The Hearing: A Dismas Hardy Novel

Oh boy, this was a good one. I'm a big fan of John Lescroart and
I believe this is one of his best. It's full of legal drama, murder and more. His main characters repeat in all of his books and they are very likeable. This is a longish story, but no unnecessary information. Good suspense waiting for the characters to figure things out. A VERY GOOD listen.

John Lescroart always delivers intricate, complex, very engrossing plots. With "The Hearing" he may have surpassed himself. I love the way he fills out the characters, with all their emotional motivations and life impulses. He makes us care about his characters and their predicaments, as well as the plot puzzles. Robert Lawrence does an adequate job of reading "The Hearing," and he has a nice voice; but I miss David Colacci's masterful readings of Lescroart's works. Robert Lawrence doesn't have Colacci's range of voices; and, in my opinion, he uses an unfortunate, nasal voice for the novel's hero, Dismus Hardy. Also, I find that he sometimes puts emphasis on the wrong words in a sentence, occasionally changing the intended meaning of the sentence. Finally, Mr. Lawrence reads too fast for my taste. Despite these criticisms of the reader, I did not want to dock a star from my rating of this audiobook, because Lescroart's good writing and plotting counter-balance the reader's shortcomings. Stick with this audiobook, and it will reward you.

Purchased this recording as part of a "buy 2, get 1 free" offering. I'm relegating this book to the free category. Would not have wanted to pay for this bungled narration. Robert Lawrence cannot seem to grasp the length of a given sentence. Unable to endure more than a few chapters. Will not listen to any other recording by this narrator.

The story is GREAT, haven't ran into a Lescroart that I didn't like. BUT the narrator leaves alot to be desired, let's hope we've heard the end of that.

I have no idea if this is a good book or not. The narrator is horrible... maybe i will come back to this book, so i don't waste a credit ... but i will have to be really bored.

I will never listen to anything narrated by this person again.

I'm so glad that Lescroart has gone to David Colacci, this guy takes a while to get used to...but eventually you get used to him and the writing shines through.

This is the only "Hardy" novel I have listened to and I wasn't overly impressed. I like my characters larger than life and Hardy doesn't qualify. One could even argue that this book was more about Glitsky than it was about Hardy. Some of the premises of the story strain credulity and Lescroart seemed at times to simply be filling up pages. The judge was one of the more interesting characters but I grew weary of hearing him referred to as the "cadaver" over and over again. Nothing special about this book but interesting enough to keep you listening. And the narration was very good.

As is my habit, when an author I like comes out with a new title, I go back and start from the beginning and listen to ALL of his books before listenting to the new book. As i went through the Dismas Hardy books this time, I wondered why I didn't have The Oath, The First Law or The Hearing in my library. I purchased and downloaded all 3 WITHOUT rereading the reviews. Then I found out why I had NOT purchased them previously. This is one of the all-time worse narrators every to record a book. It's even more horrible because a couple of these are key book in the series. He actually does a lisping detective (REALLY?!!) What purpose does that serve. Hardy's voice read by Lawrence is nasal and whiny. I can't begin to express how difficult it was to listen to these. BEWARE!

This story was really good until the end where it sort of petered out. It had great build up, couldn't really guess the outcome and then it just gave you the end without the intrigue that was in the rest of the story. Good performance. Easy to listen to and enjoy.

It wasn't a problem with the book. It was a problem with the reader.

OK

I will look for Mr. Lawrence's name and not get that book.

xxx

Bad Reader