The Hounding
Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson Mysteries
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The Hounding
Narrated by:
Jess Reed
Buy Now for £11.99
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Narrated by:
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Jess Reed
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By:
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Sandra de Helen
About this listen
Tall, thin, androgynous Shirley Combs considers herself the world's greatest living detective because she uses the methods and casebook of Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes of the gentry of the American city most closely resembling London, England - in terms of the weather, at least. Sidekick/narrator Dr. Mary Watson both delights in and is frustrated by her partner's behavioral resemblance to Sherlock. Combs is unemotional, analytical, and given to pacing through the night in the streets of the almost perfectly livable city of Portland, Oregon. Her ability to observe details and understand their relationship to a case is unmatched; her demands on Watson's time are too.
©2013 Sandra de Helen (P)2014 Sandra de HelenListeners also enjoyed...
And that was purely down to the narration and recording. First I'll deal with the engineering. I don't know if the recording was bad work from the studio used or if it was the downloaded streaming. There seem to have been a whole host of lesbian audio books recently suffering from the same problem.
However, that doesn't account for the bad narration; it felt very rushed and so fast at times that it was hard to keep a trace of who was suppose to be talking. The voice was okay, but with the rushed nature of the words the narrator wasn't able to really show if she could have done a better job. Better breaks of the sentences, (instead of running together like they did), would have made the entire story better.
That lets the whole thing down, which is a shame because I could see what the author wanted to do with the work, but when the narration detracts that badly then listening to the story isn't really pleasant.
There was a preview of the next book at the end, although it isn't showing on the UK Audible catalog yet, and given that this book was interesting enough I would probably buy the next in the series.
However, I do feel Audible needs to look more closely at the quality of the works we're paying good money for, so Audible, please take note; these poor recording are happening a bit too often for my liking. Plus I notice I'm not the only reviewer to have mentioned this issue.
Quirky little story, badly let down by recording.
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