Midnight: A Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller, Book 2

I really enjoyed "Nightfall", the first book in this series and started the second recording soon after the first finished which may have been part of the reason I didn't enjoy this as much.
I much preferred the narrator of the first book in the series "Midnight". Actually, I much preferred the first book - then the story seemed fresh and I was willing to overlook some minor irritations with the writing. This time, the story seemed stale and recycled and the minor irritations became more major. The phrases "Nightingale shrugged" and "Nightingale lit a cigarette" were used so frequently that if they were removed from the text, I'm, sure the book would be pages shorter. A disappointing follow up .

For me, the lovely voice of Ralph Lister is one that I want to immerse myself in to pick up the subtle nuances of the working-man London accent, as opposed to the BBC-sterile voices that I usually get exposed to.

This one was pretty unique in its presentation. It reminded me of a Brit cop show (like Cracker), more reality-based, with the supernormal elements being illustrated as possibly just superstitious crap. Really well done.

The voice. Compelling and believable characterizations.

This Time Tomorrow, You Will Be Dead.

Yes.

This book really began to annoy me about two hour in.
it seemed the author followed the same plot from the first book; only super sized the scene
within the plot by three; more suicides, more devil, more marlboro cigarettes.
to me it was like every person you came across is a chain smokers.
the constant repeat of establish ideas, force me a few time to stop the recording, i found the story was difficult to listen to. Jack Nightingale You are going to Hell and you are a little psychotic.

Ignoring, Stephen Leather's recent faux pas about having created sockpuppet accounts to stir up interest in his books, I thought this book was quite good but got knocked down half a star because it had some problems. None of the problems involve the narrator. Ralph Lister does a truly excellent job.

If you read the first book in the series then you will have fewer questions about this book. Telling much about the plot of this book will inevitably include spoilers

Just to cover all the bases I'm going to explain first why I did not like this book as well. Part of it was annoyance with Jack's smoking. Jack spent a large part of the first half of the book wanting a smoke, asking if he could smoke and complaining because there were laws that prevented smoking in various places. Yes, yes, I'm an ex-smoker too, but it's pointless to carry on about it too much.

Also a number of the characters were pretty much stereotypes-- a woman on welfare who is living in a nice apartment because the economy is so bad that the owner of the building kept having to reduce the rent to the point that the local council could pay it. Then there is the taxi driver from Afghanistan who had been granted refugee status in England because he was a member of the Taliban and was escaping the US invasion-- and was given some special perks. This was all in the first half of the book.


SPOILERS FOR FIRST BOOK

Jack Nightingale is looking for his half sister, born two years after Jack, adopted by an unknown couple, and whose soul was also traded to a devil by their father so he could gain power over beautiful women. The plot is very similar to the first book as Nightingale runs around trying to get information from people and the people keep dying. Nightingale also continually ends up in a situation where he is suspect in the deaths although there is no direct evidence that would connect him.

If it weren't for the things I complained about above I would give this a full four stars-- oh, except for the American millionaire who is wearing snakeskin cowboy books with spurs. The spurs are the problem, they would just rip up the furniture and carpet when he stretched his legs out.