A Death in Summer: A Novel

Bought and enjoyed the previous Dr. Quirk books, esp. Christine Falls, but having a hard time with this due to the change in narrator. The cadence gets very tiresome, and the "acting", if you can call it that, isn't good. The character of Dr. Quirk is entirely different. Too bad.

here is one of those unfortunate situations where the book may be wonderful but the narrator doesn't work with the book. i've listened to john keating's narrations before and don't recall him getting in the way of the story. i could only listen for 5 or 6 minutes. will try again. but this pairing doesn't work. have no idea why not. wish it could be redone with Timothy Dalton. perhaps its a case of changing narrators in the middle of a series.

I have enjoyed previous Benjamin Black novels with Timmothy Dalton as narrator but was not able to finish this one. The narrator completely changed my perception of the Dr. Quirke character, and not to the positive.

So the darkness of Timothy Dalton is gone and instead the narrator sounds about eleven years old. I don't know about the story because I couldnt listen past the first chapter.

I couldn't listen to it, but I love Benjamin Black so I gave his part of this 5 stars.

He puts the emphasis on the wrong places in the sentences. He does not convey any meaning to what he says. He has an annoying voice. He isn't a good actor and it's an incredible disappointment after Timothy Dalton. What happened to him?

That's about it. Isn't that enough?

I am just now listening to this audiobook, and after reading the opinions of the other listeners of this audiobook and I have to agree with them that after listening to listening to Timothy Dalton read the first 2 Quirke books, I wish they would have let Mr. Dalton do the narration rather than John Keating do it.

I'm sure that Mr. Keating is a good narrator for different type of Irish books, but to me he sounds a bit to jaunty for Quirke. It needs the moodiness of Mr. Dalton's voice to make Quirke sound more believable and moody as it was portrayed in the first two books.

Hopefully Mr. Dalton will be asked to narrate the next "Quirke" book.

The author's ability to create characters whom you can clearly see and hear, reflects his skill, as he is actually John Banville, the Booker Prize winner.
That he chooses to write mysteries is a gift to readers/listeners b/c his voice is so clear
and he paints remarkable pictures with his words.