The Key Audiobook By Patricia Wentworth cover art

The Key

The Miss Silver Mysteries

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The Key

By: Patricia Wentworth
Narrated by: Diana Bishop
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It's nearing the end of WWII, and Michael Harsh has been working for the government on a secret project for years. Finally he is ready to hand over the formula. But the next morning he is dead. It looks like suicide. Only Miss Silver knows it's murder.

©1946 Patricia Wentworth. (P)2008 Isis Publishing Ltd. Amateur Sleuths Cozy Detective Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women Sleuths Women's Fiction
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Another interesting entry in the Miss Silver series. This one was more complex than others.

The Key

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Instead of breaks for the 41 chapters, the production engineers opted for a lazy 14 chapters, each about 33 minutes each. if you are like I am, and set the timer to end with the chapter ending, you will find that Audible's chapters end randomly, in the middle of a scene, sometimes in the middle of a WORD. The lack of care is a poor reflection on Audible.

Slipshod work by Audible Inc

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Imaginative and inventive, PW shines as one the the masters of the genre. This is entertaining and engrossing and the narration is excellent.

Good involving story.

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Don't read if you don't know how this ends.


The plot was enjoyable and I guess Miss Silver figured out who did it but the killer wasn't caught through her actions or deductions. The outcome would have been the same whether she was there or not so I was a little disappointed by this one.

Spilet Alert

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I decided to order this book because I needed a mystery, but could not take another book filled with sick, twisted serial killers and depressed, heavy smoking, hard drinking detectives. I love mysteries and while The Jo Nesbo's of this world write a great book, I just had to launder my brain and cleanse it of the horrific images and circumstances dreamed up in novels like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.

Enter Miss Silver. Well written cozy mysteries, with a terrific look at 1940's and 1950's England and the comfy tea, toast and flannel which accompanies the era. The mysteries are not so easy that they are solved early on: the plots are clearly drawn and the characters introduced in such a manner as to make them familiar. The narrator, Diana Bishop is PERFECT.

What I can't figure out is why the BBC or Masterpiece have not taken these stories and turned them into a series! They keep re-making Miss Marple (who I do love) every ten years or so until I could practically recite A Pocket Full of Rye – why not try something original and use Miss Silver? There seem to be more of books to utilize and the stories are wonderful!

Anyway – this was my first and I found you do not need to start with book one. The Key was an excellent mystery combined with a little espionage and lots of great village flavor. I immediately ordered another Miss Silver and have almost completed that as well. Thankfully, my spirits have lifted and all thoughts of gruesome serial killers have fled my mind!

Miss Silver, Where have you been my whole life?

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I have read other Miss Silver mysteries and found them enjoyable but couldn't finish this one. There was just to much female person explaining why she thought a thing was so and male person being oh so reasonable explaining why female was wrong. Will have to return this one. There is always this kind of by play going on in Miss Silver books but this one was exceptionally annoying to me.

Unusual that I didn't like this

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