A very brave topic

Excellent story line- very brave to address FGM. Narrator irritating at times with constant "innit" which just wasn't Barbara Havers to me. Utterly frustrating that the other end of final phone conversation with Simi's mum not audible on download so will have to get the book to find out exactly what happened

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Audio Ruins this Book !!

I found the book as thrilling as all her other books.
The subject matter is very interesting and treated well.
Unfortunately the whole book is ruined by the awful reader plus the editing which means the end of the book is almost unintelligible due to missing sections !!
This book needs to be released and done properly

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It’s fine

I don’t understand why people were complaining about the narration or audio missing at the end. I think the narration is fine, sometimes more like a play than a book. And there’s nothing missing. The story isn’t the best she’s ever written but still enjoyable despite the seriousness of subject here. That makes it not suitable bedtime-listening, at least for me, but I learned a lot which I wasn’t aware of.

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Narration not up to usual standard

The narration on this one is terribly distracting. The accents are all over the place, I'm not sure where the narrator thinks D.S Havers originates from but going by her accent in this book it could be anywhere from Birmingham to Leeds with several layovers between the two. I swear at one point D.C.I Lynley sounded like he was from the United States, one of the Mid-Western States! The African accents travel from Africa to the Caribbean via The Indian subcontinent and back again frequently in the same paragraph.

If you can tune out the accents the story is fascinating and just enough of our favourite characters personal stories to keep them interesting.

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lost sound in last aprt

I lost sound for a couple of characters in last part.
As a long time reader of this author I enjoyed this book. Some of the detailed conversations between various characters I felt went on too long. Also the Italian accent for Barbara's friend was too archetypal. In fact the whole side story about Barbara's "love life" I felt too distracting. Otherwise a story needed to be told and sadly distressing.
I agree with other comments about the narration - not the easiest book to get a smooth narration for - so many different people. But did not distract too much from the book

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The sound disappears

In some parts of the book the sound is absent - typically “ she said:” and then silence for 30 sec and like that several times through the book. The last 20 minutes was mostly silence.

As for the book itself - Linley becomes more admire like a speaking doll , a cut out photo. It takes enormous effort to believe that a good looking well educated rich aristocrat loves a life of sexual misery: “ always suffering”/ always alone/ always has a tragic love/ has women trouble etc etc
I am sorry but Ms George wants too much from our imagination.

As for beloved Hayvers , Nkata and hated incongruous and absolutely lifeless Deidra - they also on the way of becoming of plain shallow lifeless dolls.

The main topic - fgm-is very important. But the way these defenders of the black girls from fgm speak to everyone who is not a black and not a woman - is just horrible and tremendously rude.
I do not understand why Debra all the time apologises that she is white, rich , educated, lives in a good district and good house, and tolerate offending rude behaviour of these Dewadi and Narisa fishwives. She personally did not steal anything from them or caused them any suffering.

All in all - it is sad when once good writer starts to produces such half baked books.

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missing conversations

A good book but the narration was full of mispronunciations and false stresses. also phone conversations had the dialogue missing for the person on the the other end of the phone. this was particularly bad in the last 30 minutes. I still enjoyed it but found parts irritating to listen to. not up to your usual standard.

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2 people found this helpful

Gripping

The suject matter is revealing and thought provoking.
A gripping story and well read.
My only criticism is the audio quality. The volume level varies between characters which means that, if you set the sound for the quietest voice, you are deafened by the next one. This is most noticible in a car.

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The sheer length of this novel!

It was far too long and every single place and person were described in minute detail. I was asked to read it for my monthly book group and others there said Elizabeth George had written much better, shorter books, so maybe I won’t give up on her writing. I decided to listen in order to finish it but found the woman narrator was stretched trying to read all the numerous character’s dialogue and a male as well as female narrator would have helped. Also I’ve never watched any Inspector Linley TV series so I came to this character without any background information.
I think it should have been pruned by the editors to half its 600 odd pages as it dealt with a very important issue and I felt the need to plough through it for that reason alone.

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Not up to scratch

The subject matter tackled in this book is incredibly important but this 'Lynley' is certainly not one of Elizabeth George's greatest. There were too many side pieces that were completely inconsequential to the main FGM storyline together with too many irrelevant bits of description. The narrator had her work cut out with all the varying voices and accents that were required, quite a few of which did not come off or were rather stereo-typical - the Italian as an example. With regard to characterisation, poor Barbara is now sounding like a foul-mouthed food stuffing monster! And if I were Lynley, I'd dump the awful "DE-DRA" without delay. The reader put in quite a lot of strange pauses and emphasis throughout her reading which stilted the flow. Finally to Audible, have another look at your master mix of the recording. Chapter 23 - all the telephone conversation pieces were missing from my download. So, not the greatest Lynley book. I have always enjoyed them, but this one goes to the bottom of the pile.

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3 people found this helpful