Reconstruction

By: Mick Herron

Narrated by: Julia Franklin

Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

When a young man breaks into South Oxford Nursery School with a gun and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy is fearful. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission.

Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs - tries to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 colleague of Jaime’s lover, Miro - who has gone missing with a quarter of a billion pounds....

©2008 Mick Herron (P)2020 Isis Publishing Ltd

Good book Cringe worthy narrator

Why have the narrator introduce herself at the beginning of the novel? It just distracts from the novel and inserts her ostentatious personality. She over emotes at every opportunity. Hearing her act like a child is just creepy not to mention her swallowing saliva. Ick.

Not as good as the Slough House series.

A main character is supposed to be Hispanic, but the reader’s idea of a Spanish accent sounds more Eastern European.

Excellent Story and narration

The story was well developed and engaging. I particularly appreciated Ms. Franklin’s introduction and Explanation about how she would narrate this book.

Good story

I have a new favorite British spy author.. Excellent characters. I recommend this book.

worst reader ever

I tried to get past it because I am a huge Herron fan and love the audio editions of the Slough House series, but this reader is incredibly overbearing. Way way too much emphasis on every. single. word. The scenery chewing overacting is such that I couldn't follow the plot—far too distracted by the overdone voicing. (Not good in so many ways, including: why does she use a thick, Boris-and-Natasha Russian accent to voice a hispanic character????) I got maybe halfway through, kept having to rewind whole chapters to try to hear the story rather than the hamfest vocal performance, and finally just couldn't take it any more, gave up and returned for refund credit.

I love Mick Heron but

This isn’t his best. Writing is clever but the story is too drawn out. A few less repeated phrases and themes might have helped.

Narrator is intolerable but story is good

I had to mute it a lot to get through it. I'm not sure the narrator has ever heard a child speak. I won't get another book with her reading it.

The narration takes away from the story

It is really a bit painful
So much so that it is difficult to focus on the story

Not Herron's best

Mick Herron is one of my all-time favorite writers, but this one lags. It's still worth a listen, though I agree with other reviewers that the narrator detracts a great deal from the experience (and why use a poor imitation of an Eastern European accent for a principal character whose first language is Spanish??) For me, the plot lacked Herron's usual deft twists and the book over-all seemed tedious -- I kept thinking of Dog Day Afternoon. Herron's writing is superb - his use of language is always a treat, so yes, I would still recommend this book, but for me, his others are much better.

Technically robust, tedious presentation

I’ve read all the Slough House books and loved them. This book, however, I found difficult to stay with. It is a slow moving psychological study of a microcosm of a larger international event.

Of particular irritation was the frequent jump of first person perspective accompanied by repeated text - dialogue or descriptive - two, three or more times. This copy-paste approach confounded my perspective leading to multiple, irritating re-reads to clarify.

The technical aspects of spy craft and international finance were well done. But the pace is less action-movie, more therapy session.