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The Cracked Spine

Scottish Bookshop Mystery, Book 1

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The Cracked Spine

By: Paige Shelton
Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
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About this listen

In need of a good adventure, Delaney Nichols takes the leap and moves to Edinburgh, Scotland, to start a job at The Cracked Spine. She doesn't know much about what she's gotten herself into other than that the work sounds exciting and that her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, has given her the opportunity of a lifetime.

When she arrives, she meets her new Scottish family; also working at The Cracked Spine are Rosie, perpetually wrapped in scarves, who always has tiny dog Hector in tow; Hamlet, a 19-year-old thespian with a colored past and a bright future; and Edwin, who is just as enigmatic and mysterious as Delaney expected.

But before she can settle in to her new life, a precious artifact - a previously undiscovered first folio of Shakespeare's plays - goes missing, and Edwin's sister is murdered, seemingly in connection to the missing folio. Delaney decides to do some sleuthing of her own to find out just what the real story is behind the priceless folio and how it's connected to the tragic death - all without getting harmed herself.

©2016 Paige Shelton-Ferrell (P)2016 Tantor Cosy Detective International Mystery & Crime Mystery Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Fiction Scotland

Critic reviews

"As warm and inviting as a cup of tea and a serving of fresh-from-the-oven shortbread." (Ellery Adams, author of Writing All Wrongs)
All stars
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Good easy story. Don’t like the American portion of it, but love the Scottish portion

Good story

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This is a reasonable story. I am sure nobody buys this expecting prize winning literature but it's a cosy crime novel and I was interested enough in the characters to move onto the next two books.

The main character flies half way around the world to work for a person she has never met, moves into the first flat she sees ownd by a cab driver that picks her up on day one, becomes immediate best friends with cab driver and his wife, immediately stars dating the first bloke she meets and is practically married to him, starts investigating the murder of someone she has never met, all by chapter three. She also has a weird talent to hear books speaking to her which promptly disappears the minute her plane lands in Edinburgh so not sure why that was even mentioned as it plays absolutely no part in the story. I suspect this is to attract the Droughlander fans, of which I am one!

The character is supposed to be 29 but she talks and acts like she is 49. Her relationship with the hot Scottish bloke in the kilt is like the sort of relationship we have when we are well past looking for someone to share kids and mortgages with, not the sort of relationship most 29 year old women have. Not expecting anything mucky but she hasn't even kissed him.

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Scotland I regret to report that the only guys that wear kilts in the city are tourist bagpipe players. Oh, I did once see a really drunk guy in a kilt on the No 4 bus to Partick one Tuesday night in 2018 but I suspect this was a one-of. It clearly made an impression on me.

I feel sorry for the narrator because she makes a fair job of reading the work but her accents are terrible. Even though she has a Scottish name she is American and this suits the lead character but every other character is Scottish and she simply cannot do any of the accents. They all sound the same and it is not possibe to tell the male and female characters apart.

Reasonable first installment but terrible accents

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The narrators attempts at a Scottish accent was quite off putting at times and occasionally annoying

Storyline was good

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If you can ignore the horrendous narration of any accents other than USA , it is a far fetched murder mystery. It’s free on audible and there are more; so no doubt, the cheap skate that I am will listen to more ..

Written for Americans??

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Other reviewers have mentioned the narrator's 'bad' Scottish accents, I wasn't bothered by them at all, but I'm not Scottish. I found the story long winded and ponderous. I took a chance and fast forwarded quite a few chapters and am pretty sure I didn't miss anything. I am going to listen to the next book in the series to see if it's more interesting.

Ponderous

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