">read by Ari Fliakos</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
Grisham is a long-time favourite of AudioBooksReview. He has
the enviable talent of whetting the appetite, getting the juices flowing and
then delivering something arguably unsubstantial but generally satisfying to consume
and mull over in retrospect.<br />
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51t%2BhfS7LWL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51t%2BhfS7LWL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Characterisation might be a little thin (two of
the protagonists of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071YT2VNX/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071YT2VNX&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=45fcfc79734401191c009cbed7e01076" target="_blank">The Rooster Bar</a></i>,
Mark Frazier and Todd Lucero, are at times indistinguishable: something perhaps
substantiated by the bedmate they share, prosecutor Hadley Caviness), but the
story carries you along and, well, you just have to know how it all ends up. So
many books fail in their initial hooks and there are a fair few that, despite
rewinding and restarting, your reviewer has never heard further than the
opening twenty minutes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071YT2VNX/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071YT2VNX&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=45fcfc79734401191c009cbed7e01076" target="_blank">The Rooster Bar</a></i>
fulfils the Grisham promise.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Inspired by an article in American magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Atlantic</i>, Grisham’s new book
examines the for-profit legal education industry. These new establishments,
deemed educational and named ‘universities’, are part of a criminal cohort now
plying their cynical trade in England too. In England, annual fees of just
under £10,000 are charged by former polytechnics and greedy new colleges, just
like older varsities, but which cannot be said to offer anything like a
comparable education or qualification. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071YT2VNX/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071YT2VNX&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=45fcfc79734401191c009cbed7e01076" target="_blank">The Rooster Bar</a></i>,
Mark Frazier, Todd Lucero and Zola Maal are third-year law students, deep in
debt, facing their final term at Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington, DC: a prestigious
location, but more dedicated to profit than to learning. Friend and classmate
Gordy Tanner has convinced himself of the educational conspiracy whereby law
schools admit unqualified students so as to profit from their student loans. Moreover,
Foggy Bottom’s owner, a Wall Street lawyer, also has links to one of the banks that
specialises in lending to students. Gordy’s discovery tips the balance of his
frayed nerves and he jumps off the Arlington Memorial Bridge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The students, routinely harassed by the banks lending them
the money to study, and troubled by their friend’s suicide, eventually decide that
enough is enough. They drop out of classes, assume new identities and, with the
Rooster Bar as their business address, trawl the lower courts, ambulance
chasing, picking up desperate clients for traffic violations and the like so
they can practise law without a licence <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">–
</span>a felony, they reassure themselves, rather than a misdemeanour, but
lucrative work and they are learning law on the job, so to speak.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Bookmark_1"></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, it all goes right until it doesn’t, with a few
unhappy clients and their own creditors starting to close in. A class action,
with thousands of complainants who apparently don’t need to be verified to
share in a multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement, is the climactic
clincher: debts wiped out, money in the bank (lots), early retirement in a warm
place with new identities. What could go wrong?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Grisham’s simple morality tales of Davids and Goliaths
rarely fail to satisfy. The protagonists might be a trifle two dimensional, but
the yarns are entertaining yarns and feed the imagination with plenty of the
magical ‘what ifs’ of popular fiction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Can’t wait for next year’s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">* * * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Buy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071YT2VNX/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B071YT2VNX&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=45fcfc79734401191c009cbed7e01076" target="_blank">The Rooster Bar</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-52649886782347809872018-02-16T17:11:00.002+00:002018-02-16T18:26:13.678+00:00Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="color: red;">read by J. D. Vance</span></b></span><br />
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Anyone looking for an explanation of why poor white
working-class Americans voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 US election will be
disappointed by J. D. Vance’s bestselling autobiography. It is a classic American
rags to riches tale of social opposites and is slated for Hollywood endorsement
in the glory days of the Trump first term. </div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51hS7Xh%2BIcL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51hS7Xh%2BIcL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a>But it does not explain how the American
poor came to believe Trump’s promises or could possible identify with a man who
inherited his wealth from his father, avoided conscription to the war in
Vietnam and allegedly employed cruel and bullying tactics to harass
rent-controlled tenants from a building he wanted to redevelop overlooking New
York’s Central Park.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Vance, a Yale law school-educated investment manager, who
has espoused Republican values with a vengeance, rather like the alcoholic who becomes
a proselytising teetotaller, gives us his special take on the family and people
he has left far behind, the so-called hillbillies of the Appalachian Mountains,
and charts the highs and lows of his early life and the lives of his absent
father and his substance-abusing mother. His childhood and adolescence are
startlingly similar to those of that Californian hillbilly the late Charlie Manson.
Vance credits his ability to move away from his roots to the relative stability
of his grandmother Mamaw, and a certain amount of luck.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With his wife Usha, Vance is now on the other side of the
tracks, and his antipathy and disdain for the so-called ‘Welfare Queens’, the
recipients of welfare who have been the enemies of Republicans since the days
of Ronald Reagan, is uncompromising. Of those on welfare, he recalls, ‘I could
never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government
largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.’ <o:p></o:p></div>
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Vance himself was helped first (and probably most) by
joining the marines, in a military much less class based than the British, and
then by government loans. From the comfort of his now moneyed life, Vance is
able to share the uncomprehending anger he has instinctively felt in his new
life, particularly with regard to his wife, details of whose background he
chooses not to share with his readers, and episodes such as when he spits out
Italian sparkling water at a formal dinner, thinking he had been given,
possibly unkindly, something unspeakable to drink.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is not difficult to understand quite why this book has
become so garlanded: it seems to confirm everyone’s prejudices, left and right,
liberal and conservative. And the sad fact is that little will change in the
USA, with the rich getting more and the poor losing more, until everything
comes to a breaking point and dissatisfaction with the status quo leads to riot
and revolution: Manson’s oh so prescient ‘Helter Skelter’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>* * *</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
© copyright 2018 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
</span><br />
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LT8O96W/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01LT8O96W&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=0dfd7ac5f4daf2374845fd9001e40769" target="_blank">Hillbilly Elegy</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-58200918471605089342017-07-27T15:30:00.000+01:002018-02-16T18:32:58.314+00:00Camino Island by John Grisham<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">read by January LaVoy</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Grisham can usually be relied upon to deliver the goods: instantly fascinating setting; troubled yet sympathetic protagonist; nasty (generally corporate) villain;
unforeseen plot twist; satisfying dénouement. He is a consummate storyteller, even if the prose can be undistinguished. He certainly keeps the listener wanting to learn more (so many audiobooks fall flat within minutes).<br />
<br />
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</div>
<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ekg6uclWL._SS160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ekg6uclWL._SX431_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="276" /></a>Unfortunately, with <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WP39XTC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B06WP39XTC&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=4347b9f317dcb9d25019d57dd088ad32" target="_blank">Camino Island</a></i>, the ‘Author’s Note’ reveals Grisham’s flaw: ‘I learned with my
first novel that writing books is far easier than selling them … I know nothing about
the retail side of the business’. He should really stick to what he demonstrably
knows a great deal about: the law. In <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WP39XTC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B06WP39XTC&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=4347b9f317dcb9d25019d57dd088ad32" target="_blank">Camino Island</a></i>, plot and characters really don’t convince. For this listener, his familiarity with academics, university libraries, rare books and even fellow novelists doesn’t ring quite true.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Grisham’s characters often have a ton of good fortune. Rare
book dealer Bruce Cable is no exception. He starts out with money and then discovers
that his late father had an enviable library of, mainly American, mainly twentieth-century,
first editions: items easy to overlook
as just a collection of second-hand books and a great tax dodge/money
laundering vehicle. He buys a bookshop in a tourist paradise and makes a huge
success of things: selling books, seducing authors on book signing tours,
adding to his collection of rare modern editions, getting for a song one of the
best old houses on the island and partnering a beautiful furniture dealer, an
expert in French antiques. Everything is so perfect you want to scream. But that, of course, is Grisham’s art. And his charm.</div>
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The theft of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s manuscripts from
Princeton University. And Bruce Cable’s inveigling into his deceptions of former
English professor cum novelist Mercer
Mann, who has been planted on Camino Island by private investigator Donna
Watson aka Elaine Shelby, the agent tracking down the priceless masterpieces … is sheer hokum. One comes away from <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WP39XTC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B06WP39XTC&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=4347b9f317dcb9d25019d57dd088ad32" target="_blank">Camino Island</a></i> reeling off the manifold gaping holes in the plot. But Grisham manages, every pothole notwithstanding, to
entertain until the very last word in the book.<br />
<br />
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<b><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"> * * * *</span></b> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
© copyright 2017 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Buy <o:p></o:p><i style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WP39XTC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B06WP39XTC&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21&linkId=4347b9f317dcb9d25019d57dd088ad32" target="_blank">Camino Island</a></i></div>
<br /></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-51658998432584179162017-04-30T14:59:00.000+01:002017-04-30T16:47:45.411+01:00Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><b><span style="color: red;">Read by Emily Rankin</span></b></span><br />
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<br />
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<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51dwh5UdxcL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51dwh5UdxcL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="133" /></a>Jennifer duBois showed her prodigious talent in her first
novel <i>A Partial History of Lost Causes</i>
(not published as an audiobook in the United Kingdom), making one think of
Donna Tartt, with her mesmerising prose. And <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0812995864/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0812995864&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3ECartwheel%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0812995864%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank"><i>Cartwheel</i></a> does have a tenuous
connection with Tartt’s monumental masterpiece <i>The Secret History</i>, centring as
it does on the murder of a university student.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unashamedly inspired by the story of Amanda Knox (‘loosely’ inspired, duBois claims in a brief epilogue), the murder in question moves from Italy to
Argentina, but the raw materials are all derived from Meredith Kercher, Amanda
Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, including the cartwheel of the title, which Amanda
Knox was widely reported to have performed at the police station after Meredith’s death (although Knox denied this, saying ‘I never did a cartwheel. I
did do the splits ... once’). The novel is not exploitative of the Knoxes and the Kerchers
very real traumas and grief. The events in Perugia are simply the spur that
pricked duBois’s unequalled talent for place, time, character, motivation,
voice, consequences. Lily Hayes is not Amanda Knox and Katy Kellers is not
Meredith Kercher. But all the unanswered questions of Perugia resurface in
<i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0812995864/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0812995864&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3ECartwheel%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0812995864%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">Cartwheel</a></i>. And, in this exceptional book, many of the same doubts still linger.<br />
<br />
Emily Rankin’s reading is seamless: not too tense or melodramatic: thoroughly engaged. And well worth a second or third listen. </div>
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Haunting. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * * *</span></div>
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© copyright 2017 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span><br />
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0812995864/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0812995864&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3ECartwheel%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0812995864%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">Cartwheel</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-62083754913050440222017-04-30T14:45:00.002+01:002017-10-21T19:58:42.609+01:00A Touch of Frost by R. D. Wingfield<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><b>BBC Radio 4 Full Cast Recording</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51jGVAFI6WL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51jGVAFI6WL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a>Although best known now for the ITV series which ran from
the early 1990s to the 2010s starring David Jason,
Detective Inspector Jack Frost was the
main protagonist in a gritty novel, rejected by publishers Macmillan in
1972, that R. D. Wingfield turned into a radio drama for BBC Radio 4. Currently unavailable, <i>Three Days of Frost</i>
saw the Inspector investigating child abuse and murder in a city named Denton –
a provincial locale in the grimy nowhere of the north of England. In 1982,
Frost reappeared in A Touch of Frost, and a legend was created.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Starring Derek Martin as Frost, with Haydn Wood, Stephen
Thorne and Alan Dudley, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MZ0N196/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01MZ0N196&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EA%20Touch%20of%20Frost%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01MZ0N196%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">A Touch of Frost</a></i> is very much of its time in terms of
attitudes to, for example, Women Police Constables (as they were referred to
then), women in general, and teenagers and their parents. But the
writing is first class, full of psychological tension, gritty reality and palpable despair. Despite working on cases involving a multiple rapist, a sleazy and corrupt club owner and the
distraught parents of a runaway schoolgirl, Frost gets his man in the end. He even gets his paperwork in on time – just. But not, of course, without alienating his colleagues and superiors.<br />
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Running to only just under 90 minutes, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MZ0N196/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01MZ0N196&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EA%20Touch%20of%20Frost%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01MZ0N196%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">A Touch of Frost</a></i> is a perfect way to while
away a tedious car journey and it leaves you wishing that more of Wingfield’s
work could be made available from the BBC Radio Archive.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Masterly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * *</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2017 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MZ0N196/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01MZ0N196&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EA%20Touch%20of%20Frost%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01MZ0N196%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">A Touch of Frost</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-58741448856839568312017-04-30T13:57:00.003+01:002017-04-30T16:35:31.566+01:00John Wyndham: BBC Radio Drama Collection<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><b><span style="color: red;">Six Full Cast Classic BBC Radio Dramatisations</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
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Lightly dismissed as ‘middle-class catastrophes’ and ‘cosy
disasters’, John Wyndham’s novels, written chiefly in the 1950s and 1960s, are
still chillingly shocking and disturbing dramas that make the reader question
what we, as humans, are doing to our planet and, crucially, whether we are
alone in the vastness of those universes beyond our own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61ajRkyZsQL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61ajRkyZsQL._AA300_.jpg" width="320" /></a><i>The Day of the Triffids</i>, <i>The Kraken Wakes</i> and <i>The Midwich
Cuckoos</i> are probably read less now than at any time in their publishing
history (although it is interesting to see that H. G. Wells’ <i>War of the Worlds</i>
is currently on one GCSE English Literature syllabus). Wyndham’s novels are,
perhaps, ‘an easy read’, but much of their appeal is the way he turns upside down a tranquil world where
the last thing on people’s minds is the thought that anything could prevent
life from continuing as it had done since the turmoil and upheaval of the
protracted end to the Second World War.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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These BBC radio dramatisations are enjoyable first of all
for the retelling of the novels, but then for the insight we are given into the
radio writers, actors, producers and audiences at the time of the original
broadcasts. The accents of the lead actors in <i>The Day of the Triffids</i>,
for example – Gary Watson, who made his name in countless
television dramas, and Barbara Shelley, famous for her Hammer
Film roles (playing Bill Masen and Josella Playton) – sound to modern ears frightfully cut glass.
Few actors today would even attempt such accents, but they are perfect for this
post-war apocalypse (dramatised by BBC radio drama pioneer Giles Cooper and
first broadcast in 1968). But that is part of the appeal of this collection.</div>
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A fascinating feature of <i>The Day of the Triffids</i> is that
the transcriptions are episodes shortened for sale to foreign
broadcasters, most of whom needed time for commercials. Anything deemed ‘inappropriate’
for a overseas audience was routinely cut. Twelve minutes of the deleted
material is included here on the final CD of <i>Triffids</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of the other broadcasts, <i>The Kraken Wakes</i>, from 1998, is
rather prescient in the light of the rise in sea levels through global warming.
As the Thames breaks its banks and then submerges the Houses of Parliament, the
listener is left realising that this modern-day Noah’s Flood is perhaps not so
far-fetched.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Chocky</i> (from 1998) is fascinating, as a schoolboy
communicates with an entity from the future, a ‘girl’ (although there is only
one gender on her planet) who is trying to impart the secrets of an energy
source that will save the Earth from eventual destruction. Fables of Nikola
Tesla’s inventions and conspiracy theories that the petro-chemical industry in
the USA tried to interfere with work on the electric car all spring to mind as
twelve-year-old Matthew is kidnapped, hypnotised and threatened when it is revealed
that he may be the conduit for a new science emanating from a different world. The dramatisation is gripping and absorbing and John
Constable’s script is excellent, building as it does to its inevitable
denouement. John Tydeman produced a
version for BBC Radio in 1967; it would be great to be able to hear that
version too.</div>
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Perhaps the best of the six here is Dan Rebellato’s 2003
production of <i>The Midwich Cuckoos</i> (again, there was an earlier version by
William Ingram). Bill Nighy and Sarah Parish are perfect as Richard and Janet,
who are fortunate enough to stay away from the village of Midwich on the night
when all the women, young and old, married and single, find themselves ‘with
child’. Controversial for its time, and disturbing still today, issues of
abortion, eugenics and egg-sharing are not far from the surface of this
intriguing and disturbing mystery, displaying just how current Wyndham still is
in the second decade of the twenty-first century.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Essential. </div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>* * * * *</b></span> <o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2017 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785295713/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1785295713&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EJohn%20Wyndham%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1785295713" target="_blank">John Wyndham: BBC Radio Drama Collection</a><span id="goog_1131628525"></span></i><br />
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<i><a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61ajRkyZsQL._AA300_.jpg" target="_blank"><br /></a></i></div>
<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-63704693429334714572017-04-30T13:36:00.000+01:002017-04-30T15:24:24.692+01:00The Cinderella Killer by Simon Brett<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b>Dramatised by Jeremy Front: BBC Radio 4 </b></span><b style="color: red;">Full</b><b style="color: red;"> Cast Recording</b></div>
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If you have never treated yourself to one of Simon Brett’s
Charles Paris creations you have missed out on a good many hours of sheer
pleasure. Bill Nighy is perfect as actor Charles Paris, perhaps just
beyond his best days, struggling with ex-wife Frances (Suzanne Burden) and the
always-busy-with-more-famous-clients agent Maurice (Jon Glover). ‘Hi-ho, the glamorous life!’ as Stephen
Sondheim famously puts it in ‘A Little Night Music’.</div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Gpta7YT1L._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Gpta7YT1L._AA300_.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
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Whether it is in the television or radio studio, but much
more probably in provincial rep., Paris always seems to find himself in the
middle of intrigue and murder, often mirroring the plot of the plays in which
he manages to land a part.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2USERI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01N2USERI&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EThe%20Cinderella%20Killer%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01N2USERI%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">The Cinderella Killer</a></i>, Paris tries his hand at provincial
panto, having suffered as a department store Santa the nastiness of children
grabbing his beard, poking his stomach and micturating as they sit on his lap.
Surely, Maurice can find something more befitting his prodigious thespian
talents and lengthy résumé. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But panto is better than nothing and Charles is soon glad-handing old mates and finding drinking buddies with new best friends.
Meanwhile, things are going better with his ex and he is even making the
late-night train back to town rather than staying in off-season lodgings with a
dodgy seaside landlady. However, murder and
intrigue are never far away. Actors are an unforgiving lot, and what with
stage-door groupies and an American TV actor with a questionable history,
Kensington Gore (out of place at panto time, surely) soon turns into the real
thing.</div>
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This is BBC radio at its best: two hours of drama, suspense
and good old dry wit worth visiting and revisiting many a time and oft. Why
Bill Nighy hasn’t been knighted is a mystery. Likewise, Simon Brett, a comic
genius up there with Waugh and Wodehouse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unsurpassed. (Until the next one.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * * *</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2017 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.</div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2USERI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01N2USERI&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EThe%20Cinderella%20Killer%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01N2USERI%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">The Cinderella Killer</a></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-26978286666995979322016-12-10T20:04:00.002+00:002016-12-11T08:49:22.388+00:00Dracula by Bram Stoker<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: red;"><b>Adapted and dramatised by Liz Lochhead, with Ellie Beaven, Rebecca Callard, Tom Hiddleston and David
Suchet</b></span></span><br />
<br />
There is no denying the lasting power of Bram Stoker’s tale
of the evil that is Count Dracula. The Count’s plan to move from his homeland
in Transylvania to England and to become a member of Victorian English
aristocracy is familiar through film and television and displays, perhaps, the cultural gulf between Eastern Europe and Western Europe still evident today.<br />
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<br />
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<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/513DxAoegjL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/513DxAoegjL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" /></a>Like many literary classics, few people in the twenty-first
century have the time and patience to read the original, preferring to digest
others’ versions and adaptations. Appearing in print in 1897, Stoker’s prose is
not the greatest writing of the time from the pen of an Irishman, but it is
better than that of some more contemporary authors who write tales of the <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">‘</span>Un-dead<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span> (Stoker’s
original title for the novel).<br />
<br />
Noteworthy is the epistolary method of
story-telling, using letters and diaries, which works exceptionally well given the
story-line: Jonathan Harker is confined in the Count’s
castle and, unable to send or receive letters, keeps a written account of his
journey and of his time with the Count. The exchange of letters between the
other characters, ships’ logs and newspaper clippings drive the story on and
perhaps reveal more about the protagonists’ inner thoughts than might more
conventional writing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It also make <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01KU5MC5A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01KU5MC5A&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21" target="_blank">Dracula</a></i>
perfect for radio, and this BBC World Service dramatisation, judiciously
abridged and adapted for the medium, is a rare triumph and well worth two hours
of anyone’s time. Stereo makes the whole thing come very much alive (if that
isn’t too great an irony) and the performances are exemplary. David Suchet’s
Dracula is spine-chilling, mixing aristocratic disdain with psychopathic
superciliousness. Ellie Beaven (Mina) and Rebecca Callard (Lucy) provide just
the right amount of flirtatiousness and suppressed eroticism, and Tom
Hiddleston (Jonathan Harker) is perfect as the straight-laced and hugely naive
country solicitor. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Whilst the lengthy original certainly repays perseverance,
the BBC’s Dracula provides an intense and very palpable sense of menace in the
figure of one of the first stalkers in literature and his merciless pursuit of victims to feed his insatiable appetites.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Superb.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">© copyright 2016 </span><a href="http://www.audiobooksreview.co.uk/" style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">AudioBooksReview</a><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">. All rights reserved.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01KU5MC5A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01KU5MC5A&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21" target="_blank">Dracula</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-46661993598086588482016-12-10T20:02:00.004+00:002016-12-10T21:49:34.211+00:00Agatha Christie, Close-Up<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">Four BBC Radio documentaries about the Queen of Crime<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, was a curiously private
person and, despite living until 1976, very few recordings of her discussing
her work have survived: she was from a very different time indeed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51h7nPusfML._SY498_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51h7nPusfML._SY498_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="320" /></a>In this remarkable audiobook, the BBC has brought together
four radio programmes about Christie the woman, the writer and the phenomenon.
For she captivated and fascinated a loyal readership from the very first
detective novel, <i>The Mysterious Affair at
Styles</i>, which she published in 1920, right up to the present day, almost one hundred years later. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The characters she created, including Hercule Poirot and
Miss Marple, to name just two, and her stories and plays, are just as much in
demand today as they ever were: still in print, but also on the small and silver screens, and still
regularly in amateur and professional theatre companies in the provinces and in the West End. She really is a truly singular literary
phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because so little exists of recordings of Christie, some of
the material in these programmes is heard more than once. But that matters not
a jot. Each programme tells a different part of her extraordinary story, with
contributions from, amongst many others, Richard Attenborough, Allen Lane,
Marghanita Laski, Cliff Michelmore, A. L. Rowse and Nigel Stock. The programmes
range in date from 1955 (for the Light Programme) to 1975 and 1982, with a new
contribution for Radio 4 Extra produced by Peter Reed in 2015/16, and will
delight any Christie devotee, of which there are many all over the
world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A perfect Christmas gift for aficionados of Agatha Christie, one interesting feature to note is the changing voice of the BBC – or rather the changing accent of the BBC. Vanished now is received pronunciation, or RP – the educated voice of the privileged Home counties. How differently people speak today compared with the 1950s, 60s and 70s: even actors, broadcasters and other professionals. Does no one speak that way any more? And what, one wonders, will things be like in another fifty years?<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Indispensable.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2016 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.</div>
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Buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785295128/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1785295128&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21" target="_blank">Agatha Christie, Close-Up</a></i><br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-17328606682970961912016-07-06T18:15:00.000+01:002016-07-07T17:07:48.648+01:00The Girls by Emma Cline<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">read by Cady McClain</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iJ3dGKRwL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iJ3dGKRwL._AA300_.jpg" /></a><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EZ3ECH4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01EZ3ECH4&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EThe%20Girls%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01EZ3ECH4%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">The Girls</a></i> has
achieved a startling and almost unprecedented amount of attention in all media
for its author Emma Cline – as well as an enviable advance, which, judging from
the print and radio reviews that have so far appeared, should pay royally for
the publishers’ three-book deal. It also was pirated online on publication day,
which might be a further measure of its notoriety and success.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
With the Manson murders now
almost fifty years ago (1969) and the recent release on parole of Leslie Van
Houten, one of the many convicted of complicity in the senseless and brutal
Tate–La Bianca murders, much can only be expected in the next few years to
recount the goings-on of the Family and Charlie Manson at Spahn Ranch, in the
Hollywood Hills. Fire consumed the ranch fairly soon after the Manson trials,
which might otherwise have been turned into a tourist destination. Many of
those convicted are dead. Manson enjoys a cultish following, complete with
website selling t shirts, music and ‘memorabilia’. The late Vincent Bugliosi’s
account of his part in bringing Manson to justice remains a fascinating record
of the LAPD at the time and of the sixties judicial system in the USA. It is a masterpiece
in its own right and repays a close listen in the outstanding audiobook version
read by Scott Brick.</div>
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So the only question
remains might be why it took so long to turn the stories, especially the
stories of Manson’s loyal ‘girls’ into fiction. There have been a number of
mainly ghost-written accounts of life at Spahn by a few of the people who hung
out there, including some of those convicted and imprisoned. But <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EZ3ECH4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01EZ3ECH4&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EThe%20Girls%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01EZ3ECH4%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">The Girls</a></i> is arguably the first fully to
exploit the possibilities. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And although the book makes
for a compelling listen, I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about. As YA
fiction it ticks all those stereotypical boxes. But haven’t others done this
before? And better? Robin Wasserman’s <i>Girls on Fire</i>, for example, is more convincing, scarier,
more visceral. Alison Umminger’s <i>My Favourite Manson Girl</i>
is, I think, pithier and better written.<br />
<br />
I hesitate over the creation of ‘Russell’
– the Charles Manson character. ‘Russell’ lacks the common quasi-friendly
feeling of a Charles or a Charlie (think Chaplin and <i>his</i> girls). And so much is significant in the hint that Charlie was
Christ, the son of God, of Man – Man’s Son – that ‘Russell’ just doesn’t even
slightly hint at. I know this is fiction. But the cult idea and Russell’s
musical ambitions, his way of making the most of anyone with the slightest
influence or connection with fame, stardom and its inherent wealth are well
exploited in <i>The Girls</i>. But, despite
his depiction as a guitarist and his deep yearning for a recording contract,
where is the music in the book? Where are the racial elements, the Bible, the obsession
with others musicians’ lyrics? What is missing is some kind of helter skelter.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Cline’s prose has been
praised. And there are fine passages. The fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd, with all
her adolescent angst and desperation is good. But the middle-aged Evie is no
monster: her links with the murders are third hand, her love for Susanna
unconvincing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What
we were led to believe was an American masterpiece is oddly unsatisfying and
ultimately a disappointment. There is a fine book waiting to burst out from the
raw bones of this novel, but I believe a good editor should have told the
author to go back and make more of some great material. It could have been a
work that would have stayed the test of time. As it is, I fear it will be
easily eclipsed by all those other authors looking to build on the allure of
a cult and the ghastly reverberations of a society that produced Charles
Manson’s Family.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* *</span></b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
© copyright 2016 <a href="http://www.audiobooksreview.co.uk/" target="_blank">AudioBooksReview</a>. All rights reserved.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Buy <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EZ3ECH4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01EZ3ECH4&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EThe%20Girls%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01EZ3ECH4%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">The Girls</a></i></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-23586862732838006842016-06-21T18:25:00.000+01:002016-06-21T22:23:04.167+01:00A Sealed Fate by Lisa Gordon<div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.714285em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"><b>read by Lisa Gordon</b></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Lisa Gordon’s novel is a fine example of the
storyteller’s art. She creates characters, situations and atmosphere that draw
you in and make you hungry to discover exactly where the story is going. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Ranging from
South Africa to London, most of the action takes place in Dubai, and the
combination of wealth, glitzy nightspots, drugs and unusual deaths keep you
guessing from start to finish.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61Ys2hmCJiL._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61Ys2hmCJiL._AA300_.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Valda is a singer, escaping from a long-term relationship that has just ended - by taking a well-paid gig at a nightclub and restaurant in Dubai. Her feisty self-confidence and instinctive independence make her highly suspicious of the nightclub’s owner, the fabulously wealthy Sheikh Abdullah. He asks her first to do some ‘shopping’ for him: something for ‘sciatica relief’ from an out of the way health store in Cape Town. After a nerve-wracking initial journey to locate the shop, and a preliminary look around, she finally screws up the courage to buy the ‘medicine’, which turns out to be white powder that she guesses must be cocaine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Ever resourceful, she disguises the stuff as a
gift, complete with ribbon, and finds some dog repellent to throw the drug-
sniffing canines off the scent on her return flight to Dubai. The Sheikh shows
his gratitude by installing Valda in one of his swish apartments and giving her
an extravagant sports car. Meanwhile, someone keeps sending her clippings from
old newspapers describing suspicious deaths and disappearances of ex-pats in
Dubai.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Helped by a new
friend Lara, Valda still has a few more crises to weather before she can escape
the increasingly dangerous world she now inhabits. And there are many twists
and unexpected turns before the startling, unanticipated denouement.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Lisa Gordon’s
South African accent is perfect for this tale - a refreshing change from
British or American English - and she reads like a real pro (though her British
regional accents might do with some coaching). Notwithstanding, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01FUKUIAG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01FUKUIAG&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EA%20Sealed%20Fate%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01FUKUIAG%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">A Sealed Fate</a></i>
is a fast and furious and intriguing ride. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Highly recommended.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>* * * * *</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.55pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">© copyright 2016 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;">Buy <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01FUKUIAG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01FUKUIAG&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21%22%3EA%20Sealed%20Fate%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=audiobooksreview-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B01FUKUIAG%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;" target="_blank">A Sealed Fate</a></i> </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-85693691888958325952016-04-08T09:41:00.001+01:002016-04-08T14:21:32.407+01:00Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">read by Patrick Dickson</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Apart from the plays of Ibsen and Chekov, which for some
reason have always been part of the so-called canon of English literature,
readers whose first language is English are not too keen on translations from
other tongues. And this is rarely because we can easily read them in the
original. Much Greek and Latin writing is unfamiliar to modern readers, let
alone the <i>Decameron</i> or the <i>Divine Comedy</i>. <i>Crime and Punishment</i>, <i>Dr
Zhivago</i>, <i>Don Quixote</i> and a few
others (the Bible, for example) might be exceptions, but English versions of
writers in other languages are, comparatively speaking, few and often centuries
between. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612URA9CRTL._SL300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612URA9CRTL._SL300_.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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Victor Hugo’s novels and short stories are little known except
in different media, such as the phenomenally successful ‘Les Mis’ or the stage,
feature film and cartoon versions of <i>The
Hunchback of Notre Dame</i>. So it is a treat to hear Hugo’s <i>Toilers of the Sea</i>, a tale that has been
filmed many times but deserves to be read or listened to in this exceptional
audiobook by Patrick Dickson.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Dickson has used the nineteenth-century translation by William
Moy Thomas, which shows its age on the printed page but is cleverly brought up
to date in Dickson’s abridgement. He has cut the digressions and kept the
grist, telling this sad tale of greed, courage, longing and disappointment
splendidly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Set in the small French-speaking community of the Isle of
Guernsey, the story concentrates on the shipping business in the years after
the Napoleonic Wars. A sailor by the name of Gilliatt convinces himself that one
of the village girls, Deruchette, the niece of Mess Lethierry, a local ship
owner, is interested in him romantically. Gilliatt says nothing, but keeps his
eye on the girl and woos her with his plaintive bagpipes. When Lethierry’s ship
is wrecked on a reef, Deruchette unexpectedly promises to marry whoever can
salvage the ship’s steam engine, a piece of state of the art technology
signifying the encroaching industrial age. Gilliatt volunteers to undertake the
Herculean task of salvage, and the tale describes in detail the trials and
tribulations of the mission. He is driven by love, so overcomes all odds, including
a famous encounter with a giant octopus, one of the most famous parts of the
story: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #c00000;">‘Gilliatt recoiled; but he had scarcely power to move! He
was, as it were, nailed to the place. With his left hand, which was disengaged,
he seized his knife, which he still held between his teeth, and with that hand,
holding the knife, he supported himself against the rocks, while he made a
desperate effort to withdraw his arm. He succeeded only in disturbing his
persecutor, which wound itself still tighter. It was supple as leather, strong
as steel, cold as night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #c00000;">A second form, sharp, elongated, and narrow, issued out
of the crevice, like a tongue out of monstrous jaws. It seemed to lick his
naked body. Then suddenly stretching out, it became longer and thinner, as it
crept over his skin, and wound itself round him. At the same time a terrible
sense of pain, comparable to nothing he had ever known, compelled all his
muscles to contract. He felt upon his skin a number of flat rounded points. It
seemed as if innumerable suckers had fastened to his flesh and were about to
drink his blood.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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An absorbing tale, full of atmosphere and suspense,
beautifully read, with a great range of characters and voices, this would make
a long car journey for a family audience enjoyable and rewarding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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The sound effects (seagulls) are effective and the music
(accordion, bagpipes and cello) is excellent, but by the end of the story you
feel they might, perhaps, have been used slightly less often. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21.56px;">* </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21.56px;">* </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21.56px;">* </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21.56px;">* </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21.56px;">*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">© copyright 2016 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px;">Buy </span></span><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0193XFBUI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B0193XFBUI&linkCode=as2&tag=audiobooksreview-21" target="_blank">Toilers of the Sea</a> </span></span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-5428808038000862092014-12-07T15:11:00.000+00:002014-12-07T15:11:36.008+00:00Aire By Lena Goldfinchread by Tara Millette<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-41386227687891724222014-12-07T10:00:00.000+00:002014-12-07T14:43:19.454+00:00Birthdays for the Dead by Stuart MacBride<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: red;">read by Ian
Hanmore</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">If you
like your crime dramas Scottish, grim and dark, and full of unspeakable horrors,
<i>Birthdays for the Dead</i> is as Scottish and shocking as you
can get.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SyzZNP6ML._SL300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SyzZNP6ML._SL300_.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Detective
Constable Ash Henderson is brutal, hard-nosed and very, very compromised. He
owes money to sadistic gangsters, lives in condemned social housing and does
not flinch in meting out his own kind of justice to get what he wants. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Five years ago, his
daughter, Rebecca, went missing, just before her thirteenth birthday. On the
anniversary of her abduction, a home-made card arrives with a Polaroid picture of
the girl, strapped to a chair, gagged and terrified. Every year there comes another card,
each one worse than the last.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This
serial killer has the tabloid moniker ‘The Birthday Boy’, and he has been taking young girls for twelve
years, always just before their thirteenth birthday, and sending the families cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death. Ash has concealed Rebecca</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">s cards from his ex-wife and
colleagues, because if they find out he will be taken off the case.
And he has vowed to let his daughter’s killer get everything that is coming to
them. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Criminal
psychologist Dr Alice MacDonald, with her curly brown hair, jeans and red
Converse Hi-tops, may want save his soul, but it’s one hell of a bumpy ride.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Stuart
MacBride’s writing is unceasingly violent and will not be to everyone’s taste, despite the apparent satire at its evil heart. But there is no denying that Ian Hanmore
manages to make <i>Birthdays for the Dead</i> a hugely diverting schlockfest
of Grand Guignol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * * </span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">©
copyright 2014 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Buy <i>Birthdays for the Dead</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-48954363811675757282014-12-07T09:56:00.000+00:002014-12-07T14:36:02.177+00:00Gray Mountain by John Grisham<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: red;">read by
Catherine Taber</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Grisham
must have been writing on autopilot this year. Or perhaps he has put the
franchise out to the highest bidder (as
apparently some blockbuster names now do), and just not bothered to read the
results, because <i>Gray Mountain</i> simply will not do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Once again
we have the plucky rookie lawyer opposing Corporate Big Law, which this time is
propping up good old American market forces capitalism in the form of the heartless
coal industry – wilfully ruining the environment, callously destroying communities
and families, and ruthlessly cheating, murdering, exploiting and enslaving.
Grisham’s knight in shining armour (or should that </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">be ‘armor’) coming</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to the rescue here is Samantha Kofer – progeny, you won’t be surprised, of successful and wealthy, but
divorced, DC lawyers – who is living the sweet life of a third-year associate
at one of New York’s largest law firms, and hating it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Needless
to say, having been ‘cardboard-boxed’ in the aftermath of the Leman Brothers bankruptcy
and forced to take an unpaid position in the Appalachian Mountains, she decides,
after an unavoidable fling with the brave, handsome and tenacious local lawyer,
to eschew the offer of status and riches in a start-up City law firm (phoenixed, somehow, from the ashes of US banking fraud), and stay on in Hillbilly
country to save Gray Mountain, fight the good fight and right every wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Catherine
Taber gives it her best, but the pace is slow, the characters two-dimensional,
the dialogue flat and the suspense criminally lacking. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Not one of
Grisham’s best, although that probably won’t stop it filling many a Christmas
stocking at the end of the year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">©
copyright 2014 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Buy <i>Gray
Mountain </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-13682959388244198732014-11-13T14:59:00.001+00:002014-12-12T15:03:05.281+00:00The Spire by William Golding<b><span style="color: red;">read by Benedict Cumberbatch</span></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">The
Spire</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> is a disturbing,
provocative and profound novel. Not a long read, but a book with a long emotional
and spiritual reach. And, like the spire itself, grounded perhaps less than firmly on earth but aspiring heavenwards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/617melJYJxL._SL300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/617melJYJxL._SL300_.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">The story
is simple, the message needing to be carefully teased out. It charts the decent into theological disorder and human madness of Jocelin, a cleric with the vision of a massive spire for his
cathedral. Consumed and motivated by hubris and pride, and tormented by demons of envy,
lust and despair, Jocelin brings social and psychological chaos to the claustrophobic community
of masons, workers and fellow clergy in his parish as he chides, bullies and
blackmails those around him to construct his monumental ‘bible in stone’. His
blind foolishness, said to parody that of the cleric responsible for the spire
at Salisbury, with its virtually non-existent foundations, is a metaphor for
faith, and faith</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">s doppelgänger, doubt, and provides a rewarding if unsettling listen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Jocelin is
a vain and poorly educated man, full of ambition and conceit, driven it would seem
more by his sense of his own self-importance than by care and concern for the
Church and its flock. He can barely read, let alone know anything as technical
as the mason’s art. He demands that his own image is displayed in stone on the
spire, while he mocks the lives of those below to whom he considers himself
superior, as if he is experiencing his own life on a higher spiritual plane. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">In so many
ways, this satire on the established church mirrors Golding</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> targets in his other
novels: taking a simple truth and stretching credulity to the far reaches of
mankind’s conceits. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">And
Benedict Cumberbatch’s commanding reading more than justifies the public
acclaim he currently enjoys. May he read many more such masterpieces.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * * </span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">©
copyright 2014 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Buy <i>The Spire</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-14670200756451517712014-11-13T14:56:00.000+00:002014-11-13T15:29:30.842+00:00A Dark Inheritance by Chris d’Lacey<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">read by Raphael Corkhill</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>UFiles #1: A Dark Inheritance </i>(Unicorne Files, Book 1)</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>A Dark Inheritance</i> is the first in a projected series
of young adult ‘fantastic fiction’ books from Chris d’Lacey, the author of seven
novels under the title <i>The Last Dragon Chronicles</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61o-rSFk1nL._SL300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61o-rSFk1nL._SL300_.jpg" /></a>There is a lot to enjoy in the twists and complexities of
the circumstances in which young Michael Malone finds himself following a chance
cliff-top encounter with a suicidal husky. From an ordinary schoolboy, Michael is audaciously transformed into someone with supernatural abilities and joins UNICORNE, which appears to be a covert organisation involved in investigating strange and paranormal phenomena.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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With a great dramatis personae – <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">‘</span>Mom<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">’</span> Darcy (placing the story in the USA, although much else feels decidedly
English); younger sister, Josie, (aged ten, who both doesn’t play the violin
and (in a parallel universe) is a virtuoso); prominent-cheekboned, au pair/ teacher/
martial artist Chantelle; goth schoolgirl Freya (who is dead and then undead); Amadeus Klimt, creepy head
of the covert organisation UNICORNE; and, of course, Michael.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Much in the book demands a re-read because the shifts in the
narrative make it difficult to know just what is true and then what is going
on in an alternative reality. Central to the story is the disappearance of
Michael’s father three years ago, and the first line of the story indicates
that that is unquestionably what the plot is going to reveal: ‘One day before I
began to wonder if my father was still alive.’ (Whether such syntax should be
encouraged in a book for adolescents is another matter entirely.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nonetheless, I feel sure <i>A Dark Inheritance</i> and its
successors will fill many a Christmas stocking, whether in paperback, on
kindle, or in the fabulous audiobook narrated by Raphael Corkhill, who manages
to bring all the characters to life (even the dead ones) and makes one want to listen through to the very end <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">– </span>and then to wish for further adventures still. I hope we will hear a great deal more from
this actor.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>* * * *</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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© copyright 2014 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy <i>A Dark Inheritance</i><o:p></o:p><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819960605162488879.post-84754713917732573892014-09-05T10:59:00.002+01:002014-12-07T14:16:58.047+00:00The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton <div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Q7rD1eu9L._SL300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Q7rD1eu9L._SL300_.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b><span style="color: red;">read by
Jessie Burton<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Beyond the
hype, there is so much in <i>The Miniaturist</i> to admire and enjoy that it would be
wrong to dwell too much on the few faults. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The setting and Gothic edge alone in
the opening pages of the novel are enough to urge the reader on: </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">it is 1686 and </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">a teenage
bride arrives at the grand house of her new merchant husband in </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">only to be met by
his oddly behaved sister and black manservant. Her husband is absent from the
house most days: abroad on business or spending perhaps too time with fellow merchants.
His reluctance for any intimacy with his young wife, too, raises questions. Rivalry,
envy and suspicion are rife, and life is firmly ruled by tradition, superstition and prejudice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">The
historical details – in particular, the miniature house (a ‘cabinet house’) at
the centre of the novel – are, it would seem, well researched and totally verifiable, and, thus, enchantingly intriguing. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some readers have complained at how the contemporary and the antique rub along badly within the novel and that the denouement has a decidedly postmodern feel.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The author’s reference, early on, for example, to ‘layabouts’, does jump
out of the page as particularly odd, as Burton struggles with
language ancient and modern to find her voice. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
such sour grapes cannot detract from what is a remarkable read and from someone
who is clearly destined for even greater things. As an actor, the author brings
much to the reading of her novel, and </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Miniaturist </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cannot be recommended highly
enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">* * * *</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">©
copyright 2014 AudioBooksReview. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Buy <i>The
Miniaturist</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com