Every Secret Thing

By: Emma Cole

Narrated by: Tara Ward

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

When an old man strikes up a conversation with her on the steps of St Paul's and makes a mystifying allusion to a murder and an oddly familiar comment about her grandmother, Kate Murphy is intrigued. But she never gets to hear the rest of Andrew Deacon's tale.

Shocked by his unexpected death, Kate becomes drawn into an investigation uncovering secrets about the grandmother she thought she knew and the man she never did. And she soon realises her questions are putting lives in danger...

©2006 Emma Cole (P)2007 Oakhill Publishing

Critic reviews

"This is crime writing at its most complex, intelligent best - exhausting and quite breathtaking" (EditRed.com)

Good murder mystery story and narration

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed this book and agree with other reviewers, it did start slow. This is a murder mystery story and if you like that Genre I would highly recommend it. Tara Ward did a fabulous job of narrating all the different characters and even using different accents quiet successfully. This made the book a pleasure to listen to. It is a long book about 13 hours but not too long for the story. I would have liked a few more "gasp" or "OMG" moments but I tend to find murder mysteries a little slow for my liking, hence the 3 star overall. A definite must for the murder mystery buffs out there though.

Brilliant

Couldn't turn it off...once I got into the story it was difficult to not listen to the very end.
I well read book that has you guessing trying to figure out the twists and turns -

Very good

I liked this one a lot. It took me a little time to warm to the narrator - perhaps because I'm more used to the English/male, rather than the Canadian/female voice, in my thrillers - but ultimately the narration was good.
The story reminded me of Robert Goddard novels - with a mystery from the past being investigated by a present-day descendant. The story followed several lines that all tied together nicely at the end, making it a worthwhile listen.

Not the Best

Great idea for a story but lost its way. Not sure anything really happened and a strange ending.

Pretty Unsatisfying

I like reading stories set in places I‘ve visited, so when in the synopsis I read: “When an old man strikes up a conversation with her on the steps of St. Paul's” I was hooked right away; turns out that was the best part!

I didn’t particularly enjoy the story, or the way the mystery unfolded. I’ve read many stories in which the plot unravelled slowly and I’ve enjoyed them because I liked the characters - Kate Murray on the other hand seemed rather dull and two-dimensional to me, so instead of just going with the flow I just wanted to get to the point already.

It was more annoying than suspenseful – a string of people end up dead, highly unconvincing coincidences, utterly preposterous connections between people… And the set ups! Sigh. **insert eye roll** For example: when Kate recalled talking to her grandmother and said [something to the effect of] “I was so unprepared for what she told me, that to this day I regret not taping it” ha ha ha ha I said to myself: Ok! Ok! I’ll pay attention to what comes next! Too obvious.

Overall: pretty unsatisfying.