Slipshod

By: David M. Cameron

Narrated by: David Cameron

Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Life is not going well for Peter McAdam. Nicknamed Slipshod at school for his lackadaisical manner, the name has stuck. As a private investigator, he specialises in finding lost dogs, missing persons, and investigating infidelity—until he meets Lady Rosemary. She employs him to attend a weekend social gathering at Temple Heath House, the country home of her father Sir Reginald Potter. Peter has to play the role of Rosemary's boyfriend to determine whether her father is being deceived by a clairvoyant. Out of place in a world he has no experience of, Peter finds himself at the centre of murder and intrigue. Slipshod is written in the classic whodunnit style but with a delicious twist.

©2023 David M Cameron (P)2023 David M Cameron

Great story.

Loved the story, but almost didn't finish it because the music in-between chapters was very annoying. I am glad I did.

Very British, ALL the tropes

I went through this book in audiobook format. My final assessment is 4.5 stars (rounded up). Here’s why:

I was in the mood for a medium-length mystery that didn’t require a lot of work on my part:
Down on his luck private eye? Check.
Desperate, beautiful, wealthy heiress? Check.
English Manor? Check.
Group of strangers stuck in said manor with said private eye and heiress for multiple days? Check.
Ostensible supernatural elements? Check.
Bodies stacking up via multiple classic murder methods? Check.
Reader along for the ride? Check.
Unexpected developments? Check.
Things wrapped up neatly at the end? Double-check.

What sets this book apart is that it is actually two narratives, one at the mystery level described above, and one at the narrator level as a first-time author writing the book. For most of the book, I was hovering around a 4.25 rating because I couldn’t decide if the author-level narrative was a net asset (providing a built-in explanation for any perceived issues with the mystery’s narrative or character development) or mostly pointless dead weight, but (like a typical mystery) the true purpose of the author-level meta-narrative wasn’t apparent until the end (I’d share the general purpose here, but I’m not sure if that would count as a spoiler). It was the concluding development in the author-level narrative that pushed my rating upwards to 4.5.

Also boosting my rating was that the author did an excellent (professional-level) job narrating his own book (and I especially appreciated this because I much pretty much only consume mysteries in audiobook format the last few years). The only production-quality criticism I have is that I think different (shorter) sound-breaks could have been chosen to indicate when the narrative perspective was shifting, such as giving the writer-narrative and the detective-narrative their own distinctive, short, introduction chords to provide the listener with an additional cue which storyline they were going to be listening to next.