The Bone Collector

The First Lincoln Rhyme Novel

By: Jeffery Deaver

Narrated by: Connor O'Brien

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Don't miss the NBC television series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for The Bone Collector.

The first novel in the New York Times best-selling series featuring forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme - from the author of The Never Game.

Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics - until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious duel of wits. With police detective Amelia Sachs by his side, Rhyme must follow a labyrinth of clues that reaches back to a dark chapter in New York City’s past - and reach further into the darkness of the mind of a madman who won’t stop until he has stripped life down to the bone.

Includes the short story “A Perfect Plan” and a chapter from The Midnight Lock.

©2014 Jeffery Deaver (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Lightning-paced...a breakneck thrill ride.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“The Bone Collector is so dazzling, it makes your eyes water.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“The headlong narrative...never lets up, and there is plenty of genuine forensic knowledge in evidence. There are dramatic switcheroos up to the very last page, and a climactic battle to the death.” (Publishers Weekly)

Narration is awful!

I really enjoyed this story very much but had to grit my teeth at the narration! It was only tolerable because I wanted to start this series at the beginning as I always do. I'm a fanatic about listening to series books in order. I noticed that the rest of the series has different narrators so I continued with this one hoping the future narrators are better!

Good story, questionable narration

I really enjoyed the story but hated the narration just seconds in. The "voices" are okay, but the rest of the narration sounds horribly robotic. I actually thought Microsoft Dave/Stephen Hawking was reading until I realized it was a different person. I think it would have been more interesting if that was so, given Lincoln's condition. So, for my own sanity, I decided it was a conscious effort and purposeful, and decided it lended an interesting element, but be aware it's probably just a poor performance.

Yes, the narrator is very bad.

I agree with the review that compares the narrator to that of a GPS unit. The performance is like this for 9/10ths of the book.

Review

Love the storyline. Reader is boring. Though he changes voices his voice don’t match the feelings and emotion that the book emotes

Narration was terrible beyond words.

Character were interesting and the story attention getting. The Kindle robot voice would have been better.

Crippled by a TERRIBLE Performer

I knew the movie and was interested in the show. Learning this story was actually a book series I came here to partake. The story was great and I was thrilled to get a deeper story of Lincoln from what was even in the movie. The guy performance on this production was basically garbage. During the first few minutes I was worried the performed wasn't even human but a text-to-speech program. I will stay away from this Performer at all cost in the future.

robot reader

The story is a 5 star but almost couldn't stand the reader. He sounded like a computer reading.

Digitized narration?

I almost had to put this down shortly after starting. I have worked with digitized voice machines and recognized the slight slurring of vowels that characterizes older models. Not sure what it really means...a processed voice, a new way of expanding the range of characters by one voice...whatever, it is terrible.

But when I get into a book I stop hearing the narrator and just flow with the story. Normally I increase the speed to 1.25 to eliminate the distractions of too much drama in narrations (not all but many). Here that made things even more artificial sounding. But one I got caught up in the tale I forgot the voice, well, mostly. Good book material.

needs a stronger narrator

Great story. Narrators flow is very robotic where a lot of the sentences sound the same when they end.
Also needs to differentiate the characters better. A lot of them sound the same

Terrible Narration

I’m not sure what to say. The narration was so bad that I vacillated between being irritated and confused. Someone heard this and said “great job, it’s ready to be released”. Stephen Hawking’s own narration of A Brief History of Time delivered more inflection, emotional authenticity and nuance than this audio book. I’m just disappointed that this was given a green light. If you can, read the hard copy, if you can’t, know that you are not alone in your suffering.