McGorgol and Hockney at the Guano Island Hotel

Professor Edwin McGorgol, the famous crime detecting sandpiper, is on vacation at the luxurious Guano Island Hotel with his friend, George Hockney, a sweet though dimwitted seagull, when the hotel is struck by a crime wave. A cat burglar is stealing the jewels of the hotel's guests, and the only bird with the guts and the smarts to stop him is Professor McGorgol.

The virtual voice is surprisingly good

I'm going to be honest here; I wrote this book. Several years ago my daughter Audrey, who was eleven at the time, drew the picture you see on the cover. We decided that those birds were a sandpiper and a seagull named Hockney and McGorgol and that they solved crimes. Over the course of the next couple of months she drew pictures (the paper and Kindle versions of this are illustrated) and I wrote while we discussed character and story. Then I published it through Kindle Direct Publishing. Friends and family who read it (and that's pretty much all who read it) seemed to like it, but it has been sitting there on Amazon for several years with very nearly zero sales since the first month.

When I saw Audible would make it into an audiobook for free I decided to give it a shot, and the result is a lot better than I had hoped. I chose a nice voice with an English accent and it does a pretty good job (although it does spoil a few comic bits that depend on very specific readings). I've written a bunch of books over the years, and when I reread them I always wish they were better and I find bits that I wish I had deleted entirely before publishing. But I liked every single page of this thing. I think Hockney and McGorgol are great characters, the jokes land, and the story is fun. I'm quite proud of what me and my girl put together here. Great book to be read by a parent to a child, or, if you prefer, to be read by an English accented AI.