Panic Room
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Panic Room
Narrated by:
Hollie Taylor, John Sackville
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Hollie Taylor
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John Sackville
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By:
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Robert Goddard
About this listen
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Panic Room by Robert Goddard, read by Hollie Taylor and John Sackville.
Sometimes the danger is on the inside . . .
High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter.
The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable – and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she’s escaped.
But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur, Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake the sort of questions she can’t – or won’t – want to answer.
And will the panic room ever give up its secrets?
PANIC ROOM is Robert Goddard at his nerve-shredding best. A sliver of a mystery kicks off a juggernaut of a thriller. Layers of secrets, half truths and lies must be peeled back to reveal what really lies within.
'The world's greatest storyteller' Guardian
‘Is this his best yet?...Full of sinister menace and propulsive pace with twisty plotting’ Lee Child
Listeners also enjoyed...
Story fine but annoying narrator
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If it had just been her I would’ve stopped listening but fortunately every time I thought I couldn’t take any more it switched and he kept me rooted to the story. I’d recommend it anyway because of that.
Good story 1 terrible narrator
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It just hooks you in
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A good book spoiled
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I loved the opening with John Sackville's dulcet tones which made for a luxurious listen though 4WD pronounced "four- double-you-dee" did jar and break the flow for me.
Loved all the scene setting - the character establishment, getting to know Don and his MG and his ex-wife. the opulent cliff top Des Res and then came Blake .......
I am still not sure what age Blake was supposed to be but her chapters, read by Hollie Taylor never ceased to startle and infuriate as she launched into each new piece with helium gas style girlie gusto, sporting a range so high I was reminded of dialogue from the Sooty and Sweep show. In fairness this was not so much the fault of the talented Hollie Taylor who did seem to settle down a bit later in the book, or perhaps my ears became accustomed to the overenthusiastic shrill of it - but down to poor casting, as the contrast between the two voices was just torture.
Without giving away the plot, when we first meet Blake she has no clothes on, dripping after skinny dipping in the swimming pool and stands there unashamed staring the 50+ year old Don down in what I imagine was an homage to Bond girls ....... but the fact she is voiced in the breathless high pitched babble of an Enid Blyton character leaves a rather bewildering Lolita-esque uneasy feeling about it all.
Perhaps Blake's age was revealed and I missed it - perhaps Hollie was chosen to make sure the listener realises she is YOUNG .... so young she thinks of Don an an old duffer to set up their interaction .... so why the nudity - just seems so unnecessary and "off" to imagine an au natural Bonnie Langton style precocious child star (as that how the character was voiced) wanting some "old" random guy to see her in her birthday suit and have to plead with her to towel up. AWKWARD and ODD and still makes me feel a bit queasy and seemed to have been completely gratuitous to the story - another case of the lack of an good editor to step in and snip out what sounds more like something the author fantasises about rather anything the reader needs to be dragged into.
I only mention this as, for me, this book was a bit of a mash-up - smooth Don, the likeable slightly rumpled hero and Blake his childlike Famous Fiver side kick. One minute I was relaxing with the world weary charm of the Real Estate Agent turned sleuth - next I was shocked into a frenzy by the ditsy, driftwood carving dropout - it was a dreadful mismatch of epic proportions ................... and the accents......................... which sadly were hammed up to cringe-worthy cartoon proportions by both narrators, though I have to say Hollie's were at least in place with her entire vivacious and enthusiastic performance while John Sackville's narration lost all its previous integrity and joined the romp plunging headlong into pantomime with the vocal equivalent of moustache-twirling caped villains.
It was at this point that any hint of credibility vanished off the cliff top for me - which given the way the plot had also surrendered all sense of reason was not much of a loss.
Was this a great book spoiled by poor casting and hammy foreign accents?
No, not really as although it could have been greatly improved by better narration and indeed two voices which sounded like they at least belonged in the same book, the characters themselves did not really seem like they should have been thrown together either ............. and that plot!
I suppose in ways, the Bond-esque unclad young woman emerging from a swimming pool was echoed in the scale and drama of the reveal, as were the thuggish villains, billionaire businessman and global scale of it all .... but the beautiful Cornish setting ... and the witchcraft ....... and the mystery of Blake's being forced to live off the grid all seemed as if they might have been refugees from another book completely.
I am still struggling with the last chapter as after hearing the improbable explanation of what it was all about, being plunged into a sort of budget Jack Reacher action sequence and high tech, high jinx in the simultaneous storyline I just felt I had been dragged along as far as I was willing to go with this dynamic duo and looked for my next book, disappointed that what had been an intriguing premise had not delivered.
Much as the two narrators were at odds, due to a tragic vocal style mismatch and the unlikely characters who had only slightly better odds of convincingly meshing either, even on paper - so the themes of a romantic mystery cliff top luxury house, international espionage, Cornish witchcraft, billionaire businessmen, drunken ladies of the night, vintage sportscars, stereotypical Russian henchmen and three legged stool making housekeepers with a secret past, rather than making a rip roaring adventure, instead refused to blend together resulting in a shambolic, unpalatable and faintly ridiculous dish best served with a huge helping of suspended disbelief.
In fact the whole theme of this audio book could be summed up as storylines, subplots, settings, events, characters and narrators who just do not go well together and make a sum far less than all their parts.
I give the premise start and build up 4 stars, the action and plot reveal 2 stars and I cannot really envisage dragging myself to the end. I don't think I will be risking another Robert Goddard offering based on this.
What a shame.
MISMATCHED NARRATION MARS BUDGET BOND MASH UP
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