The Divinities

Drake & Crane, Book 1

By: Parker Bilal

Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe

Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

Drake was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. The hand didn't look like a child's. And there was something about the shape of the victims' heads. It was hard to be sure from this angle. He circled around the base of the mound. The heads were covered in a layer of rock dust that had been turned to the same grey mass by the rain. He put a foot up and felt the rock start to slide beneath him.

The first in a compelling new London crime series from the Theakston Old Peculier-nominated creator of the Makana Investigations novels.

When two bodies are found brutally murdered at a building site in Battersea, DS Calil Drake is first to the scene. He sees an opportunity to solve a high-profile case and to repair his reputation after a botched undercover operation almost ended his promising career in the Violent Crimes Unit. Assigned to work with the enigmatic forensic psychologist Dr Rayhana Crane, and on the hunt for an elusive killer, Drake’s investigations lead down the dark corridors of the past to the Iraq war and the destruction he and Crane witnessed there. With a community poised on the brink of violence, Crane and Drake must put their lives on the line to stop the killer before vengeance is unleashed.

©2019 Jamal Mahjoub (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Critic Reviews

"A firecracker of a novel that delves deep into the rot infecting both politics and big business." (Eric Van Lustbader, internationally best-selling author of The Bourne Legacy)

"A brilliantly-written London Noir from a master of the crime genre." (Mason Cross, author of Presumed Dead)

Formulaic

This book came highly recommended, and I was looking forward to starting a new detective series set in London. Something I wasn't expecting was the usual tropes---rogue detective with a troubled past, boss trying to rein-in the detective's reckless behavior, faithful wise-cracking sidekick, computer wizard sidekick, beautiful and independent woman colleague, psychotic killer, etc. One almost had the sense that this was written as a pilot for a TV series, with character development and plot transitions to be added later. The only interesting element was the cultural clash between right-wing extremists and minority groups, which shows a side of London that we rarely hear about.

The narration was distracting, with the narrator struggling to produce different accents, and making it difficult to determine which character was speaking.

Narration

The narrator could not differentiate the voices very well. He did sound very hard boiled,though.

Parker Bilal shows chops. Great listen.

If you enjoy crime thrillers then you will love this one. relevant, clever, interesting. narrator finds his groove about a third of the way through the book.

A slog

Not sure the literary world needs another maverick detective with a troubled past. This story is far from convincing me that we do.

However, the biggest problem, for me, is the reader. A painfully slow delivery made this impossible for me to listen to. Setting the play speed to 1.5 helped.
Accents are not a strong point for this reader who, like others, should note that Celtic accents are not as easy to mimic as some seem to think. A good starting point would be to learn regional variations.

Unfortunately, not a series I will be following.