Bed of Scorpions

By: Judith Flanders

Narrated by: Susan Duerden

What's an editor to do with so many demands? Do you deal with the morning's pile of manuscript submissions first? Or the swine from sales who steals all the chocolate digestives? Or do you concentrate on your ex-lover, whose business partner has just been found dead in their art gallery, slumped over his desk with a gun in his hand?

It's another day at Timmins & Ross publishing house, but when sharp-tongued editor Samantha Clair's CID boyfriend is brought in to investigate Frank Compton's death, her loyalties become stretched. And when one of Aidan Merriam's artists is found dead in identical circumstances, Sam takes on the art world and the CID, armed with nothing more than her reliable weapons: satire, cynicism and a stock of irrelevant information culled from novels.

©2016 Original Material © 2016 by Judith Flanders. Recorded by arrangement with St. Martin's Press. (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Hilarious, big-hearted, clever, whip-smart and devious. A truly wonderful crime novel by a brilliant writer...Judith Flanders has found that difficult, magical ground between humor and crime, where the death is never trivialized, but the territory is hysterically pilloried. Brava!" (Louise Penny, number-one New York Times best-selling author of How the Light Gets In)

"Deadly funny. Judith Flanders' wry take on publishing and murder should be on everybody's wish list." (Donna Leon, New York Times best-selling author of By Its Cover)

"Wickedly funny...the perfect storm of an entertaining read...Loved it." ( London Times)

Love this series

The Sam Claire series is one of my favorites and I listen to them at least once a year, the performance is great and the writing is amazing. Wish the others were avatars on audio.

Sam Chase - the snarky publishing heroine strikes again

Loved this book & really enjoy Sam Chase’s character. Her sarcastic conversations within her own head are a riot & the book’s narrator has a terrific vocal delivery.

sharp and snark: wonderful

The wit, the snark, the real life puzzlement make this a great British contemporary murder mystery.

Humor

The humor during the story made me laugh out loud several times! Will definitely look for more books by both this author and narrator.

Boring and breathy

Being interested in books and their world, I thought this would be good - but it isn't. The heroine is deeply unlikeable as she wavers back and forth between Pushover and Ballbreaker. Her reactions to events is deeply unbelievable. The plot is deeply uninvolving, The narrator speaks clearly in a pleasant voice and pays attention to punctuation and scene changes, but the breathy cadence she uses is deeply annoying. So...I'm giving it back.