Dark Blood

By: Stuart MacBride

Narrated by: Stuart MacBride

Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

READ BY THE AUTHOR HIMSELF! Stuart MacBride who read his previous book for HarperAudio ‘Blind Eye’ was a complete success and we have no doubt that this will be another triumph by MacBride. With his ability to set the scene and goings on of Detective Sergeant Logan McRae this is a must have audiobook.

Richard Knox has served his time, so why shouldn’t he be allowed to live wherever he wants? Yes, in the past he was a violent rapist, but he’s seen the error of his ways. Found God. Wants to leave his dark past in Newcastle behind him and make a new start.

Or so he says.

Detective Sergeant Logan McRae isn’t exactly thrilled to be part of the team helping Knox settle into his new Aberdeen home. He’s even less thrilled to be stuck with DSI Danby from Northumbria Police – the man who put Knox behind bars for ten years – supposedly here to ‘keep an eye on things’.

Only things are about to go very, very wrong.

Edinburgh gangster Malk the Knife wants a slice of the development boom Donald Trump’s golf course is bringing to the Granite City, whether local crime lord Wee Hamish Mowat likes it or not. Three heavies from Newcastle want a ‘quiet word’ with DSI Danby about a missing mob accountant. And Richard Knox’s dark past isn’t done with him yet…

©2010 HarperCollins Publishers (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers

painful

What disappointed you about Dark Blood?

sorry stuart, your take on your own characters was abominable, surely the audible people have some quality checking in place, i blame them.

Has Dark Blood turned you off from other books in this genre?

no, just bad scottish semi-bellowing accents in general.

Would you be willing to try another one of Stuart MacBride’s performances?

probably not, or only after having a careful listen to excerpts beforehand.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

pain, then disappointment then a tinge of anger followed by indifference.

Any additional comments?

as you can tell, i wasn't particularly taken with the author's take on the characters, however i might have struggled further with it if the actual plot had grabbed me, which it did not... sorry stuart.

Awful

Would you ever listen to anything by Stuart MacBride again?

Not on purpose

Would you be willing to try another one of Stuart MacBride’s performances?

I have three and I doubt I'll even open the other two.

Any additional comments?

The reader, the author, lays on the Scots so thick and the language is so coarse I couldn't get through a paragraph without thinking "This is really terrible."

This author should not narrate his own books

I really enjoyed the first few books of this series but this one is hard to take. MacBride has a tendency to exaggerate his characters to the point that they become unbelievable and it seems that this gets a little worse with each book. When he narrates he goes one step further in that he tries to further the various characters description by giving them "voices" that he feels match. The outcome is farcical. His DI Steel for instance is a rather cranky bulldozer of a woman with some occasional soft bits thrown in. Every time I hear him doing the voice he believes suitable I get visions of the wolf that is about to blow the house down: seriously overdone.
Unfortunate, because he has shown to be a talented writer with at times a brilliant sense of humor. I have listened to Jonathan Hackett doing a few books in the series with a totally different result.

very disappointed

what happened to this great series, this book was not well written. The storyline was loose, jumbled, and full if dead space dialog. Who ok'd the publishing of this!!