Aural Noir – Page 10

New Releases: iambik audio

Aural Noir: New Releases

Here’s the latest crime collection from iambik audio. And while imabik offers excellent DRM free versions of their titles on their easy to use website you may also be interested to know that more than thirty titles are now available through Audible.com too.

The pick of the bunch, just going by the descriptions, appears to be The Vaults by Toby Ball. And based on the reviews of the print edition, which came out last September, it seems this debut novel is rather well regarded!

Hard Cold Whisper
By Michael Hemmingson; Read by Adam Verner
MP3 Download – Approx. 2 Hours 56 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
David Kellgren is a process server, a job where everyone wants to kill the messenger and things can get a little bit dangerous and out of hand. David is attacked when trying to serve legal papers to a gang member and an angel comes to his rescue: nineteen-year-old Gabriella Amaya, trapped in a large dilapidated house, caring for her dying aunt. This elderly aunt has money, diamonds, and real estate, promised to Gabriella when the aunt dies. Is there any way the sultry caregiver can get her crafty hands on that wealth sooner? And share it with her new lover, the unsuspecting process server who starts to wonder if he’s become a patsy in an elaborate murder plot, or if he simply cannot allow himself to truest any woman who says, “I love you.” Set in San Diego, Chula Vista, and Tijuana, Hard Cold Whisper is Michael Hemmingson at his finest, most terse and torqued prose in the crime genre. — Hemmingson wrote Hard Cold Whisper as an experiment during the 2010 3 Day Novel Challenge during Labor Day Weekend, a concerted event where writers all over the world participate. The method here pays homage to hardboiled noir master Gil Brewer, who wrote many of his finest Fawcett Gold Medal titles in a possessed, white hot flash fury of several days or a week. Hard Cold Whisper is Hemmingson’s nod to the feel and atmosphere of the Gold Medal paperback.

Listen To The Dead
By Randall Peffer; Read by Art Carlson
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
Inspired by one of the largest unsolved cases of serial killings in the United States, the New Bedford Serial Killings of 1988. Harbormaster Corby Church finds the bones of a human body on Bird Island off Cape Cod. As brassy, young police detective Yemanjá Colón struggles with the case, she realizes that Church may know more than he’s letting on, and a trip he took to the Bahamas in the ’80s may prove the key.

Richmond Noir
Edited by Andrew Blossom, Brian Castleberry and Tom De Haven; Read by Charles Bice
MP3 or M4B – Approx. 7 Hours 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
Collection edited by Andrew Blossom, Brian Castleberry and Tom De Haven. “In The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller tosses off a hard-bitten assessment of the City on the James: ‘I would rather die in Richmond somehow,’ he writes, ‘though God knows Richmond has little enough to offer.’ As editors, we like the dying part, and might point out that in its long history, Richmond, Virginia has offered up many of the disparate elements crucial to meaty noir. The city was born amid deception, conspiracy, and violence…

The Painted Messiah
By Craig Smith; Read by Clive Catterall
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 9 Hours 54 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
The Painted Messiah combines a blistering action thriller set in the streets of Zurich and on the lakes and wooded slopes of Switzerland with a compulsive and convincing account of first century Romano-Judaean politics and the real reason for Pontius Pilate’s condemnation and execution of Christ. A legend persists that, after the ‘scourging’, Pilate commanded that his victim be painted from life. Somewhere, the painting survives, the only true image of Christ, granting the gift of everlasting life to whoever possesses it. Kate Kenyon, the wealthy young widow of an English aristocrat killed on a Swiss mountain, has an addiction to mortal risk. She feeds it by engaging in the armed robbery of priceless artefacts with her accomplice and lover Ethan Brand, a Tennessean who owns a bookshop in Zurich. Their latest target is a priceless ‘Byzantine’ icon hidden in the tower of a chateau by Lake Lucerne. So far they have never had to shoot anyone. This time will be different.

Thought You Were Dead
By Terry Griggs; Read by Gregg Margarite
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
Meet the Perfect Man… no, no he’s not the hero of Thought You Were Dead. That would be Chellis Beith, literary researcher, slacker, reluctant detective, and a man bedeviled by every woman in his life. There’s his lost love, Elaine Champion, a now happily married inventor who uses him for market research, his best friend’s dotty ex-wife, Moe, his two vanished mothers, and his menacing boss, Athena Havlock, a celebrated writer who herself becomes embroiled in the dark side of fiction. The humour is wild, the language a thrill, the mystery within marvelously deft and daft. And as for the Perfect Man… well, nothing is as it seems. Is it? Thought You Were Dead is the most unconventional of all murder mysteries, turning the genre completely on its head, by bludgeoning flat language and Puritanical sensibilities with evident glee. This is further evidence that Terry Griggs is sui generis: an original and completely inimitable literary voice, with an eye for the cinematic.

The Vaults
By Toby Ball; Read by Michael Agostini
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 9 Hours 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: July 15, 2011
Sample |MP3|
In a dystopian 1930s America, a chilling series of events leads three men down a path to uncover their city’s darkest secret. At the height of the most corrupt administration in the City’s history, a mysterious duplicate file is discovered deep within the Vaults—a cavernous hall containing all of the municipal criminal justice records of the last seventy years. From here, the story follows: Arthur Puskis, the Vault’s sole, hermit-like archivist with an almost mystical faith in a system to which he has devoted his life; Frank Frings, a high-profile investigative journalist with a self-medicating reefer habit; and Ethan Poole, a socialist private eye with a penchant for blackmail. All three men will undertake their own investigations into the dark past and uncertain future of the City—calling into question whether their most basic beliefs can be maintained in a climate of overwhelming corruption and conspiracy.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Martin, Mezrich, Dick, Poe, Stark, Block, and Aaronovitch

New Releases

Hey! Got a couple a weeks to kill this Summer? Narrator Roy Dotrice returns to the series that nobody can stop waiting for…

A Dance With Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five)
By George R.R. Martin; Read by Roy Dotrice
38 CDs – Approx. 49 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 9780739375976
Sample |MP3|
In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance—beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. As they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind. Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys’s claim to Westeros forever. Meanwhile, to the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone—a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice. From all corners, bitter conflicts reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all.

And in the new releases in non-fiction department comes a story that that sounds like fiction…

Sex On The Moon
By Ben Mezrich; Read by Casey Affleck
7 CDs – Approx. 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: July 2011
ISBN: 9780307750761
Sample |MP3|
Thad Roberts, a fellow in NASA’s prestigious Neutral Bouyancy Laboratory, had an idea. A romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally. Somehow he convinced his girlfriend, also a NASA fellow, and another female accomplice, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA’s headquarters and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks. To get to the lunar vault, Thad and his accomplices would have to go through the high-security entrance of Building 31, the most protected structure at the Johnson Space Center, wind their way past a half dozen additional checkpoints until they came to an electronically-locked steel door with cipher security codes, monitored by a camera-lined hallway. And then there was the safe where the moon rocks were stored. Labeled “Trash,” this vault was something out of a Swiss Bank, three-feet-thick, made out of steel, and with an enormous combination wheel that took at least two people to turn. Against all odds, the team made a clean get-away (at 5 mph no less, the compound’s inflexible speed limit). But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own. And was Thad Roberts — undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a potential astronaut — really what he seemed. From the author of the New York Times bestselling Accidental Billionaires comes this strange but true story of genius, love, and duplicity, centered around an Ocean’s Eleven style heist that reads like a Hollywood thrill-ride.

Never before available as an audiobook? How, exactly, did we miss this?

Radio Free Albemuth
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
6 CDs – Approx. 6.8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: November 2009
ISBN: 9781433291647
Philip K. Dick’s impassioned final novel is a wild and visionary alternate history of the United States. It is 1969, and a paranoid president has convulsed America in a vicious war against imaginary internal enemies. As the country slides into fascism, a struggling science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick is trying to keep from becoming one of that war’s casualties. Meanwhile, Dick’s best friend, a record executive named Nicholas Brady, is receiving transmissions from a God-like extraterrestrial intelligence, which he dubs Valis, who apparently wants him to overthrow the president. Agonizingly suspenseful, darkly hilarious, and filled with enough conspiracy theories to thrill the most hardened paranoid, Radio Free Albemuth is proof of Dick’s stature as our century’s greatest science-fiction writer.

Cory Doctorow had good things to say about this new collection of Edgar Allan Poe tales.

Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Bronson Pinchot
4 CDs – Approx. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Go / BBC Audiobooks America
Published: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 9781609981624
Edgar Allan Poe is the undisputed originator of the Detective story. His brilliant, imaginative sleuth C. Auguste Dupin set the stage for eccentric, logic wielding investigators like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. This audio collection of Poe’s three Dupin stories also includes one non-Dupin detective tale, Thou Art the Man. It features celebrity narrator Bronson Pinchot. The story titles are: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“; “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt“; “The Purloined Letter“; and “Thou Art the Man.”

The first of a batch of new Richard Stark audiobook releases…

The Hunter (Book 1 in the Parker series)
By Richard Stark; Read by John Chancer
5 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours 1 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Go / BBC Audiobooks America
Published: January 18, 2011
ISBN: 9781609981068
You probably haven’t noticed them. But they’ve noticed you. They notice everything. That’s their job. Sitting quietly in a nondescript car outside a bank making note of the tellers’ work habits. Lagging a few car lengths behind the Brinks truck on its daily rounds. Surreptitiously jiggling the handle of an unmarked service door at the racetrack. They’re heisters. They’re pros, and Parker is far and away the best of them. In The Hunter, the first volume in the series, Parker roars into New York City, seeking revenge on the woman who betrayed him and on the man who took his money, stealing and scamming his way to redemption.

Long out of print in audio, back in print in time for the latest novel, and totally missing from the publisher’s website…

The Sins Of The Fathers (Book 1 in the Matthew Scudder series)
By Lawrence Block; Read by Alan Sklar
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours 2 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Go
Published: March 8, 2011
ISBN: 9781609982683
The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer–a minister’s son–hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl’s father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.The hooker was young, pretty…and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister’s son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute’s father wants it opened again–that’s where Matthew Scudder comes in. But this assignment carries the unmistakable stench of sleaze and perversion, luring Scudder into a sordid world of phony religion and murderous lust where children must die for their parents’ most unspeakable sins.

And finally, Ben Aaronovitch has noted that audiobook version of Moon Over London, the follow up to Rivers Of London, “will be available for download from the 21st of July.” It’ll be up on Audible with Kobna Holdbrook-Smith reprising the narrating duties. Though I should note that the first book is not available, bizarrely, in all regions.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Green Rust by Edgar Wallace

Aural Noir: Online Audio

LibriVox Don W. Jenkins, a San Diegan, may not be the ideal narrative match for this 1919 English murder mystery/Science Fiction novel, but he’s competent enough for the price, 100% FREE! The novel itself isn’t going to break any heads open with its sheer awesomeness either – but The Green Rust is a competent reading of a competent early twentieth century murder mystery (that’s also got some SF elements in it). Plus, it’s got some great vocabulary, a fairly compelling mystery at the center of it (who would kill a man on his deathbed?), the occasional dollop of hilarious dialogue (“Drunk or sober he is a man! Drunk or sober he is a man!” and “she’s as dumb as an oyster”) as well as some quaint technology on display (home gas meters run by coins).

The Green Rust
By Edgar Wallace; Read by Don W. Jenkins
32 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8 Hours 2 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 31, 2011
A millionaire is taken suddenly ill, and sensing his mortality, he asks his attorney to do him one last favor—to find and secretly watch over his missing niece, the daughter of his profligate deceased sister. This niece at the appropriate time would become heir to his millions. However, the millionaire is mysteriously murdered, stabbed to death in his sick bed. Oliva Cresswell, the unsuspecting niece, has been a cashier in a large West End store for five years when she meets a Mr. Beale, a self-described wheat merchant, is attacked in her flat and rescued by this Mr. Beale, is offered a job as his confidential secretary, refuses him, is unexplainably sacked and finds herself in need of his offer. The mysteries multiply and deepen as the story proceeds.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/5391

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Dawn Larsen and Availle]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Tantor Media: FREE AUDIOBOOK: The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Tantor Media is releasing another new limited time FREE MP3 audiobook download. Despite what it looks like on the cover (apparently Sherlock Holmes had a Macbook Air) The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes is an all original, un-remixed, collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, first collected in 1894.

You will need to have an account with Tantor Media, and to login to it. Start by clicking HERE. Accounts are free and do not require a credit card. The free audiobook should be available through the end of June 2011. I know some folks have had difficulty figuring out how to either “log in” or “create an account.” You must have an account and be logged in to get to the download. It is a two step process as illustrated below.

Step 1: Create An Account And Log In

First Create An Account Or Log In

Step 2: After Signing In, You Get Your Download Link

After Signing In Get Your Download Link

As usual there was a bit of trouble the first couple of times I downloaded the zipped file, but it now works and downloads. You will, of course, also need to unzip the MP3s once the download completes.

The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Read by Simon Prebble
11 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: March 2010
Sample: |MP3|
|ETEXT|
The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close—the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When The Final Problem was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself—on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house—as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother Mycroft.

Stories included: Silver Blaze, The Yellow Face, The Stock-Broker’s Clerk, The ‘Gloria Scott’, The Musgrave Ritual, The Reigate Puzzle, The Crooked Man, The Resident Patient, The Greek Interpreter, The Naval Treaty, and The Final Problem.

I should also point out that like most publications of this collection in the USA, over that last 117 years, this collection omits The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box for what Wikipedia indicates are reasons of morality.

If you’re not quite so squeamish The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box is available through LibriVox as two MP3 Files (Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|). |ETEXT|

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4X + RA.cc: Topkapi by Eric Ambler

Aural Noir: Online Audio

According to the Wikipedia entry, BBC Radio 7 was renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra back in April. I’m not much for re-branding – it’s a grubby little idea that makes me think of scientific management, focus groups and meetings … endless … unproductive … meetings. The more I think about meetings the less I want to think.

Hopefully the new name will last a few years, and then perhaps BBC management can go ahead and arrange to have a meeting about considering the update of their antiquated delivery methods – perhaps they’ve already started as I hear they’ve finally dropped RealAudio (the web’s first big audio technology).

Speaking of delivery methods, I discovered my first interesting BBC Radio 4 Extra offering over on RadioArchive.cc. RA.cc is my favourite site for public radio, its chock full of great taxpayer funded programming. The site is extremely well organized and make even people who are wary of the word “torrent” comfortable with the technology. Files are, naturally, in the MP3 format, and when well seeded, a program the size of Topkapi will take only about TEN minutes to download. That’s service folks!

Topkapi, aka The Light Of Day, is a 1962 novel Eric Ambler. I’d heard about it – but until it showed up on RadioArchive.cc I never even thought to investigate it. Well, after investigating it turns out that The Light Of Day was an Edgar Award winning novel, 1964, and has a fair cachet in espionage and crime fiction circles. The name change, for this reading, was likely done to remind BBC listeners of the movie – Topkapi is pretty famous, the Ottoman Sultans used it as their personal residence as well as an “impregnable fortress” that housed its famous seraglio/harem.

the Topkapi Palace by night

The Wikipedia entry for Ambler has this gem:

“A recurring theme in Ambler’s books is the amateur who finds himself unwillingly in the company of hardened criminals or spies. Typically, the protagonist is out of his depth and often seems for much of the book a bumbling anti-hero, yet eventually manages to surprise himself as well as the professionals by a decisive action that outwits his far more experienced opponents.”

That certainly fits Topkapi.

I can’t say how much of the novel was excised for this abridgement, but I can say the novel definitely works as a quick listen. There are some unnecessary sound effects added, but when they show up they don’t overwhelm the text. The story is told in first person, by the clever, but unlucky anti-hero. David Westhead, the reader, is truly excellent in performing the lead character. He’s got a wonderfully subdued humor, and the voice and accent work he provides for the man supporting characters adds a lot of color.

Topkapi (aka The Light Of Day)
By Eric Ambler; Read by David Westhead
Six 30 minute episodes – Approx. 3 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 Extra
Broadcast: May 2011
Source: RadioArchive.cc
Small time operator Arthur Abdel Simpson is an illegitimate stateless half British half Egyptian pimp and pornographer. He makes his living fleecing tourists in Athens, Greece. When he picks up a likely looking pigeon at the airport he soon discovers that he’s the one in trouble. He’s then blackmailed into driving a car to Istanbul.

1/6. Minor crook Arthur Abdel Simpson spots a likely mark at Athens airport
2/6. Arthur Simpson is interrogated by Turkish security for unintentional arms smuggling.
3/6. Arthur is now seconded to Turkish security. He also has to work at the suspect’s villa.
4/6. Unwilling agent Simpson watches a group of ‘tourists’, while he works as their driver.
5/6. Arthur Simpson witnesses a vicious knife fight and waits for news of Fischer.
6/6. Arthur Simpson is still on the roof. He has just reluctantly robbed the Treasury.

Here’s the trailer for the film version:

I’ll try to find a copy of the film itself, and maybe see if its anything like the audiobook.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Black Star by Johnston McCulley

Aural Noir: Online Audio

LibriVox Today Johnston McCulley is probably best known as the creator of Zorro. But in his own day McCulley had several success in pulp fiction. The Black Star was among his first repeating characters – the titular character being a masked burglar with a massive ego and a five pointed signautre.

Proof listener “Betty M.” says that the titular Black Star reminds her of “the Scarlet Pimpernel, only the Black Star is a scoundrel” – after listening to the first chapter he sounds like a demented supervillain to me – he breaks-in to private residences and pastes black stars all over people’s headboards and dressing tables!!?!?!

The Wikipedia entry on Black Star describes him thusly:

Black Star was what was once termed a “gentleman criminal”, in that he does not commit murder, nor does he permit any of his gang to kill anyone, not even the police or his arch enemy Roger Verbeck. He does not threaten women, always keeps his word, and is invariably courteous, nor does he deal with narcotics in any of his stories. He is always seen in a black cloak and a black hood on which is embossed a jet black star. The Black Star and his gang used “vapor bombs” and “vapor guns” which rendered their victims instantly unconscious, a technique which pre-dated the Green Hornet’s gas gun by several decades.

That still sounds a lot more Lex Luthor, than Raffles, to me.

The Black Star
By Johnston McCulley; Read by Roger Melin
36 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8 Hours 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 17, 2011
The Black Star was a master criminal who took great care to never be identifiable, always wore a mask so nobody knew what he looked like, rarely spoke to keep his voice from being recognized, and the only mark left at the scenes of the crimes which he and his gang committed were small black stars which were tacked as a sign of their presence, and an occasional sarcastic note to signify his presence and responsibility. Even those who worked for him knew nothing of him, all of which were making his crimes virtually unsolvable. The police were at a complete loss as to his identity and at a method of stopping his criminal activities. He seemed to have the perfect strategic setup and all advantages were in his favor. He even somehow knew where the wealthy kept their jewels and money, and knew when they would remove valuable items from their safes and deposit boxes. Thus Roger Verbeck decided to take on the case of the Black Star using his own methodology. The Black Star will keep you guessing from beginning to end, just as he kept the police and Verbeck guessing.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/5440

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and David Lawrence]

Posted by Jesse Willis