I don’t read mysteries all that often, but I do relish listening to Tana French’s novels. No idea if they’d work as well on the page (they probably would), but as audiobooks they’re fantastically immersive — thrilling, creepy, suspenseful.
This one was slightly less so than the Dublin Murder Squad books, I think because the protagonist is American, and I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he wasn’t drawn quite right — he was a slightly implausible collection of traits and experiences, with the wrong balance of cliche. Also, his voice was stilted — it came across as imitation American. This may be partly a problem with the audiobook narrator, whose American English was bizarrely placeless. I looked him up later and even listened to some sample of his other recordings, I was so curious. It seems that he grew up in Ireland (his Irish accents are spot on) and now lives in NYC. In some of his other audiobooks, he has a similarly stilted semi-British accent. I guess an ability to sound like you’re from nowhere in particular is probably a virtue in the audiobook world, but I really don’t care for it. So it might be his delivery of the lines that’s off, but I suspect they’re just a little out of sync with American English in general, just as Cal’s various experiences and opinions and actions don’t quite fit together, for me.
ANYWAYS. The novel really ended up confirming my appreciation of Tana French, because even though it’s definitely one of her lesser works in a lot of ways, it’s still a vivid, gripping read.
Kasia Reads 