First part of story excellent Second part disappointing

The first part of the story was brilliant, it was a great example of another book “Mistakes were made” where you and me justify our actions, and how we slip down from our ideals, one very small step at a time. Not to give anything away the remaining part of the story seems to be very wordy but rushed in the construction and believability. To much guess work by French and bending his findings to suit his conclusions.

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Dated but easy listening

Written in a time gone bye, old fashioned phrase but easy listening.
Overall story ok and well worked

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2 people found this helpful

It's a good story

This was well performed and I listened to the end
Think I prefer a classic whodunnit though.

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1 person found this helpful

excellent

I found this very enjoyable and well done would recommend it very unusual way to tell story

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Excellent

This was a really gripping murder mystery write from two points of view. I didn't want it to end.

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2 people found this helpful

Not really an Inspector French book

Written from the killer's point of view with very little French actually in the book. And it's not an exciting story, even by the rather slow and meticulous normal standard of Inspector French books

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exhaustive and exhausting

Golden Age fiction . the names that survive and are read generally are Christie , Allingham, Marsh and Patricia Wentworth. the reason being that they all entertain. this book by FWC is at the opposite end of the spectrum. written mainly from the point of view of the murderer it is a thought by thought day by day diary of a bore. FWC can be dry as an author but this must be his driest. no subplots and no amusing social interaction, which you would have with the authors mentioned above. ( you may think Sayers should be included in the entertaining group but she had a tendency to transcribe chapters from legal tomes so is a half dry ) GG has a very good voice, but unfortunately that is also slightly dry. the effect of having a dry book read by a dry voice was rather like having plain biscuits crumbled in my ears. if you can listen to this all the way through, rather than just having it on as background, I commend you.

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2 people found this helpful

Life is waaaaaay too short

I waded through until about 1.5 hrs from the end, at which point, beginning to give up hope that the book would take a sudden interesting twist, I Googled the ending, and found that, no, it does not. I gave up. I don’t mind inverted mysteries, where you know from the start who did it, and how, and why, as long as I don’t know all of those! Otherwise, where’s the hook? It was just a dull dull plod.

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Great disappointment

I’d listened to several other audiobooks by this author, which I had really enjoyed. Paul Fox was the narrator and very good he was too. I hadn’t realised that this book had not only a change of style in writing - as in Inspector French was kept in the background until the end - but also had a different narrator, whose work did not compare as favourably as Paul Fox. Consequently I found the whole thing to be unnecessarily long-winded and poorly presented. I stuck with it until the end because I was hopeful that it might improve. I was wrong.

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