The Distant Dead cover art

The Distant Dead

(The Detective's Daughter Book 8)

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The Distant Dead

By: Lesley Thomson
Narrated by: Richard Attlee
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About this listen

Cleaner-turned-detective Stella Darnell connects a murder in Tewkesbury Abbey to a decades-old mystery in wartime London. From the number-one best-selling author of The Detective's Daughter.

London, 1940.

A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he, too, is murdered.

Tewkesbury, 2020.

Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. He was looking into the murder of police pathologist Dr Aleck Northcote - and was certain he had uncovered Northcote's real killer.

Stella Darnell used to run a detective agency alongside her cleaning business. She's moved to Tewkesbury to escape from death, not to court it - but Roddy died in her arms, and Stella is someone impelled to root out evil when she finds it. Now she is determined to hunt down Roddy's killer - but then she finds another body....

©2021 Lesley Thomson (P)2021 Head of Zeus Crime Crime Fiction Detective Fiction Mystery Private Investigators Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Murder

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All stars
Most relevant
I love this series and was sorry to see this one wasn't being narrated by Anna Bentinck. I can understand she might not have been available but to switch to a male narrator seems a very odd choice. He did an OK job (although there were some woeful mispronunciations and misreads) but it is such a shame when most of the characters (and the author) are women.

Different narrator

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I usually buy this series of books on kindle to read so this was the first audible version and was strange having the narrator put on his old lady voices! This book wasn't as good as previous but it did hold my attention until the end.

Enjoyable

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I love this series of books, I can’t think of anything that I dislike about them, and am looking forward to the next one!

Another outstanding Story

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I have read the books since the first day the first book was published. I always looked forward to the next book. This book is bad. It rambles on just to fill up space. It is tiresome. Took me a week to listen to as I kept going back trying to get the point of it. Time for Stella and co to retire and for the series to be remembered kindly.

Sorry but Stella has run her course.

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I have been a fan of the author for some time and really liked the previous books in the series. This one, however, has been disappointing. The narrator is an odd choice when most characters are females. Some of the main characters have had some personality changes since the last book, Stella sounds a bit like a sociopath and displays contradictory behaviours, which can be explained through a breakdown but that is not well covered. Jack on the other hand is now a fully adjusted and charming character with better insights that he had previously and better than Stella. Neither appear to have much emotional intelligence. The plot is oddly put together, police are a bunch of idiots who have huge resources at their disposal but manage to get it completely wrong. It’s not clear why the people they arrested have all the evidence from the murders! The new characters are weak and seem cobbled together in an attempt to make them quirky, but it comes off wrong. The reader does not have sufficient clues to put together to identify the offender and the team doesn’t work it out either. Whilst in the past they diligently investigated and recorded, this time around they stumbled in the dark and only work it out when they are themselves targets. The amount of coincides is staggering and make the plot and characters not only weak, but also not credible. Too much is not explained and it just doesn’t flow well.

A bit disappointing

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