Blind Spot (A John Handful Novel Mystery)

The John Handful Mysteries, Book 1

By: Andrew Hixson

Narrated by: R.E.Harter

Length: 2 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

When a body is found at the foot of a cliff, the local Suffolk Constabulary calls in their consulting lateral thinking detective to help. There are many unanswered questions. Why did a man with impaired vision use a dangerous path as a route to work? If he did use the path every day, no matter what the weather, how come he suddenly fell? With plenty of red herrings and twists to keep the listener guessing.

Blind Spot: A Bell Rings - A Rope Breaks - A Man Dies.

©2017 Andrew Hixson (P)2019 Andrew Hixson

Blind Spot

I enjoyed this book!I found R.E. Hunter a very fine narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.' 

Cozy mystery

This is one of those cozy mysteries where there is a bunch of dialogue, lovely descriptions of a rural environment, some inept police officers, and a civilian detective to close the case. Despite being relatively short, there were a lot of words compared to the somewhat transparent mystery that drove the plot. I took this as a sign of world building and establishing some love able, relatable characters for future novels.

I liked the setting and characters, and generally I’m good with the cozy mystery sub/genre. There isn’t a lot of action here. (And that’s consistent with this type. )

The narrator has an engaging but clear accent and has become the voice of the main character for me.

I received this audiobook for free in exchange for a review.

Entertaining start to the series

Private detective, John Handful, is called in to help the local Suffolk police when a body of a local blind man is discovered at the bottom of a cliff. This is a good short story that introduces you to the John Handful Mysteries series. The main character is appealing and works his way through the twists of the investigation well, but it did make me wonder why the police were not using their own detectives and completing the investigation themselves. It seemed like the PI was doing all the work of the police. The narrator was ok, though he did make all the characters sound old and his pronunciation of some words seemed off. This story has all the gossip you would expect from a small rural town, some intrigue, humour, characters that have potential and an interesting but somewhat predictable plot.

Fun short story

A little predictive but still a fun listen. I’m already looking forward to book 2 in the series.

Great

I love mysteries and this listen was great i love how Detective John Handful operates if you love twist and turns this is for you

Not bad

But not all that great, either. John Handful wasn’t a very dynamic character to me. I’m told stuff about him but I never got a good feel of who the man is. This can work if the mystery is interesting but I didn’t that was the case. Overall, it was just ok.

A quirky and fun experience

This short work is a wonderful entry into the series of a private investigator taking shelter in a new place not far from London and starting over. It's full of what you'd expect: small town gossip, intrigue, twists and humor. It's rather reminiscent of Murder, She Wrote in a way but the best part is the narrator. It's a perfect pairing of age, wisdom and spunk (with a bit of dickiness) that brings this to life from the written word.

Take part in this who done it and enjoy the journey.

Not Much of a Mystery

I received this book in exchange for my honest review.
Despite his best efforts at concealing the truth, the author gave away the cliffhanger within the first few chapters of the book. Once I had it figured out, it was hard to appreciate the rest of the promised twists to the story. The narration was pretty good, but I would have appreciated a wider range of emotion to convey the feelings of the characters. For me this book fell flat, but if you don't catch on to the truth early on, you may enjoy the book more than I did. I am disappointed, as I thought the premise of the plot was great.

Great story

The main character reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. Great story, interesting plot, good narration.

A fun short mystery

A good start to a fun mystery story. Good narration. It was a fun listen.

This book was provided free for review, however, the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Nice quick listen

I enjoyed this short story/novelette. It had everything you need in it to make a good mystery. Obviously being a shorter story there is not much back story or involved detail but it did not detract from my enjoyment, enough was there to life to the characters without them feeling flat.

I am afraid though the choice of narrator did make it hard for me to listen to it. Nothing against R.E. Harter but his voice did not fit the character for me yet I can think of plenty of other books he would be fantastic reading. Although no age was given for the main character it was implied he was at most middle-aged but most likely younger and to me the narrator's voice made seem as if he was a man in his 6s/70s but I, of course, could have picked it up wrongly and maybe he is older than I assumed.

I would love to listen to more of Johns adventures as a PI but whether I will unless a new narrator is chosen for this series I am unsure. Would I be willing to buy another, maybe I will relisten now I have done so once and see if I can fit voice to the character better.

I was given this book by the author for free so I know I should not complain but to me, a review should be truthful no matter how the book was obtained.

So to sum up - I loved the authors work but to me, the narrator was the wrong choice.

A short but engaging tale

This short detective tale felt like the pilot episode of a charming TV series. Interesting location, range of various characters, scenerios seemingly set up for the next week.

For fans of the kind of low key British police procedural this will feel right at home, and makes for a fun listen on that basis.

Unfortunately the production has its own problems which can really distract.For some reason the narrator cannot say quay right, which as much action takes place or, near or by a "kway" gets super annoying. There's a few other similar issues, which just don't inspire much confidence in the production and can take you out of the story.

The story itself also felt a little unsatisfactory. It's hard to explain without spoiling the mystery, but in my opinion it felt like the type of story that should be at least the third or fourth mystery in a series not the first, where we're expecting to be wowed by the main characters detection prowess, and instead I left underwhelmed.

However it was an entertaining tale, and I'll probably pick up some future stories for something a bit quick and light hearted to listen to. If you like a cosy mystery style piece, this does that job pretty well.

A great start

A promising first mystery to the series, with a wonderful twist at the end. Great

Blinded

This was an interesting short story. I liked the whole idea that the detective was never sure if it was murder or an accident. It reminds me of an old fashion murder mystery and very English (not sure when it was supposed to have been set). I don't think you got very much back ground story (I don't think you were ever told why he became a P.I. or if you did I missed it) but the plot wasn't very complicated, so it wouldn't have worked if it had been any longer. I liked all the big clues left so you could reach the same conclusion as John and with no twists it was easy to get there. A good start though to a new series.
John Handful has been called in to consult when a body is found on the beach. The dead man worked for John's finance and is quickly identify when she calls John worried about her visually impaired employee not turning up for work. She knew he liked to walk on the cliffs and he had never missed a day before. Was he pushed or was it an accident?
I didn't really like the narrator. He was to gruff and just didn't have enough range of voices for the characters, this meant they all tended to sound very similar.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Okay story

A decent enough story, this was an easy case to work out though.
I wasn’t drawn to the main character but some of this was down to the narrator, unfortunately his voice and delivery didn’t appeal to me added to that he mis pronounces several words, soco (scene of crime officer) vanilla and Peugeot.

mystery

A interesting and well written plot. The main character works well .
This book has good characters and a good plot. An old fashioned mystery who done it.

Good but not great

It is a good book, it is not perfectly written, but I still enjoyed it.
The narrator is horrible, he should not be allowed to narrate books

enjoyable book

Enjoyed this audio book very much from start to finish great story line too
I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

Ok , I suppose, for a short story

The story is extremely basic and revolves around the bumbling buffoon DI Silvers of the Suffolk Constabulary and John Handful himself who is asked for assistance as soon as a body turns up on the beach.

The narration is dire. The american narrator gives all the characters pompous old fashioned voices and pronounces everything in the american way, 'booey' for 'buoy' being one of the worst sins, also 'Zoë' being pronounced 'Zo'!

I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Worth a listen but needs a better narrator

This short story is a good start to a series with an interesting and well written plot. The main character works well but he seems to do more work than the police, who called him in before they even tried to solve the mystery/crime themselves.

I solved the main mystery much quicker than John Handful though so I kept waiting for him to catch up. Also, there was too much description of the sky & sea than was necessary as well as the completely unnecessary cookery lesson detailing how to make breakfast. That seemed like nothing more than space filler and I half expected to be told about the pattern on the plates and how many mouthfuls of scrambled eggs they each ate.

I have to wonder why John's girlfriend is always introduced as Kimberley Ashlyn Gere. Is it ever normal to introduce people with all their first names? Surely just Kimberley Gere would be more natural. Nobody introduces the Black Widow actress as Scarlett Ingrid Johansson or the Game of Thrones star as Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke do they? I actually thought it was a hyphenated surname at first.

I'm not too keen on the narration much as the performer often seems to be shouting his conversations for no apparent reason and while one character states he's not yet an octogenarian, the performer often sounds like exactly that. Also his pronunciation of some words made me cringe, such as Quay should be pronounced KEE not KWAY and Zoe is pronounced ZOH + EE not ZOH, at least in British english. Maybe it's a regional thing but it's not normal.

I'm still keen to try other books in the series as I've checked that other, hopefully better, narrators are used.

I received a free copy of this audiobook either from the author or a promotion or giveaway and am voluntarily writing an honest and unbiased review.