Harry

I haven't listened to this book yet, but am surprised at the negative comments about Susan Ericksen's reading. I've listened to many audible books and find Ms. Ericksen's reading to be excellent. Yes, there are times when she slips when several characters are talking at the same time and she must changes voices frequently and yes, her voice of Peabody doesn't fit the geographical area where Peabody was raised. However, I find that Ms. Ericksen does a great job of defining each character and uses excellent changes of tonal quality, gender differentiation, and accent to give us a clear picture of the characters. I think Ms. Ericksen is one of the better readers that I've had the pleasure of listening to here at Audible. She makes the "in death" series come alive in my opinion. If you've ever tried reading in a dramatic way to your grandchildren it becomes very easy to appreciate the difficulty involved in being a quality reader like Ms. Ericksen.

I was very disappointed with the readers changes in character voices. It is now difficult to tell Eve and Peabody from one another. The commander is a different person, McNabb has lost his arrogant tone and even Roarke's voice is somewhat changed. That makes the whole book a different and disappointing experience for me. I listened to the next book in the series with the same disappointment and am now done with the JD Robb series. I'm moving on to something different. The story gets a five but the review is a two because of the unexpected and unwanted changes in the characters voices.

I listen to these kinds of books to be entertained. While I very much enjoyed the story once the author had developed the characters, it took nearly half the book to get there! I was disappointed with what I felt was an abrupt ending that left a lot of ends untied or to the "reader" to finish themselves.

While I enjoyed the story very much, I was very disappointed in the reader. The author should stick to writing and leave the reading to those who do it best. I had difficulty following which character was doing the talking due to Ms. Higgins Clark's inability to change her voice to distinguish between characters. I would rate the story as a four and the reader as a two.