detective – Page 6

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

New Releases: iambik audio CRIME – 10 all new DRM free audiobooks

Aural Noir: New Releases

Iambik Audiobooks has just released its first crime and mystery collection – ten novels from “indie publishers [like] Akashic, Hard Case Crime, Tyrus Books, HandE and Soho.” Iambik is a new audiobook company from some of the people behind LibriVox.org. Iambik takes proven LibriVox narrators and proof-listeners and matches them with modern copyrighted novels. The audiobooks produced are then released as downloadable DRM-free audiobooks at a price point lower than you would probably imagine. These audiobooks are $6.99 per book, or you can get the entire 10 book collection for $44.99. I love the idea of selling the whole collection as a bundle – I’ve never seen that before!

I’ve checked the MP3 and M4B functions (bookmarkability, art, volume) prior to posting this. The checkout system is two steps, accepts PayPal and sends you an email with a link to your download. It’s a snap. Unless you’re a collector, or want to burn your audiobook to CD, I recommend the M4B files over the MP3. The M4B has art embedded and it works easily with Apple devices.

Until the end of March, you can get a 33% discount on all iambik purchases using the code: sffaudio-march.

Complete Crime Collection 1
By various; Read by various
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
This collection includes all the titles in our first release of Crime books.
Titles included:
– All or Nothing, by Preston L Allen, narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson
– Death of a Nationalist, by Rebecca Pawel, narrated by Elizabeth Klett
– Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips, narrated by Gord Mackenzie
– Getting Sassy, by D.C. Brod, narrated by Karen Savage
– High Season, by Jon Loomis, narrated by Charles Bice
– It’s Behind You, by Keith Temple, narrated by Ruth Golding
– Late Rain, by Lynn Kostoff, narrated by Kenneth Campbell
– Suicide Casanova by Arthur Nersesian, narrated by Mark Smith
– The Tattoo Murder Case, by Akimitsu Takagi, narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson
– Witness to Myself, by Seymour Shubin, narrated by John Michaels

All Or Nothing
By Preston L. Allen; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Preston L. Allen’s witty, charming, and very likable school bus driver, named P, is a desperate gambler. He has blown the hundred thousand dollars he won at the casino six months ago, but his wife and family still think he’s loaded. P spins out of control on the addict’s downward spiral of dependency, paranoia, and depression, as he must find ways to keep coming up with the money to fool his family and fund his growing addiction. The bets get bigger and bigger, until finally, faced with the ultimate financial crisis, he hits it really big. Yet winning, he soon learns, is just the beginning of a deeper problem. The one constant for P–who rises from wage-earner to millionaire and back again in his roller-coaster-ride of a life–is that he must gamble. That his son has died, that his wife is leaving him, that his girlfriend has been arrested, that he has no money, that he has more money than he could ever have dreamed–are all lesser concerns for P as he constantly seeks out new gambling opportunities. While other books on gambling seek either to sermonize on the addiction or to glorify it by highlighting its few prosperous celebrities, All or Nothing is an honest, straightforward account of what it is like to live as a gambler–whether a high-rolling millionaire playing $1,000-ante poker in Las Vegas or a regular guy at the local Indian casino praying for a miracle as he feeds his meager life savings into the unforgiving slot machine. All or Nothing is the first novel to dig beneath the veneer to explore the gambler’s unique and complex relationship with money. If you’ve ever wanted to get into the heart and psyche of a compulsive gambler, here is your chance.

Death Of A Nationalist
By Rebecca Pawel; Read by Elizabeth Klett
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Lean is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist. This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while communists have come to the aid of the Republicans. Atrocities have devastated both sides. It is at this moment, when the Republicans have surrendered, and the Guardia Civil has begun to impose order in the ruins of Madrid, that Tejada finds the body of his best friend, a hero of the siege of Toledo, shot to death on a street named Amor de Dios. Naturally, a Red is suspected. And it is easy for Tejada to assume that the woman caught kneeling over the body is the killer. But when his doubts are aroused, he cannot help seeking justice.

Fade To Blonde
By Max Phillips; Read by Gordon Mackenzie
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Ray Corson came to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, not hired muscle. But when a beautiful girl with a purse full of cash asks for your help, how can you say no? So Corson agrees to protect starlet Rebecca LaFontaine from a vengeful mobster — but what he doesn’t realize is that he’ll have to join the Mob to do it.

Getting Sassy
By D.C. Brod; Read by Karen Savage
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 9 Hours 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
With her nearly broke and practically homeless mother about to land on her doorstep, Robyn Guthrie learns that desperation can play havoc with a daughter’s scruples. Otherwise, why would she even consider kidnapping a goat and holding it for ransom?

High Season
By Jon Loomis; Read by Charles Bice
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 7 Hours 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Frank Coffin had been a well-respected Baltimore homicide detective. But when he started having panic attacks at crime scenes, he was forced to go home to Cape Cod, where the worst crimes were usually break-ins, bicycle thefts, and domestic disputes. That is, until a vacationing televangelist turns up dead on the beach wearing a wig, a muumuu, and one size-twelve pump. Not to mention the raspberry-colored taffeta scarf strangling his neck. Frank and his partner, Officer Lola Winters, begin checking out the drag bars and isolated trysting spots the reverend might have frequented. However, when the body count starts to rise, it becomes alarmingly clear that a killer with an agenda is at large in Provincetown. And Coffin’s fears—like unwelcome summer tourists—have returned in full force…

It’s Behind You
By Keith Temple; Read by Ruth Golding
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 13 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
A story about fame, megalomania and murder. Carina Hemsley, former soap star of ‘Winkle Bay’ was a hugely popular actress in her day – until her ego took over and ‘Cora Smart’, her character, was axed off. Now, after years away from the lime-light, she’s appearing as the Good Fairy in panto, terrorising the cast and crew of a tatty third-rate northern theatre and drinking and smoking herself to death. Audiences are down and the outlook isn’t good… until she starts receiving death threats in the post. Along with the police, the media circus descends, boosting her public profile and putting bums on seats in the theatre. Follow Carina and her not-so-merry troupers as they face an onslaught of assassination, romance and intrigue, but as Carina says, ‘The Show Must Go On!’

Late Rain
By Lynn Kostoff; Read by Kenneth Campbell
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 10 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Corrine Tedros is a Lady Macbeth wannabe who sets in motion the murder of her uncle-in-law (a soft-drink mogul), and things go awry when the murder is witnessed by a senior citizen in the late stages of Alzheimers. Things are complicated by the fact that the daughter of the man with Alzheimers is involved with a former homicide detective who has resigned and moved South in an attempt to reshape and simplify his life; on his own, Decovic starts to make connections in the case that cause Corrine Tedros to up the ante in keeping herself out of the murder investigation.

Suicide Casanova
By Arthur Nersesian; Read by Mark Smith
MP3 or M4B Download – 11 Hours 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
What do Gary Condit, Woody Allen, and O.J. Simpson have in common with Leslie Cauldwell, protagonist of Nersesian’s latest offering? They are Suicide Casanovas. What compels powerful men in the prime of their professional lives to risk so much? Following the commercial success of his first three novels (Manhattan Loverboy, The Fuck-Up, and Dogrun), Nersesian’s new novel is a psychosexual thriller, a dramatic departure from his youthful black comedies: Humbert Humbert without the pedophile penchant, Hannibal Lechter without the appetite. Corporate attorney Leslie Cauldwell is middle-aged, handsome, and rich, but has only a few swipes left on his mental Metrocard. During a rough sex session, he garrotes his beloved wife; now he’s an officially designated “sex offender,” off on a bender, looking for love in all the wrong places. Twenty years earlier, when his office was high above the pornographic purgatory of Times Square, Leslie became involved with the adult-film star, Sky Pacifica. She needed a refuge, and he was ripe for the using. Following a brief fling, each went their own way. Two decades later, in 2001, Leslie is still working in Times Square — recently sanitized with its ESPN Zone and MTV window — and fraught with guilt about his “accident” with his wife. Like Jay Gatsby pursuing an erotic American dream, Leslie, with the help of a private detective, hunts down Sky Pacifica, his latter-day Daisy. Across a landscape of S&M mistresses and porn producers, from L.A. of the ’80s to New York of the new millennium, we see a modern-day tale of love and loss, innocence and corruption, crime and redemption.

The Tattoo Murder Case
By Akimitsu Takagi; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
MP3 or M4B Download – 11 Hours 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Miss Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs left behind. Gone is that part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered by her late father. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor, must assist his detective brother who is in charge of the case, because he was Kinue’s secret lover and the first person on the murder scene.

Witness To Myself
By Seymour Shubin; Read by John Michaels
MP3 or M4B Download – Approx. 5 Hours 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: iambik audio
Published: March 2011
Sample |MP3|
Fifteen years ago, teenager Alan Benning jogged off a beach – and into a nightmare. Because what awaited him in the Cape Cod woods was an unspeakable temptation, a moment of panic, and a brutal memory that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Now a successful lawyer, Alan finds himself drawn back to the scene of the crime, desperate to learn the truth about what happened on that long-ago summer day. But even as he grapples with his own dark secrets, he finds himself hounded by a shadowy adversary – and by the forces of justice, drawing their net around him tighter by the day…

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mister Ron’s Basement: My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

Aural Noir: Online Audio

This 100 year old story of a very Canadian bank heist, authored by Canada’s greatest literary humorist, could encapsulate a good part of that elusive Canadian culture we say were always looking for.

My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock, Art by GordRaymer (found in SENSE AND FEELING)

My Financial Career
By Stephen Leacock; Read by Mister Ron
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: 2005

My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month, and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.

I went up to a wicket marked “Accountant.” The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.

“Can I see the manager?” I said, and added solemnly, “alone.” I don’t know why I said “alone.”

“Certainly,” said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

“Are you the manager?” I said. God knows I didn’t doubt it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Can I see you,” I asked, “alone?” I didn’t want to say “alone” again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.

“Come in here,” he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.

“We are safe from interruption here,” he said; “sit down.”

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.

“You are one of Pinkerton’s men, I presume,” he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.

“No, not from Pinkerton’s,” I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.

“To tell the truth,” I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, “I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank.”

The manager looked relieved, but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

“A large account, I suppose,” he said.

“Fairly large,” I whispered. “I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly.”

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

“Mr. Montgomery,” he said unkindly loud, “this gentleman is opening an account. He will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning.”

I rose.

A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.

“Good morning,” I said, and stepped into the safe.

“Come out,” said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.

I went up to the accountant’s wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick, convulsive movement, as if I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

“Here,” I said, “deposit it.” The tone of the words seemed to mean, “Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us.”

He took the money and gave it to another clerk.

He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.

“Is it deposited?” I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.

“It is,” said the accountant.

“Then I want to draw a cheque.”

My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a cheque book through a wicket and someone else began telling me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.

“What! are you drawing it all out again?” he asked in surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me. Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.

“Yes, the whole thing.”

“You withdraw your money from the bank?”

“Every cent of it.”

“Are you not going to deposit any more?” said the clerk, astonished.

“Never.”

An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the cheque, and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick temper.

The clerk prepared to pay the money.

“How will you have it?” he said.

“What?”

“How will you have it?”

“Oh”—I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think—”in fifties.”

He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.

“And the six?” he asked dryly.

“In sixes,” I said.

He gave it me and I rushed out.

As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.

And here is the 1962 National Film Board adaptation:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Tequila Mockingbird by Paul Bishop

Aural Noir: Recent Arrivals

Out of print, (I found it on ABEbooks.com), and just arrived by Canada Post, is this 10 cassette audiobook written by Paul Bishop, of the Bish’s Beat blog!

Tequila Mockingbird
By Paul Bishop; Read by William Roberts
10 Cassettes – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Chivers Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0792722426
The murder of Alex Waverly, a highly decorated detective in LAPD’s anti-terrorist division, appears to be an open-and-shut case of domestic violence turned deadly. But circumstances are not what they seem, as Fey Croaker discovers, when the Chief gives the case to her with instructions to wrap it up “quick and tidy. No muss, no fuss.” Caught in the middle of a power struggle, Fey and her crew search for the truth. But they quickly become moving targets in their effort to stop a south-of-the-border terrorist from striking at the very heart of Los Angeles.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7 & RA.CC: Trueman And Riley

Aural Noir: Online Audio

My good friend Julie, from the Forgotten Classics podcast, sent me an email pointing out Trueman And Riley a BBC Radio “Drama series about two bickering detectives, starring Robert Daws and Duncan Preston.” Sez Julie:

“Just in case you hadn’t heard it, this [Trueman And Riley] is a good ‘un. Just finished listening to the first episode which was a good little mystery and showed great promise for future character development of the ‘tecs.[detectives]”

I hadn’t heard of it, but found both series 1 and series 2 of Trueman And Riley available via torrent over on RadioArchive.cc!

I’ve now heard the first series, and I must say I do kind of like it. The programme features unpredictable mysteries with a contemporary feel (one episode is set at a James Bond convention). Trueman And Riley might be the very epitome of BBC “light entertainment.” It isn’t as gritty as McLevy, nor as engrossing as the Falco series. But, there is a certain breezy charm to the very modern, middling problems that Trueman and Riley are forced to face.

Here’s the skinny on it from the Wikipedia entry:

Trueman And Riley is a British radio drama series written by Brian B. Thompson and starring Robert Daws and Duncan Preston. Originally named Trueman it began life on BBC Radio 4 on 17 April 2002 with DI Trueman being called back to work after a nervous breakdown in order to solve a high profile murder case, backed up by DS Riley (Duncan Preston). Renamed Trueman And Riley for a relaunch on BBC7, and relocated from Hull to Leeds, the new series saw the pair attempt to solve slightly more everyday crimes, and frequently disagreeing about the best way to proceed.

Trueman And Riley
By Brian B. Thompson; Performed by a full cast
30 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: 2007, 2009

Cast:
DI Trueman, Robert Daws
D.S. Riley, Duncan Preston
Written by Brian B. Thompson.
Produced by Toby Swift.

Series One:

Episode 1: Vanished
Detectives Trueman and Riley investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man en route from London to a new life in Leeds.

Episode 2: Story
A journalist has fallen from a building while working on a story, but was she pushed? Trueman and Riley are on the case.

Episode 3: Bond
Intrigue and suspicion at a James Bond convention as Trueman and Riley go in search of a stolen ring.

Episode 4: Speed
An angry Riley’s been sent on a speed awareness workshop. But that puts him on the trail of an ex-con from the old days in Hull.

Series Two:

Episode 1: The Road to Nowhere
The Leeds detectives find themselves on assignment to the Student Crime Prevention Team.

Episode 2:The Three Degrees
A student reunion turns sour when a man ends up in the canal. Trueman & Riley investigate.

Episode 3: A Man’s World
Trueman and Riley return to CID to deal with a series of thefts from pregnant women.

Episode 4: The Other Chic
Trueman and Riley are called in when a lingerie shop is burned down in an arson attack.

Episode 5: Love Bytes
Trueman and Riley are sucked into the world of an online role play game.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir review of Killing Floor by Lee Child

Aural Noir: Review

Killing Floor
By Lee Child; Read by Dick Hill
12 CDs – Approx. 14 Hours 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 9781423339854 (cd)
Themes: / Thriller / Murder / Mystery / Detective / Georgia / Conspiracy / Counterfeiting / Music /

All is not well in Margrave, Georgia. The sleepy, forgotten town hasn’t seen a crime in decades, but within the span of three days it witnesses events that leave everyone stunned. An unidentified man is found beaten and shot to death on a lonely country road. The police chief and his wife are butchered on a quiet Sunday morning. Then a bank executive disappears from his home, leaving his keys on the table and his wife frozen with fear. The easiest suspect is Jack Reacher – an outsider, a man just passing through. But Reacher is not just any drifter. He is a tough ex-military policeman, trained to think fast and act faster. He has lived with and hunted the worst: the hard men of the American military gone bad.

I’d heard about Lee Child for a while before I started reading his books. For a time there there was some confusion in my mind about who he was and what he wrote. I heard vague talk down the isles of bookstores. “Got any Child?” They’d say. “Lincoln?” They’d whisper. Or was it “Lee?” Then I’d hear about some character called “Repairman Jack” – or was it “Jack Reacher?” So with the confusion in the hearing it took a while longer than usual for the facts about who wrote what to float up from my unconscious to the part of my brain that thinks: “interesting.” The last time I heard about Lee Child was in Jolly Olde Books in Port Moody. That’s a used bookstore I frequent. The guy who runs the place reads Lee Child, and a couple of other booksellers I see in their from time to time were reading him too. They got to talking about how addictive the series was and that was the final clincher. When you run a used bookstore you really have your pick of books. They were reading Lee Child, so I thought I’d better get on the case too. Luckily Brilliance Audio has released most of this series, with at least one other done by Random House Audio.

But, even having the audiobook in hand, I had a hard time getting interested in listening to it. It sure doesn’t help to have such a generic title. And just look at it, the cover art is boooring. Apparently this is a very popular series, a bestselling series. That explains both the generic cover and the generic title. Killing Floor, the name sounds like just about every other techno-thriller/courtroom thriller/forensics thriller you’ll find in the supermarket paperback book rack; and that cover art only tells you vaguely about the genre – nothing about the story. The story starts out promisingly enough though. The story is told in first person, past tense (my preferred person and tense) by the protagonist, Jack Reacher. He tells us what is happening without much embroidery. When Reacher is arrested for murder, within the first few seconds of the novel, I was intrigued. It seemed like some sort of variation on David Morrell‘s First Blood: A stranger walks into small town USA and is arrested by corrupt cops. Fun. When the facts of Reacher’s backstory eventually drip out I still found myself fairly interested. Child’s explanation as to why Reacher is such a bad-ass actually makes pretty good sense too. What kind of police deal with the world’s most dangerous criminals? Child’s answer is: Military Police. The criminals the US Army deals with have been trained with every conceivable deadly art: firearms, hand to hand combat, artillery, grenades, demolitions – the many different ways of killing. A military policeman (MP) has to be trained better with these weapons than the criminals he confronts. And so an MP has to deal with the army’s best trained criminals: Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force. Jack Reacher, we eventually find out retired from the army as a Major, having run his own criminal investigation unit (homicide investigation). A bit convienient but not too implausible. The mystery itself seems fairly interesting and Child wants to play fair. But there is one giant co-incidence that badly mars the narrative. It’s fairly well lampshaded by Reacher, but even in doing that I wasn’t wholly willing to forgive Child.

This novel has plenty of good characters and characterization. I can also see the seeds of themes that will probably reappearing in later books in the series. Like many novels of the last 25 years that I complain about Killing Floor is overly-long for the material it contains. The action sequences in the later chapters of the book are solid, but there were too many for the machinations of the plot. After listening all the way through I’d say this a solid novel with fairly good storytelling. I can see exactly what Lee Child is doing and am not particularly impressed. He’s gonna make a lot of money, but I can’t imagine anyone would ever bother to re-read one of these books. More likely they’ll just pick up another in the series and get more of the same kind of thing, just a bit different. It’s a slightly less obvious Mack Bolan story, a romance novel for men. So this is several steps removed from anything like spectacular.

Narrator Dick Hill has been a major audiobook narrator for longer than I’ve been an audiobook listener (that’s a long time). In Killing Floor he personifies Jack Reacher with a conspiratorial first person voice. When playing the other major players, criminals, love interests and fellow investigators he switches tone just enough to make it clear who’s speaking. I hope he reads more books in this series as if he does, and I get up enough interested to read another, I’d like him to narrate it.

Posted by Jesse Willis