Who Kills a Nudist? cover art

Who Kills a Nudist?

The Cornish Detective, Book 1

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About this listen

Book 1: The Cornish Detective series

A pensioner is found drowned on a beach used by naturists. An autopsy shows his death was violent, that he'd been sexually molested.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Kettle is a grieving widower of three years. The last time he visited this beach was with his wife. Already running investigations into human trafficking and the smuggling of drugs and weapons, Neil's enquiries into the victim's life reveal links to a shady millionaire car dealer, Rupert Mansard, a man who's risen from nowhere to prosperity.

The reclusive car dealer is rumored to be involved in gay BDSM, not an illegal activity, but he knows men of wealth and influence, including law enforcement officers. Guns and explosives are being brought in from Eastern Europe, by sea and air, to arm organised crime gangs.

Desperate immigrants are snuck into the country, forced to work as slaves to pay off their debt. Cornwall's rugged coast land with sheltered coves, quiet rivers, and inadequate customs patrols has favored smugglers for centuries, and only the contraband has changed.

The drowned man was found by an American photographer called Mish Stewart, who lives in a remote cabin overlooking the beach. Someone is stalking her, a shadowy man who could be their suspect Rupert Mansard. She's separated and though Neil is still grieving, they get on well enough for him to imagine falling in love again one day.

Huge profits are guarded with malevolence, destroying the innocent and the corrupt. Neil Kettle is pursuing men with assault rifles, who treat human life as a disposable commodity. Anyone and anything can be bought and sold. Mish, the only woman he's cared about for ye,ars is under threat.

The car dealer isn't intimidated by police interest in him, insulated by his wealth and insider knowledge about their investigation — someone is a traitor.

Then, a bullet is fired through Neil's kitchen window.

Is he about to become a target?

©2020 Paul Whybrow (P)2020 Paul Whybrow Crime Fiction Modern Detectives Mystery Crime Fiction Money
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enjoyed this 'read' and the affable main character will be listening to his next story

Book 1

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I loved this storyline for its unusual ness but hated the narrator. It needed an actors voice

Great story but needs a better narrator

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Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way: I was given a free copy of this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this unbiased review.

I make a point of not posting a summary as the blurb is always included on the book’s page where I post a review and in this case the summary pretty much covers the whole story except for revealing who dunnit and who else is involved. It’s a good premise and on the whole not a bad story. The settings and scenery were well described and painted a lovely picture of Cornwall in vivid detail. Some of the characters are more believable than others but I kept losing track of who was who in places, though this may be due to the narration, more on that below.

There wasn’t much humour or action but there were plenty of police procedures and details. There’s also some quite graphic BDSM details which didn’t bother me but may put some readers off. Can’t please everyone though.

A few minor niggles about the story such as the reference to die hard nudists who still go out in 40 degrees. Either that’s hot enough to blister the skin and far too hot to lie on burning sand or Cornwall still uses Fahrenheit instead of using Celsius like the rest of the UK, Europe and indeed the majority of the world (USA excepted of course). How many times do we need to be told that there are at least 3 authorised firearm officers in the team? Three or four apparently, repeated almost word for word each time.

I guess the biggest disappointment though, for me at least, was the narration. The book is narrated by the author and in my experience that can either be really good or really bad with little in between. Sad to say this isn’t near the top end of the scale. There’s almost no differentiation in character voices (probably why I got lost with some of them) and not a lot of inflection. Dare I say a little dull to listen to? Monotonous? There were several mispronunciations though the only one that I can remember is “sleight” pronounced “slate” instead of “slight”. To add to this the recording keeps switching from clear and sharp into muffled and muted, sometimes every few sentences, clearly recorded either on different equipment, in different rooms or with different mic settings. This inconsistency quickly became quite annoying.

Kudos to the author for giving it a go but I think a professional voice actor/narrator would have made a huge difference.

An Ok story but poor narration.

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Interesting story, easy to "see" the lovely setting, and the characters were believable. I usually like an author reading their own work as they get it across in the way they intended, but sadly I found this author's distinctive voice distracting and sometimes difficult to understand so I wont be getting any more of the audiobooks

good yarn but....

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I listened for well over a hour BUT the narrator just bored me so much I deleted the book

Boring monotonous voice

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