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I think the reader was channelling Fran Drescher when she decided what a Bostonian should sound like. What were the producers thinking?

If you can ignore the accent then the story is worthwhile.

First 10 chapters: exciting
Next 36 chapters: really really boring, coupled with more than the usual snarky John Corey commentary, a recipe for tediousness...
Last few chapters: A crack ATTF officer being an idiot.

Plus, the usually superb Scott Brick being not superb.

I would. The narrator is every bit as bad as everyone else claims. Lispy, and he sounds like he might be 11 or 12 years old.

He's not Spenser, not Hawk and not even particularly good. Do yourself a favor and buy the book, then pray they put Joe Mantegna back to work on the next one!

I listened to the whole thing, although I figured most of it out well before the end. And I guess I cared enough about the characters to want to know what happened.

But, this is a mishmash of a whole lot of things, Dickens characters, a "serialized" format, Victorian/Edwardian meandering and wordy stories, books within books (Eliza's fairy tales). In the end I had the feeling that the author didn't know what she wanted this book to be when it grew up.

If you have lots of time, are looking for a leisurely, slow-paced story, with lots of words, this is the novel for you. If you're more the action/instant gratification type, check for an abridged version.

...then this book is a pretty good mystery. Why they chose to do the main characters (all Italian) with REALLY bad Italian accented English is beyond me, maybe because there were one or two English speaking characters?

I do plan to keep up with the series, but will probably read the rest.

of Sue Henry's mysteries, but it was made doubly disappointing by the narrator, whose voice was grating and pronunciation stilted. Listen to a sample before you download to see if her voice is as unpleasant to you as it was to me.

The story was entertaining, but I think the author was being paid by the word...

Her voice is grating, really annoying. The phrasing is choppy, filled with confusing pauses. Very often it sounds as if she's reading this for the first time. This was my first audio recording of the Deborah Knott series, and if she's going to continue to narrate them, I'm going back to the books.

Go for the abridged version. As one reviewer said, this was an 8 hour book stretched to 32. The story is not interesting enough and the characters not engaging or sympathetic enough to warrant this much of your time, unless, of course, you have nothing better to do like 19th century ladies and gentlemen of leisure.

The end is a really not worth wading through all those pages. It sort of just finishes, in a vague sort of way.

I absolutely agree with all the rave reviews, and especially agree that one of the reasons this book is so good is the narration.

Simon Vance also reads under the names "Richard Matthews" and "Robert Whitfield".

Try the Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason.