Pariah

A Vasily Korsokovach Mystery

New City. New Job. Same broken heart. So much for a leaving it all behind.

A millionaire’s missing computer, their dead housekeeper and a family secret hidden in plain sight: these are the elements of a most unusual case quite literally handed to Detective Vasily Korsokovach moments after arriving at John Wayne International in Southern California. Put into the awkward position of cleaning up a colleague’s sloppy investigation, Vasily immediately finds himself on the defensive after he begins asking uncomfortable questions in pursuit of the truth. And when he pulls a thread that inadvertently connects to a decades-old suspicious death that has a personal connection to the department, he encounters uncompromising and outdated attitudes in the one place he least expects to find them.

While he’d hoped for a fresh start, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Alone and truly on his own for the first time in years, Vasily buries himself in his initial case as lead detective and leans heavily on a new friend – one who he hopes could become something more, replacing the ache in his soul that has dogged him since leaving everything he loved behind in Windeport. Broken hearts have a way of blinding one to everything else that is important, though, and Vasily is no exception to that rule...

Good story marred by virtual voice

Good, engaging mystery, likable, memorable characters.

The narration was subpar even for virtual voice: problems with Vs and Bs (via pronounced by-a, booth -> voth); weird cadence making statements questions & making it hard to tell who was speaking in convos; read consistently said as “red” when it should have been “reed.”

Loved story

The mystery of what was going on, how he discovered the murders. Love the author, just discovered him.

vanilla is a noble character

I liked he's kind of a hero but plays it cool. he solves the cases. don't like the mark character. he will get his ccomeuppance. the VV was well produced where mab
many many others are done terribly.

Reminds Me of Nick Nowak Series

This is my first book by Christopher Jansmann, but it’s definitely not the last. At 1/2 the story I looked up and downloaded 5-6 more of his books. This is so good!!!!
Real, gritty, and well written, Jansmann’s first book in the series reminds me of the gay detective series set in the 80’s by Marshall Thornton. Nick Nowak suffered the bigotry and violence for being a gay detective. Vasily Korsovovak is a gay detective in current times, also suffering from prejudice and isolation in the LAPD. One would expect that acceptance of sexual orientation would be the prevailing culture in the 2020’s. This book is compelling and so good!
I hate AI narration. It’s cheaper than employing a human voice actor, but it’s so wrong. For example, the AI voice inflection is often incorrect, going up like a question at end of sentences, halting midway through a sentence, just irritating and sad.
I support human voice actors.

Astonished

This book is surprisingly good for a virtual voice. Most times I actually felt I was listening to a regular narrator except for a few inflections in the speech it should have used to define certain moods of the characters. The story was captivating. Well thought our and suspenseful. My only criticism is that I wish the books were numbered so I would know the order of the books.