Master of the Delta

By: Thomas Cook

Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith

Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

Multiple Edgar Award nominee Thomas H. Cook is the author of dark, terrifying thrillers like Places in the Darkand Red Leaves. In Master of the Delta, it's 1954 down in Mississippi and Jack Branch has finally come home, taking a job as a high school teacher. He soon learns that one of his students is the son of a notorious local murderer, the Coed Killer. And as they say, like father, like son.

©2008 Thomas H.Cook (P)2008 Recorded Books

Narrator detracts from book

I'm just in the second hour of this book and am sorry that the company that published this audiobook chose T. Ryder Smith to read it. The first-person narrator is supposed to be a well-educated, articulate schoolteacher from an equally well-educated Southern family -- no, this isn't an oxymoron -- yet he mispronounces too many words that he should know. In addition, his southern accent rings false. (For example, who says "uman" for "human" in the Delta?) Another reader, speaking of yet another audible book narrated by T Rider Smith, says this: "The book is a good, very original story, but the narrator's southern accents are so bad that it warps the entire book. . . . I live in Mississippi and I can assure you that people don't talk like this. It really detracts from what could have been a very enjoyable listen." I agree.