Margaret H. Willison

A great beginning to an excellent series

Reviewed: 08-05-23

When it comes to mysteries, I can be hard to please. I like some of the aspects that make them cozy— knowing we’ll get a clear resolution at the end, a charming setting, lovable characters I want to spend time with again— but I still want the real tension of a mystery. I do not want a book with muffin recipes in it. Then, on the flip side, I need the mystery to be a little grounded, and I like the characters to be decent people (by and large), and I want them to be grappling with issues that are to scale. I do not want, for example, Louise Penny’s situation where the majority of the characters are in some degree of psychic anguish and eventually her average detective is going to be taking on a nationwide terrorist conspiracy.

I’ve now listened to five of these books and they’ve threaded my needle perfectly each time. I love the setting and the characters, they have enough psychological complexity to feel truly real while also being very decent, even when royalty is involved, things feel to scale, and I’m so invested in their continuing story. And, not for nothing, the mystery plotting is pretty darn crackerjack. If you like muffin mysteries OR Louise Penny, I think you’ll really like this. If you liked the early Maisie Dobbs books, you’ll love it. But, better yet, if you almost but not quite loved those and want something somewhere in between all of them, this series may be exactly what you need.

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Strong mysteries & stronger characters

Reviewed: 08-05-23

It’s such a pleasure to find a mystery series where the returns do not diminish sharply as you go through. My only complaint is they aren’t being published fast enough, I’m so greedy for more!

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As a mystery, this is bad

Reviewed: 06-17-23

As Austen pastiche, it is tolerable. I may be tempted to consume the inevitable third book, but I don’t have high hopes for it.

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Witty, informative, and PERFECTLY narrated

Reviewed: 07-19-17

If the subject of Batman & the ride of nerd culture holds even cursory appeal for you, do yourself a favor and download this book immediately. It's so smart and informative while also being extremely funny and expertly, engagingly narrated.

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Very much a middle book

Reviewed: 06-11-15

Tim Curry's narration of these books is great-- such a good match between material and vocal style. The story is excellent and it introduces a lot of fascinating concepts but it's not very self-contained-- without reading Sabriel and Abhorsen, too, it's hard to imagine connecting with this one.

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Implausible but relatively fun

Reviewed: 06-10-15

Not in love with the vocal performance on this one-- Archer affects a kind of breathy voice that, in conjunction with Rayburn's iffy plotting and worse dialogue, make Lady Julia seem like kind of a dimwit. I might like these better if they were plain romances-- as a mystery, they leave something to be desired. BUT you could do worse!

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Simon Vance is the best

Reviewed: 04-21-15

The Sherlock Holmes stories are terrifically well-suited to the audiobook format and no one in the world is better at narrating them than Simon Vance.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent narration, charming but dated story

Reviewed: 04-20-15

I love Josephine Tey and dearly wish more than three of her books were available on Audible. Of the three here, this is my least favorite. Carol Boyd's vocal performance is just to my taste-- enough to give the whole work color, but never sounding belabored. The story, though, trades in a lot of era-appropriate but gross-to-my-modern-ears classism and slut-shaming that definitely diminishes my appreciation of this otherwise solid Tey novel. The mystery is also solved more by chance and less by the characters' actions. So, worth owning for the Tey completist, very well-narrated, but not the place I would start with her work. Go for Brat Farrar first.

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12 people found this helpful

Utterly charming contemporary romance!

Reviewed: 04-11-15

This book was great fun-- two leads, both well-developed, with obvious chemistry and realistic emotional obstacles keeping them apart. I can't wait to read more Melanie Greene!

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3 people found this helpful