I love listening to stories while I walk the dog, or travel in the car. The app that I use is still Audible as it has everything that I need and has some fantastic offers every so often like the 2 books for 1 credit.
In March, I listened to stories from Val McDermid, Ross Greenwood and David Blake.
The Distant Echo is another brilliant story by Val McDermid. It begins when four drunken students from St. Andrews University stumble over the barely live body of Rosie Duff. She’s been brutally raped and stabbed, left for dead in a cemetery. One of the students goes for help while the others try to keep her alive. Unfortunately, Rosie doesn’t survive, and the students are the prime suspects.
The first part of the story revolves around the four students and the investigation into Rosie’s death. How it affects their lives and how the town and Rosie’s family react to them.
With Rosie’s killer never caught, the second part of the story moves on 25 years. The four students now live separate lives in different parts of the world. Police Scotland begins a series of cold case reviews including Rosie’s murder, so the focus turns to the four men. However, two of them die in suspicious circumstances, leaving the other two to question If someone is killing them one by one.
Although the cover says that this is a Karen Pirie thriller, in this story, she is only really a peripheral figure.
The story was read excellently by Tom Cotcher, the performance lasting for 14hrs and 11mins.
Broadland is the first in the DI Tanner series by David Blake. Detective Inspector John Tanner has transferred from the high-octane world of the Met to the relative peace of the Norfolk Broads. He is assigned missing person cases to get ‘acquainted’ with the local area and is given the help of Detective Constable Jenny Evans. But the first one they investigate quickly escalates into a murder case when the mutilated body of a woman is found caught in the propellor of a hire boat.
As the newcomer to the team, Tanner is asked to assist with the case, and soon the evidence points to a man with plenty of reasons to want the woman dead. But when another body is found on a slipway, his guilt is less clear.
It’s a cracking first book in the series giving us a bit of background into DI Tanner and the problems he faces with his boss and his counterparts in the new team. Broadland is a fast-paced story with plenty of red herrings to throw us off the scent.
The story was read brilliantly by Jonathan Keeble, the performance lasting 6hrs and 46mins.
The Snow Killer is a super story by Ross Greenwood. It begins with a family who are gunned down, but one child survives. That child wreaks its revenge and kills the men who slaughtered the rest of their family. These were known as the snow killings, but they were never solved.
50 years later, the killer begins a new spree of killings during the winter months and it’s up to DI Barton and his team to solve these latest murders.
It’s a pretty fast-paced tale told from the perspective of the child (the snow killer) and later DI Barton. So, we get a fascinating insight as to why each of the targets were chosen and can see the sort of logic used by the killer.
Even though we may understand the killer’s motives, the author still misdirects us brilliantly and the final reveal is very cleverly done.
The story was read superbly by David Thorpe, the perfomance lasting for 9hrs and 34mins.
