Remains of Innocence: A Brady Novel of Suspense

It was an interesting storyline but the terrible narration took away from the audio book.

The narrator could have acted like she was enjoying reading the story. I've heard children with more emotion in their reading than this narrator.

The two separate stories are intriguing and held my interest. I kept listening because of the story. The narrator was awful. I've read Joanna Brady mysteries previously and have imagined her as energetic but in the hands of this narrator she is tired and a "one note" character.

The book is read with such low energy I can't say I had a favorite character, it was the plot that was my favorite part of the book.

Another narrator with more energy would definitely be in order. With audio books the narrator is the make or break part of the book. In this case the reader "broke" the book.

Another good one from J.A. Jance. The narration was terrible. The book was not "performed." It was simply read. For the first 1/3 of the book there was no voice change at all from man to woman to adult to child. An identical voice for all. This meant paying close attention to a conversation because it was easy to lose track of who was talking. Then suddenly, one of the lead characters developed a slight Boston accent. This (as opposed to the story line) almost made me jump out of my chair. Then the accent went away; later it came back; and so on. There were a few other stabs at the occasional accent, but for the most part everyone had the same voice. This was really strange.

I like that her stories have great plots but don't have unnecessary foul language, sex for the sake of sex and explicit violence.

The Narrator. There was no inflection of any type in her voice. Whether the characters were excited, sad or in regular conversation, it all came out the same. "Hey what are you doing", came out the same as "he said grimly"

Spoke in a monotone, and through her nose

maybe w/o the narrator

this book draws you in to one character that I hope makes a permanent additional to Bisbee.

My introduction to J. A. Jance was a book in the middle of the Joanna Brady series. I enjoyed it so much I read the entire series then started on the Beaumont series. I was so glad to see a new book in the Brady series; I thought she had forgotten about. The book starts out in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where a daughter of a hoarder is forced to return to her mother’s house. Lisa Machett’s mother Thelma is dying and Lisa needs to deal with Thelma’s affairs. In cleaning the house she discovers a large amount of cash. People who help Lisa are killed; Thelma’s house is burned down on the day of her funeral. Dr. Machetts is found murdered and tortured in his home in Bixby, Arizona. He is Lisa’s half brother.

Sheriff Joanna Brady is also dealing with the murder of Junior Dowdle, a long time character in the series, along with Junior’s body is a number of dead and mutated kittens, rabbit and small dog. Gradually the two plots weave together to form a compelling tale of family dysfunction and murder. This is a complicated read that moves forward at a rapid pace. As usual J. A. Jance has written an interesting tale. Hillary Huber did a good job narrating the book.

I have read/listened to many of J.A. Janice's books and always enjoyed them but this one is terrible. It rambles and is haunting. Very hard to stay with but I did hoping it would improve. Sadly it did not.

I can usually get over the monotone voice of some of the readers if the book is good enough to draw me in and keep me interested. By this book was a bad combo of a monotone voice and monotone storyline that made it painful to follow. It had its moments that peaked my interest, followed by the on and on droning of the author, making it boring and annoying.

I don't even know how to begin reviewing this book. The narration is terrible. It's nasal and slow, and often lacks the correct inflections, so that a clause within a sentence is read like a new sentence. But, as irritating as that was, I could have overlooked it if the plot was halfway decent. It wasn't. Suspension of disbelief? More like suspension of intelligence was required to swallow this story.