A. Rajan

I thoroughly enjoyed Moonstone-the famous mystery novel by the same author. I was skeptical when I decided to buy "The woman in white" wondering if it would live up to the standard of Moonstone.I am glad that it was even better. I could hardly stop listening to it. The narrators were quite good, especially the voice of Marian Holcomb is rivet ting. I highly recommend it,especially if you love British literature !!

The onion like nature of the story, the fact that it touches on everything from espionage to high finance, engineering to journalism, politics and current affairs of Europe alongside descriptions of human nature. The story is tied together so well it is almost an epic. In addition, the way he builds the characters is sophisticated to say the least, you are so drawn into the story. In the end, the fact that what appears to be an obvious red herring and is dismissed earlier on, comes back and hits you like a ton of bricks, I am still getting over that.

A Tolstoyian style. Based on the style of the author to Zoom in and out, it touches on so many aspects of society and life, but still keeps the focus on human nature. The granularity of detail, for instance tiny incidences such as Stone stealthily grabbing a fruit in Venice from a girl is treated with such delicacy as and detail as is given to a high power meetings of British, Russian and French finance ministers.

They draw you in and you can almost see it happening..like watching a movie. I think the lady voices are done strangely in some instances by Simon Vance, though his reading of Stone's thoughts and projecting the personality just drowns any quibbles I may have had with the female voices. There were times in John Lee's narration where it was hard for me to keep track of the characters involved in segments with rapid conversation, but again his performance on other segments more than made up for this. Roy Dotrice was impeccable.

If you are a patient listener who likes attention to detail and enjoys a subject being deal at many levels this may interest you. If you are in it for just the "story", then look elsewhere. This book is like a journey which has to be relished.