Sorry I haven’t posted over the last week but my family and I have been on holiday in beautiful Sydney. We drove up the Hume Highway which is a very long, ten hour trip for someone who gets carsick if I read or play on electronic gadgets which is what my children did. Thankfully, I had the foresight to visit my local library for a few audio books for the trip. With my husband, I listened to Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” which was a fascinating look at science but not as we were taught at school. I learnt about planets and the solar system, alchemy and chemistry, geology, palaeontology and anthropology through the lives of the scientists themselves. What makes this book memorable and accessible to the average reader is that it focuses on the “how” question – how we came to understand the theories around some of the biggest scientific questions, both the official story as well as the untold story. He utilises humerous stories about the scientists themselves, their eccentricities, and the competitive jostling between the famous scientists to keep the reader engaged.
My choice of audio book was one by P.D Martin called The Murderers’ Club. The main character is Australian born FBI agent, Sophie Anderson, who becomes involved in a serial killer investigation while visiting her friend Darren, a police detective in Tucson. As a profiler with the FBI, Sophie just can’t help but get involved in Darren’s investigation. However, there is one extra skill that she has which is not usually found in an FBI agent’s repertoire – she has psychic visions. The setting of the novel is very contemporary with the use of computers and chat rooms, and the plot introduces the premise that there will always be people who are prepared to do what others won’t if there is enough cash involved. While the plot was suspenseful enough, I felt a little let down when the case came to a resolution not through the psychic visions and insights of the police, but due to an event which seemed to be placed at just the appropriate time. I can’t say what this was without spoiling the story, but it took the suspense out of the story for me.
I also found writing style of the novel to be a bit choppy. Maybe that was due to the audio book format, or maybe it’s because I have been reading a lot more fiction by European authors (including the crime genre) which is quite a different style. Personally, my opinion was that there wasn’t enough differentiation between this novel and other novels of I have read in this genre to make this one stand out from the crowded bookshelf that the crime genre fills these days. Still, it did keep me occupied during the long drive.
One of the things I noticed with the two audio books that I listened to is that, unlike the written book where the voices of the characters are determine by our perception of what the characters would be like, in the audio book, the choice of narrator of the story is very important and can affect the enjoyment of the book. With the Bill Bryson book, both my husband and I found our minds drifting away every now and again during the five hours of listening to the same voice talking about quite complex matters. In “The Murderers' Club”, the narrator became a little annoying when she was using different voices for the different characters – especially when it came to male voices with American accents as it didn’t sound at all like the type of person I imagined the characters to be. One of the audio books that I had borrowed but that I didn’t get to listen to was Sonya Hartnett’s “Butterfly” so I might give that a try in coming weeks to see if a totally different style of fiction makes a difference.
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