Category: Aural Noir

Escape: The Killer Mine based on the novel by Hammond Innes

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Check out this striking image:

The Killer Mine by Hammond Innes

It’s part of one of the many covers from The Killer Mine by Hammond Innes. Intriguing isn’t it? Here are three more:

The Killer Mine by Hammond Innes

I’ve got a small stack of Hammond Innes paperbacks that I haven’t read. I inherited them from my grandmother and had been looking for an excuse to read one. Now I’ve found one!

In a post over on the Escape-Suspense blog proprietress Christine A. Miller wrote:

Escape’s “The Killer Mine” was adapted from the 1947 novel by English author Hammond Innes (1913-1998). For radio, the story was shortened considerably, and as a result, the high tension of the novel and some of the characters, are missing. If you like this episode, then do yourself a favor and read the book.

The Killer Mine The story is set in England, three years after the end of World War II. Jim Pryce, a miner by trade, but a deserter from the British army, has just returned to England from Italy. He has made his way to the Cornish coast in the hopes of securing a “no questions asked” mining job through his friend, Dave Tanner.

When Jim finds Dave, his friend is in trouble with the law for liquor-running. Nevertheless, Dave follows through on his promise and sends him over to talk to Captain Manack, the owner of a local mine. When he does, Jim discovers that Captain Manack doesn’t want to work the old tin mine for profit, he wants Jim to blow a hole through the top of an undersea shaft and flood it. That way, they can create an underwater entrance for illegal liquor to be unloaded into the mine. Will Jim take the job?

EscapeEscape – The Killer Mine
Based on the novel by Hammond Innes; Adapted by Antony Ellis; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: February 11, 1951
Provider: Archive.org Archive.org
“Smuggled illegally into his native land after many years’ absence, army deserter Jim Pryce finds himself deposited on a Cornish beach. Little does he suspect, setting out along the road to Penzance, that he is about to walk straight into a mine disaster, and into a story involving his own history.” Starring: John Dehner, Eileen Erskine, Tony Barrett, Ray Lawrence, Wilms Herbert, Jay Novello, and Lou Krugman.

There is also, if you look hard enough, an out of print unabridged audiobook editon out there.

CHIVERS - The Killer Mine by Hammond InnesThe Killer Mine
By Hammond Innes; Read by Stephen Thorne
6 Cassettes – Approx. 8 Hours 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Chivers Audio
Published: 1992
ISBN: 0816132119
On the run, a deserter from the army, Jim Pryce returns to Cornwall. But the familiar places of his childhood are not the welcoming villages they once were. And when the ruthless modern-day smugglers who operate along the deserted coast need his mining expertise, Pryce has no choice but to aid them. The crumbling mine which is his workplace becomes a nightmare killing ground when his usefulness is over. For the smugglers are quite prepared to kill to keep their secrets. And death is the ultimate silence…

[via Escape-Suspense.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrival: Heist Society by Ally Carter

Aural Noir: Recent Arrivals

Every update to Paul Bishop’s Bish’s Beat blog seems like another chance for me to win a book! This is the second prize I’ve won from Bish. Should he choose to retire from law enforcement he could have a second career as a cool hunter. Check it out…

DISNEY / HYPERION - Heist Society by Ally Carter

From just inside the dust jacket:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own–scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help. For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in history–or at least her family’s (very crooked) history.

Here’s what Bish said about the book:

“I’m right in the middle of enjoying this sparkling Y/A novel about Kat Bishop, a teen from a family of cat burglars and master jewel thieves, caught up in the heist of her life.

The great cover presents Kat as an Audrey Hepburn/Grace Kelly look-a-like, which is actually perfect for the almost retro, To Catch A Thief, vibe exuding from between the novel’s covers.

As a result I wasn’t surprised by the news Warner Bros. (Describing the tale as The Thomas Crown Affair with teens,) has just won a multi-studio bidding war to option the film.

Admist the current glut of teen angst vampire / werewolf novels and paranormal/urban romances cluttering the bookshelves, Heist Society is a zesty, refreshing, suspenseful tale that is actually fun – making for a great change!”

And, just like the previous paperbook that I won from Bish, this one is available as an audiobook too!!!

BRILLIANCE AUDIO - Heist Society by Ally CarterHeist Society
By Ally Carter; Read by Angela Dawe
5 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: February 9, 2010
ISBN: 1441826734 (cd), 9781441826756 (mp3-cd)
Here’s a sample |MP3|

Sounds fun hey?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir review of The Monster Of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

Aural Noir: Review

HACHETTE AUDIO - The Monster Of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario SpeziThe Monster Of Florence: A True Story
By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi; Read by Dennis Boutsikaris
8 CDs – Approx. 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781600242090
Themes: / Crime / History / Mystery / Murder / Serial Killer / Conspiracy / Italy / Florence / Sardinia / The Renaissance /

In 2000, Douglas Preston and his family moved to Florence, Italy, fulfilling a long-held dream. They put their children in Italian schools and settled into a 14th century farmhouse in the green hills of Florence, where they devoted themselves to living la dolce vita while Preston wrote his best-selling suspense novels. All that changes when he discovers that the lovely olive grove in front of their house had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known only as the Monster of Florence.

If you’re a fan of Douglas Preston’s fiction you’ll be all into digging the biographical details he adds to this illuminating non-fiction account of a real monster and the labyrinthine twists and turns the investigation took. Those readers looking for insight into Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novels can find this story impactful too. Myself, I was most interested in the unparalleled access this fearsome story details, namely the historical forces that shaped Florence, Tuscany and Sardinia from ancient days, through the Renaissance, the 1960s, 1970s, and on up to the present. Preston, with help from Spezi, provides elucidating details about how the killer (or killers) got away with 16 murders that took place between 1968 and 1985. Their book, this audiobook, is an indictment of Florentine and Italian journalists, the Italian national police , the Florentine investigators, and one prosecutor in particular. In short, after more than 30 years of criminal investigation the case remains an unsolved mystery. Spezi and Preston do take a guess at the culprit, and they back that guess up with a logic chain that is a helluva-lot-more compelling than the official explanation. But, just thinking about it all, a week or two later, I’m still shaking my head. The final disgrace of this story came as a result of a convergence between the Public Minister of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, and a fraud psychic named Gabriella Carlizzi. Together they explained to themselves, and the arresting police, that Mario Spezi was actually involved in the murders and was a member of a satanic cult.

Even more worrisome, if it is possible to imagine, is what Preston argues is a fairly widespread Italian cultural embrace of something called “dietrologia.” Literally meaning “behindology,” dietrologia is the practice of assuming that nothing notable is as it actually appears – that something hidden (often sinister, cynical and/or conspiratorial) is behind any and all notable events. In Canada we might call it acting paranoid, or being a conspiracy theorist. In Italy, apparently, it is regularly practiced around the dinner table. And it’s all fun and games, I guess, until you end up throwing innocent people in jail. During the writing of The Monster Of Florence Spezi was arrested for either being a collaborator with the Monster or actually being the serial killer himself. Meanwhile Douglas Preston was interrogated, told to confess, threatened with arrest, and forced to leave Italy upon pain of prosecution. The Monster Of Florence case was completely bungled. This was a clusterfuck on par with the notorious California’s McMartin preschool investigation and trial. I guess it all goes to show that police and prosecutorial incompetence is alive and well in the new and old worlds both.

Reader Dennis Boutskaris takes full control of the narrative, becoming the voice of Preston (and Spezi) for the entire audiobook. To my untrained ears his Italian accent sounded fine. The cover art, as mentioned in the audiobook, comes from a photograph of a statue in Piazza della Signoria, in Florence (The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna |JPG|). In addition, on the final disc, there is an informative interview with Douglas Preston.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of the Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Aural Noir: Review

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock HolmesThe Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by John Joseph Adams; Read by Simon Vance and Anne Flosnik, John Joseph Adams (uncredited)
18 CDs – 22 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
ISBN: 1441839070
Themes: / Mystery / Crime / Alternate History / Science Fiction / Horror / 19th Century / London /

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” This famous Sherlock Holmes quote is the impetus which drives this intelligent, inventive, and at times irreverent compilation of Sherlock Holmes stories written in the last few decades. As John Joseph Adams explains in his introduction, his aim in compiling these stories is to explore the uneasy peace between the cold clear logic of the deerstalker-wearing, pipe-smoking detective and the unanswered, perhaps unanswerable mysteries which continue to thwart human investigation to this very day. While many of the stories miss the mark of this goal entirely, the collection as a whole succeeds in pushing Holmes in new directions while staying true to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’s original work.

The stories in this collection fall into one of three categories. First, there are the traditional mysteries. These are stories that, with but slight alteration, might easily have found a home among Conan Doyle’s own work. The best of these tales expand upon characters or cases mentioned in the original œuvre only in passing. Mrs. Hudson’s Case by Laurie R. King, for instance, features Holmes’s protégé Mary Russell as its protagonist and reveals the character of Holmes’s long-suffering landlady. Edward D. Hoch’s A Scandal In Montreal, meanwhile, reunites Sherlock Holmes with his sometime nemesis Irene Adler. As a whole, however, this category fits rather uneasily into the collection because, by and large, there is little in the way of “the improbable” in any of these stories. All are well-written and most are engaging; they simply miss the point.

The second category I would call historical, or pseudo-historical. In most respect these stories are similar to those of the first category, with one redeeming addition: Sherlock Holmes crosses paths with historical figures from the Victorian era. Stephen Baxter’s The Adventure of the Inertial Adventure sees our detective join forces with author of scientific romances H.G. Wells, while Tony Pi’s Dynamics Of A Hanging brings mathematician Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) into the Holmesian world. The highlight of this grouping, though, is The Adventure Of The Field Theorem by Vonda N. McIntyre, in which Sherlock Holmes investigates crop circles at the behest of none other than Arthur Conan Doyle.

The last category throws Sherlock Holmes–and let’s not forget Doctor Watson, through whose eyes we see most of these tales unfold–into genres as wide-ranging as alternate history, horror, and science fiction. Subjectively, I liked these stories best because they fall into genres which I most commonly read. Objectively, these stories succeed because they deliver on the promise of “improbable adventures.” The collection opens with a chilling tale by horror master Tim Lebbon, which unlike most Holmes stories is never intellectually resolved. The Singular Habits Of Wasps by Geoffrey A. Landis, perhaps my favorite story in the collection, puts a fascinating otherworldly spin on the mysterious murders of Jack the Ripper. Robert J. Sawyer’s closing story, You See But You Do Not Observe, pits Holmes’s intellect against the fermi paradox concerning extraterrestrial life. The collection is worth the price of admission for these entries alone.

Simon Vance carries the bulk of the narration, with Anne Flosnik reading only a few stories featuring female protagonists. Flosnik performs solidly in her few appearances. Simon Vance’s portrayal of Holmes and Watson is spot-on; the former speaks with a whip-sharp voice, while the latter lumbers along in a more lugubrious manner. He falls short only when narrating the few “New World” characters who figure in the stories, but these cases are uncommon and Vance’s accent isn’t off by much. John Joseph Adams himself narrates the collection’s introduction, as well as introductory passages to each story.

Whether you’re a fan of mystery, history, or something further afield, chances are high you’ll find something to sate your appetite in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I’ll venture out on a limb and say that visitors to this site will likely be most interested in the tales of speculative fiction. I assure you, in particular, that you’ll not be disappointed.

Posted by Seth Wilson

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine PodcastHere is a terrific find for fans of mystery and crime tales! Hosted by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine‘s editor, Janet Hutchings, comes a new podcast the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast! It features:

“Monthly readings and dramatizations of stories by the world’s leading writers of suspense chosen from the magazine’s archives. The full range of the genre is represented in these riveting audio renditions, from the drawing-room mystery to urban noir—including police procedurals, private-eye tales, psychological suspense, and locked-room and impossible-crime stories.”

I’ve been listening to these for hours today. The audio dramatizations are actually pretty good. The short stories tend to be very solid too (and are mostly read by their authors). Sound quality varies though and sometimes the recording level volume is set far too low. Additionally, the proof-listening is occasionally very shoddy (with repeated lines remaining unedited). The latest episode (#7) has three stories all based on the same newspaper article. The results are mixed, but I really like the idea of stories based around a story seed like that. In fact, it reminds me of something John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley were talking about in a recent Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. They mentioned the John W. Cambpell story seed that lead to the writing of Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall and Robert A. Heinlein’s Orphans Of The Sky. Two SF stories that are both very different and very terrific.

My favourite Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast episode so far is #5, Dear Doctor Watson, a Steve Hockensmith short story. Its a kind of Sherlockian pastiche set in the Victorian West. It’s protagonist a kind of amateur Sherlock Watson team that’s only half-hampered by being illiterate and in Montana. Dear Doctor Watson is both fun and well read by two narrators.

I truly hope to see the “Ganelon” stories by James Powell and the “Black Widowers” tales by Isaac Asimov showing up in future episodes. They’re the absolute tops!

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - September 1956Episode 1: Cut! Cut! Cut!
Based on a story by Ellery Queen; Adapted by Ed Bogas; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: August 2009
Ellery Queen receives a phone call from a murder victim in this clever play involving a witness of another species. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine September 1956 issue.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine - November 2001Episode 2: Groundwork
Based on the story by Neil Schofield; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: September 2009
A nosy neighbor alerts police to suspicious digging in the garden next-door—and she isn’t the only one to get an unexpected comeuppance. First published in EQMM in November 2001.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine - June 2003Episode 3: The Talking Dead
By Melodie Johnson Howe; Read by Melodie Johnson Howe
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: October 2009
A TV writer goes missing, leaving her show’s star without a script and opening up a perfect scenario for murder. In this fourth installment in her series of Diana Poole mysteries, former Hollywood actress Melodie Johnson Howe takes a penetrating look at the off-stage life of a TV idol. First published in EQMM June 2003.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine - February 1953Episode 4: A Lump Of Sugar
Adapted from a story by Ellery Queen; Adapted by Ed Bogas; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: December 2009
Ellery Queen returns in a case involving a cryptic dying message. First published in EQMM in February, 1953. The story later appeared under the titles Murder In The Park and The Mystery Of The 3 Dawn Riders.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine - February 2007Episode 5: Dear Doctor Watson
By Steve Hockensmith; Read by Steve Hockensmith and Mike Willtrout
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: December 2009
A pair of Old West cowboys try to prove they’re worthy of joining a detective agency by retrieving an incriminating letter. But things are not all they appear to be in Missoula, Montana, circa 1890… First published in the February 2007 issue of EQMM.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - May 1976Episode 6: The Problem Of The Locked Caboose
Based on the story by by Edward D. Hoch; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: January 2010
The solving of so-called “impossible crimes” is the hallmark of Edward D. Hoch’s series character Dr. Sam Hawthorne. In this episode, the New England country doctor is on board a night train when a body is discovered in its locked caboose. First published in EQMM in May, 1976.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - March/April 2007Episode 7: Say That Again, The Old Story and Wheeze
By Peter Lovesey, Liza Cody, Michael Z. Lewin; Read by Peter Lovesey, Liza Cody, Michael Z. Lewin
1 |MP3| – Approx. 73 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast
Podcast: February 2010
Three stories (Say That Again by Peter Lovesey, The Old Story by Liza Cody, and Wheeze by Michael Z. Lewin) that take their lead from a single newspaper article provide an entertaining look at how a common creative impetus can take the imaginations of different writers in wonderfully different directions. Includes a short interview with the authors, all leading writers of suspense, recorded at the 2009 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.

Podcast feed:

http://eqmm.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis