London Calling

Inspector Carlyle, Novel 1

By: James Craig

Narrated by: Joe Jameson

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Can you win an election and cover up murder at the same time? When Inspector John Carlyle finds a body in a luxury London hotel room he begins a journey through the murky world of the British ruling classes which leads all the way to the top. In the middle of a General Election, a murderer is stalking the man poised to be the next Prime Minister.

With power almost in his grasp, Edgar Carlton will not stand idly by while his birthright is threatened. Operating in a world where right and wrong don't exist and the pursuit of power is everything, Carlyle has to find the killer before Carlton takes the law into his own hands.

©2011 James Craig (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"In this hard-bitten political thriller, the author skillfully portrays Carlyle as a good cop who genuinely struggles with the problems of his job and his lifestyle. Mr. Craig, a former journalist, writes with brutal candor about crimes as vicious as crimes can get.... It says something about the author's capacity for the darkest of humor when his description of a corpse superglued to a car can evoke a chuckle from the reader as police try to detach the body." ( Washington Times)

"As the title of James Craig's London Calling suggests, The Clash should be the soundtrack for this close to pitch-perfect debut introducing Inspector John Carlyle." ( Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

"Craig lards his familiar tale of revenge served cold with enough expository detail for a primer on politics and enough personal background about his hero to insure that his debut mystery won't be his last." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Stuck with it -- Wish I hadn't: Poor Performance.

Joe Jameson trained for the stage and has narrated a lot of audio books. I'm going to assume this wasn't one of his best. He doesn't get accent or tone of voice right ... unless he's trying for parody. And he was the best of the cast, by a fairly long way. It's a decent story -- The modern day consequence of nasty Cambridge high jinks, and captures the feel of the post-Thatcherite political scene.Sadly the ending is (no pun intended) a cop-out. I like more character to characters, but that might be just me. All in all, OK for beach or in-flight listening. Not worth an Audible credit..

Better than good

"London Calling" has attracted more than its share of negative Audible reviews, as opposed to positive Amazon reviews, or even reviews in newspapers, such as a strongly favorable one in the Washington Post. Usually when this happens, it's because a poor narrator ruined a good story, but the narrator here is wonderful.

Yes, it's violent, but far less so than more police thrillers, where the victims are nearly always women who are prey to terrible men. Here, the "victims" deserve some kind of punishment, exposure for their deeds at the least.

I didn't find this story offensive. By my lights, it's very well written, with a great central character and a fast-moving plot. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to other titles in the series.

Well written but hard to follow. Warning: Graphic violent sex

Love the narrator Joe Jameson from other authors-work and he did not disappoint here. As to the novel, it is well-written but slow in places, sometimes hard to follow. First in series so this may improve in later books. But warning (spoiler?) graphic rape scenes were too much, didn’t fit with rest of the tone. After the second such scene described in detail I decided not to finish the book.

Joe Jameson did a great job

But the story just wasn’t there for me. Hard to follow and no real ending

Stimulating

Left me feeling as though I can understand the criminals

It doesn't make the police nor the news media look very favorable