Murder on Pointe

A Fiona Quinn Mystery

De: C.S. McDonald

Narrado por: Maren Swenson Waxenberg

Fiona can't wait to attend the performance of Coppelia at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh. Her old friend, Silja Ramsay, is dancing the principal role. They have dinner after the show, but when they return Pittsburgh Ballet Theater is down one dancer! Ballerina, Alexis Cartwright, has been found dead in the dressing room. Is this murder a result of hot tempers among the cast members? Or is it a random act of violence? Will there be more murders? Homicide Detective Nathan Landry isn't taking any chances. After finding out Fiona has a strong background in ballet, he recruits her to go undercover among the cast of Coppelia. Can Fiona help catch a killer, or will she be the next victim?

©2016 Cindy McDonald (P)2017 Cindy McDonald

A Fun Book to Listen Too.

Maren Swenson Waxenburg did a great job narrating Murder on Pointe. It was a fun to listen to how Fiona kept getting in trouble. Great book to listen too.

I Only Half Figured it Out Early

Fiona Quinn, a kindergarten teacher, is visiting the ballet theatre for the first time since the injury that ended her ballet career before it had even truly begun 10 years prior, but as she and her dancer friend arrive and go to visit another dancer in her dressing room they discover the body of murder victim #1, the soloist slated to dance as Coppelia. An investigation starts immediately and local police decide they need an investigator on the inside and ask Fiona to return to dance and take on the Coppelia role so she can get close with the rest of the ballet company and theatre staff. Unfortunately for the company, the first dancer dead will not be the last.

After absolutely loving Back to the Burgh and Beyond I was so excited to experience another cozy mystery by the same author and narrator. In my experience with the cozy mystery genre, it usually doesn't matter which order you read the books in a series, so the fact that I selected the first book in the Fiona Quinn series is a coincidence. I saw pointe shoes on a cover image and ticked that box. I grew up dreaming and wishing I had been given the opportunity to either dance ballet or compete in gymnastics professionally, and when I was a college student I took the opportunity to register for adult recreational ballet classes. I caught the ballet bug and went as far as learning basics up en pointe, and I still love checking out anything to do with ballet when I see it.

Unfortunately, this one didn't hold up quite as well as Back to the Burgh and Beyond did. Even more unfortunate is that it's mostly due to the narrator's performance, despite the fact that I loved her performance in Burgh and said I wanted to listen to more books she narrates. My first and biggest complaint about the narration is that she doesn't appear to take a breath for 20-minute stretches. Given how much better the narration on Burgh was I'll concede that this could be a case of overzealous editing rather than poor pacing on the narrator's behalf, but it made my normally comfortable 1.5-2x playback speed almost impossible to listen to. If you snag my phone, launch Libby, and open any audiobook just to see what playback setting I was most recently using, it'll probably be 2x. This book sounded like I had it set to 3-4x and I had to decrease it. That's not something I do often! My second complaint is that while she did do well with the pronunciation of common knowledge ballet terms, the more obscure ones were very hit or miss. For example, fouetté does NOT rhyme with pirouette. Lastly, names were getting messed up, and I don't know if that was a problem with the text, the performance, or the editing. When Cynthia is first introduced I swear she was called Celia and I questioned why there would be two Celias in the same short book. Much later (chapter 10, I believe) Fiona is called Celia for the first half to two-thirds of a scene. There's clearly only one of the ladies in the scene, the scene is at Fiona's house, and the lady is the owner of the house. I know I'm not getting confused that this shouldn't be Celia, but the officer with her calls her Celia for most of the scene.

The story itself is very good and true to form for the cozy mystery genre. This is an excellent introduction for Fiona as a character, and although I had half the mystery figured out in the first hour of this 4.5 hour audiobook, I thought I'd solved the whole thing and the other half caught me by surprise in the last hour. I loved David's sense of humour, and I got my Schadenfreude fill when a certain later murder victim meets their end. My only critiques of the story itself (besides the title saying "on" pointe instead of "en" pointe and the fact that I've never heard anyone say janitress before) is that as someone who struggled to do pique turns en pointe as a 22-year-old intermediate student I just couldn't buy the idea that someone who had not danced en pointe for a decade would be stage ready in a week (even with the modified choreography) or that the professional ballerinas would allow it. I'm very glad there weren't too many actual Fiona dancing scenes because that always took me out of the story as that doubt settled in.

Overall the story is a solid 4-4.5, the narration is more like a 3, so I'm calling this a 4 out of 5 stars. If you like cozy mysteries and stories about ballet dancers, read this! If you struggle to listen to fast-paced recordings, though, perhaps opt for the print/ebook version.

I was granted complimentary access to Murder on Pointe as part of my participation in a blog tour for the author's latest title, Back to the Burgh and Beyond, through iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me the opportunity to listen to and review both books! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Take a Breath!

I’m giving the story 3 stars because the narrator made it impossible to listen to it long enough to make an actual judgement. I assume that somewhere in the first 20 minutes is a period. Surely the whole story isn’t written as one unbroken narrative with no punctuation, but you wouldn’t know it from this narrator. She surely is a woman in a hurry. I won’t be trying anything else from her.

Pretty good cozy, pretty awful narrator

I pretty much enjoyed the cozy mystery. I love ballet and dance and it's not a very common cozy theme. However, the narrator made this audiobook barely tolerable. She never, ever pauses and seemed to be in such a rush. Is she in a race to finish? How does she catch her breath? I'm sure this audio book would be 5 or 6 hours, rather than 4.5, if she read with the appropriate pauses and pace. The narrator also used the same monotone and inflection for every single darned character, male and female. I could not tell whose dialogue she was speaking. No emotion, no voice acting, Also, her voice is more "mature", sounding like an elderly person. I believe the main character is younger by several decades. One positive comment - her voice is very clear and I had no difficulty understanding her.

If you want to read this book, I would highly, highly recommend to get the print version. I will no longer be listening to any more of this series due to the narrator. Regarding the mystery itself, I did enjoy the main character Fiona. I enjoyed the plot, how the culprit was discovered. I did enjoy the mystery, characters, and setting enough to continue with the next book in the series - not on audio, unless it is a different narrator.

Who knew murder could be so much fun?

Loved the story, characters, mystery, and narration. Fun audiobook to listen to. Fiona Quinn is a terrific character and narrator succeeds in bringing her to life.