Paranormal Nonsense

Blue Moon Investigations, Book 1

By: Steve Higgs

Narrated by: Peter Fullagar

Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

Tempest Michaels does not believe in the paranormal, in fact he thinks it is all nonsense, so why does he investigate it for a living? Because he is the only professional Paranormal Investigator in the Country and business is booming. 

Following a spate of violent deaths with vampiric characteristics Tempest can ignore the case no longer. The police are getting nowhere and solving the mystery falls into his job description. This would be enough motivation, but when the alluring PC Amanda Harper, AKA PC Hotstuff, asks for his help the lonely voice from his pants demands he do all he can to solve the case, find the killer and win a one way trip to her knickers. 

Aided by his friends, encumbered by his mother ("Why are there no grandchildren, Tempest?"), advised by a clearly deluded occult book shop owner, and surrounded on all sides by beautiful women that just want to be friends, Tempest soon finds himself up to his eyeballs in wannabe vampires who want to kill him while simultaneously investigating reports of a Bigfoot terrorizing the local countryside and dealing with a pesky Poltergeist that is disturbing poor old pensioners. 

It will get worse before it gets better and all he really wants is a date with an attractive woman.

©2017 Steven John HIggs (P)2017 Stven John Higgs

Decent mystery plot and writing

The beginning was a little rough due to the horrific start and I almost returned the book, but decided to go a bit further to make sure. Which was a good decision because the rest of the book wasn't horror, and the narration smoothed out.

The plot and writing are decent. The story is good, well-told and interesting.

However, this isn't five stars because of the very tiresome sexual objectification of women. And, for some reason, there's a lot of attention paid to the main character's penis. And, the use of a very obese woman to be a bad character. Shallow. Immature. Old and tiresome.

There are plenty of books that don't have to trash women to tell a good story, so in comparison this book just doesn't measure up.

Also, this book is listed in Audible as Comedy: Satire. There are amusing parts, but I never laughed out loud, so is it really comedy? It's not a cozy mystery, due to the horror in the beginning of the story. Maybe it's just a mystery.

The narration. I didn't like the narrator at first - he was just reading the text out loud. But, the narration improved and became more of an inner voice of the main character. The sound quality wasn't good, with a bit of an echo, and awkward long pauses between chapters - and there were other noises that could be heard at times in the background.

At this time i'm not going to continue the series. There's been a spate of books I've read lately written by men and I am getting tired of their sexual fantasies played out in their stories. I'll keep looking for something else interesting, entertaining, or funny. This wasn't it.

More mystery investigating and less mansplaining needed

This book needed more mystery investigating and less frat boy musings. If you prefer a masculine point-of-view main character, then this is the book for you. If however, you tire easily of hearing a male character ponder about his penis, obsess about his weight and the weight of women, and fantasize about sexual liaisons, then keep perusing the library. Disappointingly, after the investigation started out strong, it quickly became buried beneath boring back room stories.

Poor recording and sexual objectification of woman

The sound quality is not great. You can hear background noises like sirens, deep breaths and opening doors that are not part of the story.

The story itself would be good if it were not for the constant sexual objectification of every female character. In addition to the graphic descriptions of the female characters, the main character is constantly telling us how his crotch reacts to each woman he meets. The overweight women in this book are constantly fat shamed and overly sexualized.

I will not be reading any more of these books.

Better than Ghost Busters!

testosterone-fest, snark-fest, private-investigators, debunking, British, Dachshunds, mystery

Guilty of buying because of the cute dachshunds on the cover, the sale price didn't hurt either! You can tell that this fun book is written by a guy, so if you only want PC you won't like it as much as a lot of us do. After getting out of the army, he becomes a private investigator with a twist, specializing in debunking alleged paranormal activities that are driving ordinary people batty. Sometimes a friend or two will help out, sometimes he takes his miniweiners along on a case or to the pub. Great fun!
I got the Whispersync on sale and enjoyed Peter Fullagar narrating.

ew

fat shaming, racist, misogynistic, and with the sex humor of a pubescent teenage boy (or girl who fantasizes what it might be like to be an adult male). interesting idea very poorly executed...too bad.

Excellent Story

Steve Higgs' basis for this story is that all paranormal activities are not. There are normal explanations for everything. Higgs also draws extensively on his personal knowledge of the Kent, England area where he sets his novels. If you like dachshunds, you will adore Bull & Dozer. I recommend this book highly.

didn't finish

guy was a womanizing insecure jerk. and i couldn't get past the fist few chapters after he said having a nice car didn't make him hung like a baby carrot

Truly awful in so many ways

I rolled my eyes at the reviews that based their ratings on being offended. I lasted over 20 chapters. But WTF -are all the character supposed to be comedic parodies? Cause if not,,, maybe the author intentionally created a cast of disgusting pathetic tools. The story sucks. The book as a whole is just bad. Add in the unrelenting sexism misogyny consistently body shaming and unnecessary detail of healthy meals. .

Wonderfully executed!

Absolutely loved the story and the narration. It drew me in from the first sentence and kept me listening all the way. Don’t think you have this one figured out, as there are too many leads to follow. Sit back, brew a cup of tea and then hang on for the ride! You won’t regret it!

Paranormal Nonsense Blue Moon Investigat

OMG! This is an amazing story and narrator!! This is the story of a man who somehow found himself starting a Paranormal Investigative Agency. He took on the cases that the police thought were crackpot reports. Tempest Danger Michaels has just gotten out of the military and looking for a spot of a career. Now he investigates all kinds of paranormal situations. He gets drawn into the case of the vampire killer. In the process he meets a female investigator, Amanda. At this point poor Tempest is enmeshed in vampires, bigfeet (?!) and a mother who wants grandchildren and will play matchmaker to the nth degree.
Peter Fullagar is exceptional in this narration. The stoic Englishman narrating a life that brings excitement and chuckles.
Fantastic story and audio!!

Off-putting narration

The story has potential, but I couldn't listen to the laboured and hesitant narration. It would work if this was Adrian Mole, but isn't appropriate for this.

crap with some amusement

The narrator was awful, storyline mediocre and the chavinism bad macho bullshit just made me cringe

The wrong narrator.

The narrator's voice did not give the impression of an ex army heterosexual male. I found it very difficult to believe in main character because the voice was wrong.

Wrong narrator

The story itself is good but some of the writing / dialogue is stilted, which is made more pronounced through the narrator. It’s not that his reading was poor, it was just not right for this book. It would have been much better with a different reader and a good editor. Otherwise fun and entertaining.

wrong narrator

cadence and expression from narrator did not really match the material.
story good but will read next one rather than listen.

Not the book I expected

After 18 chapters of this narrators boring performance I was unwilling to carry on. Then I heard the characters opinions of women and immediately stopped listening.
The reviews said it was a funny book, I found very little wit or humour.

Male fantasy with mediocre storyline.

The plot was simple with few interesting ideas. It was the sort of story where Scooby Doo appears. I kept waiting for complexities, interesting ideas or twists. As it was it was primarily about male fantasies .

A great introduction to the series!

This story tells how Blue Moon Paranormal Investigations was born, as well as the very first case. I read several books in this series before reading this one...no idea how I managed to do that, but oh well. Steve Higgs has since become one of my all-time favourite authors. I've not read one of his books that I haven't absolutely loved! Some I've actually read twice! And I've had countless nights of laughing so hard my cheeks and ribs hurt! The perfect author to have to hand in this crazily insane world we've all found ourselves trapped in! Don't miss out on a great series!

very Shallow

Awful!!! I listened to the first few chapters and found the main character to be boring beyond measure

I wanted to like it

Despite trying several times, I simply couldn't listen to this. The narrator might be ok for some characters, but is definitely very wrong for this one, and it seems to have been recorded by someone who knows nothing about production. Apart from the narrator just not suiting this story, you could hear every breath and every swallow. I literally couldn't listen to it for more than fifteen minutes without needing to turn it off and do something else.