Brat Farrar Audiobook By Josephine Tey cover art

Brat Farrar

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Brat Farrar

By: Josephine Tey
Narrated by: Carole Boyd
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.47

Buy for $20.47

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family’s sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick’s mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick’s early life, up to his 13th year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that threaten to jeopardise the imposter’s plan and his very life.

©1949 The National Trust (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Police Procedural Suspense Mystery Fiction
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Brat Farrar

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,462
  • 4 Stars
    897
  • 3 Stars
    374
  • 2 Stars
    74
  • 1 Stars
    43
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,705
  • 4 Stars
    629
  • 3 Stars
    171
  • 2 Stars
    33
  • 1 Stars
    24
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,308
  • 4 Stars
    784
  • 3 Stars
    356
  • 2 Stars
    73
  • 1 Stars
    37

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great book

Very good book! I would highly recommend it! story,writing,and reader are all fabulous. if you enjoy mystery books with a happy ending you will love this book. it is beautifully written with a hint of humor.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Clarity of Mind

Perhaps because of her more modest output—eight novels, compared to Sayers’ twelve, Marsh’s thirty-two and Christie’s seventy-three—most of us don’t include Josephine Tey in the charmed inner circle of writers from the Golden Age of English Mystery. But she deserves a niche.

Her work stands apart from those other masters in more than mere tonnage. In the case of Brat Farrar, the very shape of the story came as something new. And I learned a lot about horses, too.

In many mysteries, you can almost sense the first big break and the final red herring. Admittedly, that’s part of the enjoyment; just as a song can sound incomplete without a bridge, a mystery without the chapter where all the leads have gone cold might disappoint.

But in Brat Farrar those cozy expectations are turned on their collective head. I can’t say any more without spoiling the story, so I’ll leave it to Peter Hitchens to sum up Tey’s virtues:

“Josephine Tey’s clarity of mind, and her loathing of fakes and of propaganda, are like pure, cold spring water in a weary land. Her story-telling ability is apparently effortless, and therefore you may be sure it was the fruit of great hard work. (As Ernest Hemingway said, ‘if it reads easy, that is because it was writ hard’.) But what she loves above all is to show that things are very often not what they seem to be, that we are too easily fooled, that ready acceptance of conventional wisdom is not just dangerous, but a result of laziness, incuriosity and of a resistance to reason.”

And, as if that wasn’t enough, our reader here, Carole Boyd, is simply superb. Her performance is as effortless as the prose she’s reading, and as spot-on as if she’d written the words herself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A truly rich and engaging story

I read "Daughter of Time" many years ago, and it was great, but I quickly forgot about the author. Seeing this classic, about which I knew nothing, offered as a 2-for-1 sale, intrigued me, particularly after listening to Carole Boyd's narration sample. Now I am SO pleased to have listened to this book! It's a wonderful example of British Manor House life, toward the end of the era, and the not-so-stuffy gentry who live it. The narration is superb, the mystery is engaging and the dialogue in turns warm and acerbic. There is plenty of wit, the characters are clearly and cleanly fleshed-out, and the writing is simply as good as it gets.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Abrupt ending

I really enjoyed this story and all the characters very much. The ending however was a bit anticlimactic and a bit abrupt.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Old school mystery

Any additional comments?

Loved this book. The narrator was an absolute pleasure to listen to, and was able to switch back and forth effortlessly between voices. The story is one I've never read before, and given that I'm a British mystery fan, I'm surprised at myself!

Beautifully paced, the story involves a tried and true twin-switcheroo scam, along with horses (I loved the horse scenes!), and a sedate love story. Loved the character development and fell in love with Bea and Brat.

Highly recommend this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Brat Farrar

Spend the credit. Excellent in its character-driven plot. None of my ubiquitous frustrations with listening. Could not stop listening until its last chapter. Deeply satisfying listen.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Not the same ol' like I thought it would be!

Any additional comments?

I thought this was going to be similar to the Importance of being Ernest, but it was far from it! Well written, descriptive details about each character. Nice plot and the story flowed easily, no unnecessary gobbilty gook! Good story, I liked it! Great reader!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

What a novel is to be - entertaining

I save my five stars for amazing. This was well worth the read, but not amazing. I would recommend it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good old fashioned story; great narrator

I listened to this book after reading reviews of Josephine Tey stories and this narrator's performance. I was not disappointed. Liked the story but loved the performance. I will listen to more books by this combination.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story, beautifully performed!

Character development is well done, story suspenseful, descriptions thorough and meaningful. I really enjoyed this!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!