Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire

A Betty Church Mystery Book 1

By: M. R. C. Kasasian

Narrated by: Emma Gregory

Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

September 1939. 

A new day dawns in Sackwater, not that this sleepy backwater is taking much notice....

Inspector Betty Church - one of the few female officers on the force - has arrived from London to fill a vacancy at Sackwater police station. But Betty isn't new here. This is the place she grew up. 

Time ticks slowly in Sackwater. Having solved the case of the missing buttons, Betty's called to the train station to investigate a missing bench. But though there's no bench, there is a body. A smartly dressed man, murdered in broad daylight, with two distinctive puncture wounds in his throat. 

While the locals gossip about the Suffolk Vampire, Betty Church readies herself to hunt a dangerous killer.

©2018 M. R. C. Kasasian (P)2018 W. F. Howes Ltd

Too many deeply irritating characters

I abandoned this book with 6.5 hours to go. As I had enjoyed previous titles by MRC Kasasian I was hopeful that I would enjoy this. The main character is fine but I found the host of supporting characters are beyond tiresome.

Promising

I have read Kasasian's other crime fighting novels with a great deal of pleasure and I read this with equal delight, to start with. It is guffawingly funny in places and, for a man, he writes female protagonists so creatively. The setting and historical period suited the grotesqueries of character with their elitism, sexism and all the other isms, perfectly. The characters are, in fact, caricatures in essence, but as all the action is so enthusiastically slap-stick it would be clunky any other way.

The plot, however, becomes outrageously convoluted (possibly intentionally) in the denouement. If Kasasian actually intended to annoy he succeeded; however, I doubt he would welcome the by-product of losing the impact of his story line and enjoyment of his reader. (Also, I'm not sure if there was a little touch of rape apologist at the end, too - I hope this was my mis-reading.) Having said this, I would read a sequel and give it another go.

Being an ardent feminist, I am sometimes disappointed with sub-standard performances by many female voice-artist, not so with Emma Gregory, she is superb and a yard-stick for most other audible performers from both genders.

Disappointing

I've listened to the whole Sidney Gryce series written by the same author and was looking forward to an equally good yarn with this Betty Church mystery.
Alas I found this not to be the case, there were far too many silly characters.
In the Sydney Gryce stories you have the regular maid molly who is silly but funny and at the same time somehow believable.
However with the Betty Church mystery you get the very silly Dodie, Betty Church's parents, the constable twins and more and I found myself not really caring or engaging and my mind would wonder. I was even counting the chapters to the end.
I can only hope if there is another Betty Church mystery that it improves.
The narration by Emma Gregory as with the Sydney Gryce series is good.

Too many irritating characters

If you thought Molly from the Gower Street Detective series was the best character in the books, you'll love this one. If, however, she set your teeth on edge, give this a miss. There are a lot of Mollys here and, my goodness, they're irritating and two-dimensional.

Really Quite Painful.....

As with other reviewers, I have read all of the authors books and assumed that this would be similarly well written. But I was very wrong; it’s an utterly boring storyline, wordy, some of the characters (male in particular) are voiced in extremely irritating accents and by chapter 10, literally nothing of note had happened. Awful.

Disappointing

Listened to about 2 hours before deciding to return this. I was hoping that the story would get going at some stage, but it didn't. Some of the characters were just annoying, particularly the young female WPC and Betty's parents. I loved MRC Kasasian's previous books featuring March Middleton and Sidney Grice, which were humorous and engaging tales, but this story was neither humorous nor engaging. On a positive note, the narrator was excellent , as always.

Suffering fools

The enjoyable parts were to do with March, Sidney, learning about this new character Betty and some intriguing possibilities. However, the style of humor is a bit 'Dad's Army' and I could feel the empty silence where canned laughter would have been after every inane utterance and there is a ton of these.
Listening to Emma Gregory narrate is always a pleasure.

A lower quality book with a nonsensical ending :(

In many ways this book felt like a colossal aprils fool joke from the author to the reader.

A strong protagonist was introduced and then sidelined for much of the book.

The ending felt like a rushed last minute ''this ought to do'' kind of an affair.

When taken in balance of the previous 4 'Grice' books, the quality of this book feels 'ghost written' perhaps. I cant quite finger the problem but its definitely a lower quality book with a nonsensical ending

I will be seeking a refund

Loved it!

After the disappointment over Sidney Grice and March Middleton being no more I didn’t have high hopes for Betty Church but gave it a go anyway. I’m so pleased I did. March still puts in a appearance as Betty’s godmother and Betty is a brilliant stand alone character.
Written with MRC kassasians now familiar humour which I find myself chuckling out loud to regularly. All the characters are so well described and completely bonkers.
Emma Geogory has to be my favourite female narrator. How she manages such a ladylike voice one minute followed by such realistic deep masculine vocals I have no idea. And it seems that every single character has very distinct voices no matter how large or small their part.
Can’t wait for the next instalment.

very disappointed

I lived the Gower Street investigation books and hippie that thirds would love up to the same standard but not even close. it was such a bad stab at overly exaggerated comedy with a very obvious plot. narrating was brilliant as always though.