Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Sight for Sore Eyes

Author: Ruth Rendell

Narrator: Tim Pigott-Smith

Format: Abridged

Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-23-09

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Teddy Brex emerges from a loveless, isolated childhood as a handsome but autistic young man. Francine Hill, traumatised by the murder of her mother, grows into a beautiful young woman, who must endure the overprotectiveness of an increasingly obsessive stepmother. Teddy Brex does ride to her rescue, but he is a man who has already committed two murders.

Members Reviews:

Not everyone's cup of tea....

I have been a fan of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series, and bought this book, which is not part of that series, by mistake. I have read it to the end with some effort because the plot is more sordid than I usually prefer. Well crafted, the book demonstrates Rendell's skills magnificently, but at the

same time it is gloomy and it is almost impossible to relate to the characters in a positive way. Recommended only as a prime example of this author's skills. Not for entertainment.

Suspense as only Rendell can do it

I couldnât put it down. She takes delight in exploring the seamy side of life. Will have to go back and reread her others.

Creepy Psychological romp

Excellent study of mentally damaged humans who can pass quite well in society, but who eventually overestimate their ability to fit in.

A Beguiling Masterwork

This is surely one of Rendell's masterworks, a beguiling psychological thriller that draws the reader in like candy offered to a greedy child.

Teddy Brex and Francine Hill are damaged teens who meet by chance and are drawn together as though magnetized. Teddy, born in squalor and denied love throughout his life, worships beauty and thinks he has found his ideal in Francine. Francine, who witnessed her mother's murder as a child, sees him as salvation from the cloistered life she's been forced to live by her father's manipulative second wife.

Teddy's obsession with beauty brings a third party, Harriet, a bored trophy wife, into his sphere. Teddy covets the house in which Harriet lives and sees it as the ultimate setting for his life with Francine.

The intersection of these lives is guaranteed to have the reader biting his fingernails in anticipation of a tragic outcome. But, just when you think you know what's coming next, Rendell tosses in a curve.

A Crazy Cast Of Characters Populates This Classic Suspense Novel

This book is populated by enough psychologically damaged characters to fill an asylum. The two craziest of the bunch would have to be Julia, the overprotective stepmother, who also happens to be, probably the worst psychologist in the history of the profession; and Teddy, a neglected boy who grows to be a beautiful but scary psychopath. Around this collection of kooks, who fall victim to an unusual amount of miscalculations and misunderstandings, Rendell, as usual manages to weave a fascinating, suspenseful story; one of her best (although I do say that about many of her books.)

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Thirteen Steps Down

Author: Ruth Rendell

Narrator: Tim Pigott-Smith

Format: Abridged

Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-23-09

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last 50 years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby - a woman who would not look at him twice.

Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence.

Members Reviews:

I Believe

"In Rendell's view, we seldom understand how life works and how little control we have over it; criminals are the biggest dolts of all for risking so much on schemes that are bound to go awry. What's more, murderers also lack sympathetic imagination (as opposed to the narcissistic imagination of fantasy)." So says, Ruth Rendell, and as we read this novel, we say "I Believe, I Believe!"

Mix Cellini is a work-out equipment specialist. He repairs the "things". He also obsesses about John Christie, the English serial killer, and he knows everything about him. This gives us the first clue. There are many serial killers in many mysteries, but Ruth Rendell's is the best. Mix keeps us on the edge of our seat. He is funny at times; he eats junk food and drinks strange concoctions of booze. He is in fact a very strange man, but likeable in some sense. He rents rooms at St Blaise House in the Notting Hill area which he keeps spic and span, from Gwendolen Chawcer. Gwendolen has lived in this same house since she was born- and the house is old and decrepit. Gwendolen lives in her library and her bedroom. Many rooms, none of them clean and Gwendolen lives in her own little world. She is caught up in the 1940's when she first fell in love, and she has never moved on. She, in fact, wears the same clothes. Well made and expensive, yes, but old. Gwendolen fell in love with her mother's physician many years ago, and the unrequited love has never bloomed. She lives her life in her old memories. She does not much like Mr. Cellini, nor he her. Both are obsessed. Both are strange and fixed in their ways, and that is where the difference lies. Gwendolen is harmless in her obsession. Mix has two obsessions, John Christie and the model Nessar Nash. He believes that Nessar is in love with him, and he stalks her. She notices him, but ignores him. She has her own story and that is almost as interesting as Mix and Gwendolen. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

Mix is superstitious about the number thirteen and has always felt dogged by ill-luck. In St Blaise House where he lives, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms. Ahhhh, now we know a little bit more about the whys but not the wherefores, that is for you to decipher.

How much did I love this book? I gave it to my plane seatmate. I finished the book as the plane landed in Oregon. She had told me how much she loved mystery thrillers, and this is the best there is. Holiday Spirit and all. 4.99 stars, why? The ending was mundane. 99% of the novel was first-rate, one of the best I have read. The ending deserves, well, it deserves a better ending. Ruth Rendell dedicated this novel to P.D.James, she is now her equal.

Highly recommended.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Water's Lovely

Author: Ruth Rendell

Narrator: Claire Price

Format: Abridged

Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-23-09

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather's lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly, "Don't look!"'

The dead man was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, has disappeared.

Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day...

But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with painful inevitability, the truth will emerge.

Members Reviews:

just miserable

One of the most dreary, boring books I've ever read. Such a sorry bunch of unpleasant characters, who all manage to emerge unscathed from their various shady doings, except for the couple of people you might actually have rooted for, if you cared enough at all. Very unsatisfying ending, especially since I had only kept reading in the hopes of some kind of redeeming resolution. Nope. Very, very weak.

Just okay for me

I found this book wanting. The characters were shallow and two- dimensional and the ending didnât make sense. I wanted to know why (spoiler alert) Ismay stayed with Andrew, why Barry married Marion, why Heather and Edmund had to die - everything was random and unexplained. Overall it felt like the author was in a hurry to get the book out and didnât put a whole lot of thought into it.

A good book but not a great Rendell

When I first started reading this book, I wondered why Ruth Rendell didn't publish this under her pseudonym Barbara Vine, which is reserved for her best and most complex psychological dramas. By the time I was done, I understood. It is an interesting read with a very complex storyline but there are a few blatant coincidences that diminish this as a superb read. The devotion of sisters, one of whom may or may not have murdered their stepfather, and the subsequent catastrophic collapse of their mother form the centerpiece of the book. If only these people could have talked to one another! Rendell unflinchingly fails to rescue her characters from disastrous relationships and yet, through her eyes, we understand why people make such awful choices (and not just romantically). I think her writing is a little uneven in recent years but she still delivers a good story. Just not a great one, in this case.

You Tell them, Ruth!

Ruth Rendell is one of my favorite British mystery writers. I have read almost all of her books which is a considerable achievement when you consider this is her sixty-fifth. Twenty of them were Inspector Wexfords. The others were mainly psychological character studies; this new one falls into that category. Remember the old dictum from writing classes: show the readers, don't tell them. Rendell constantly breaks this old chestnut adage and does it successfully.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Sun, Sea and Murder

Author: Roderic Jeffries

Narrator: Gordon Griffin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-01-09

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

When Superior Chief Salas orders all inspectors on the island to determine whether Tyler is in their area, laid-back Inspector Enrique Alvarez regards it, like all work, as an unwanted interruption to his lifestyle. He soon discovers, however, that this routine inquiry has far-reaching consequences he could never have foreseen...

Members Reviews:

LOVE THIS SERIES!

I discovered this series when I found one of the books at our local library's book sale and have been ordering them through amazon ever since (used). Fascinating mysteries, a great character in Inspector Alvarez and his life and his problems with his superior. Wonderful evocative descriptions of Mallorca. I have not read one of these that has disappointed. Eventually I hope to read all 37 of them!! They do not have to be read in any kind of order to understand the characters, which is a big plus.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: No Trace

Author: Barry Maitland

Narrator: Tim Bruce

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-17-09

Publisher: Oakhill Publishing Ltd

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

As Kathy tries to decipher motives. Brock's attention is diverted by a personal and career crisis.

Critic Reviews:

"No onw who reads this haunting, unnerving work will ever again think about contemporary artists the same way." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Brock is no artist, that's obvious!

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The storyline is, as ever with books by Barry Maitland, a good one although DCI Brock meets some very strange characters this time. However the narrator is totally wrong - he gives Brock a voice that sounds young and uneducated which is not the impression I get of the character from Maitland's books. There are certainly enough bodies to go round and some very sick people with which he and DS Kola have to deal. There's a good twist at the end, so don't be tempted to peek.

What did you like best about this story?

The twists and turns of the plot. Barry Maitland is an expert at this and No Trace is no exception.

Would you be willing to try another one of Tim Bruces performances?

Only if it better matches the characters.

Could you see No Trace being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Easily, except there's a plethora of detective series being mades for TV. I don't know that there is sufficient difference between Brock and some of his counterparts in other police procedurals currently being aired.

Any additional comments?

Barry Maitland is a good author, one of the best for this type of crime novel.

Great story

Missing child, a series of murders ...the mystery is unravelled with many twists and peculiarities. My problem with this listen is the narrator: he often seems unprepared for the next word in a sentence, thus making the intonation completely inappropriate for the intended meaning.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Dead Tomorrow

Author: Peter James

Narrator: William Gaminara

Format: Abridged

Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-11-09

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

The body of a teenager dredged from the seabed off the coast of Sussex is found to be missing its vital organs. Soon two more young bodies are found.

Caitlin Beckett, a 15-year-old in Brighton, will die if she does not receive an urgent liver transplant. When the health system threatens to let her down, Lynn, her mother, turns in panic to the internet and discovers a broker who can provide her with a black-market organ - but at a price.

As Superintendent Roy Grace investigates the recovered bodies, he unearths the trail of a gang of child traffickers operating from Eastern Europe. Soon Grace and his team will find themselves in a race against time to save the life of a young street kid, while a desperate mother will stop at nothing to save her daughter's life.

Members Reviews:

I'm skipping the rest of this book and moving on to Roy Grace #6

I've read the Roy Grace series in order so far and this one never captured my attention. I actually find the entire subject matter to be repulsive and I couldn't set aside my disgust to even finish the book.

I like Peter James and I like the Roy Grace series. I will continue with book 6. But this is one that I just don't recommend unless you're interested in the topics of organ trafficking and homelessness.

Another Peter James Masterpiece

I've been going back to the beginning of Peter James' Detective Roy Grace series of books. After reading the first one I just couldn't stop. I'm reading them in order and each one is more fascinating than the last. "Dead Tomorrow" was another stellar page turner that I couldn't put down. As a result I have quickly picked up the next one in the series, "Dead Like You."

Absolute Excellence

One of the aspects of writing crime fiction that is obviously very important to Peter James, indeed one of the issues that he emphasised in panel sessions and during an in depth interview at CrimeFest 2011, is the depth and accuracy of his research. This is borne out in his novels.

DEAD TOMORROW shows James is an authority not only on British police procedures but also on the several topics that the novel touches on. Minute details add authority to his writing, to the point where the reader thinks "I am learning something important here."

James uses all this background detail to create another world for us to temporarily to become part of: one where we get to know a complement of characters to the point where we actually care what happens to them.

DEAD TOMORROW is #5 in Peter James' Roy Grace series set in Brighton. (#7 has just been published). Grace's wife Sandy disappeared nearly 10 years ago and until now Grace has wanted to believe she is still alive. Her has searched assiduously and even consulted seances. There has been a supposed sighting in Germany but his search has continued throughout the series. But now he has a new love in his life, Cleo, and he wants to move on.

I'd like to comment too on a couple of characteristics of James' writing that i find both unusual and well done.

The author often reveals that he has fore-knowledge of future events that will embroil a character.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Behind You

Author: Linda Regan

Narrator: Christopher Oxford

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-11-09

Publisher: Oakhill Publishing Ltd

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Oh no it isn't, thinks Detective Paul Banham, called out to a suspicious death at the local theater, right in the middle of the pantomime. Was it an accident - or murder?

On the other side of rivalries, grudges and illicit liaisons begin to surface. A second death leaves Banham in no doubt that there's a murderer on the loose - but the panto is sold out and the show must go on.

Critic Reviews:

"A sound debut; I look forward to Linda Regin's next book." (Tangled Web)

"An enthralling read. This crime story has it all; a clever plot, unbelievably believable characters, and an unsuspected twist at the end. An excellent bedtime read." (Amazon.com review)

Members Reviews:

Behind You by Linda Regan

I bought this without any expectations from a new author (to me). We were delighted by the crisp, humourous writing; super characterisation and frustrating love interest.We cannot wait for her next novel!

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Blood Substitute

Author: Margaret Duffy

Narrator: Patricia Gallimore

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-02-09

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Patrick Gillard and Ingrid Langley are called in to investigate. At the same time Carrick, who is an old friend of theirs, asks them to make inquiries on a private matter: he has discovered that his father, whom he thought long dead, is not only alive but a criminal. His name is Robert Kennedy. Can there be a connection between the two cases?

Members Reviews:

Not Rina Martin

Not a Rina Martin mystery. This is an Ingrid Langley mystery, part of her series. I like this series. Great characters. Be sure to read in order.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Account

Author: Roderick Mann

Narrator: Patrick Macnee

Format: Abridged

Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-19-09

Publisher: Phoenix Books

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Determined to learn the truth, Julia hires investigator Guy Ravenal to track down Brand's legacy. His plan is daring and dangerous, but not even he can foresee the horrors they will uncover, nor the ruthlessness of Julia's enemies. From London to Geneva. Paris and Acapulco, Roderick Mann weaves an unforgettable web of glamour, passion, deceit and chilling suspense.

Members Reviews:

This is a must read.

The story is about a Swiss bank account, a murder, and a lovely woman.

This is an excellent story. I have read it several times. If it is put on kindle or audible I would purchase it again.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Circle of the Dead

Author: Ingrid Black

Narrator: Tara Ward

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-08-09

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

Ratings: 1 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

As special adviser to the Dublin murder squad, ex-FBI agent Saxon teams up with Chief Superintendent Grace Fitzgerald to track down a killer who has his own inventive night of horror planned.

But why has he targeted Daniel and Oliver? And what is the significance of the group known as the Second Circle to which they both belonged? The other members of the group might have the answers - but can Saxon and Fitzgerald get to them before it's too late?