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Title: The Midwife's Tale

Subtitle: A Mystery

Author: Sam Thomas

Narrator: Leila Birch

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-29-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 82 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

In the tradition of Arianna Franklin and C. J. Sansom comes Samuel Thomass remarkable debut, The Midwifes Tale.

It is 1644, and Parliaments armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridgets friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer.

Bridget joins forces with Martha Hawkins, a servant whos far more skilled with a knife than any respectable woman ought to be. To save Esther from the stake, they must dodge rebel artillery, confront a murderous figure from Marthas past, and capture a brutal killer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. The investigation takes Bridget and Martha from the homes of the citys most powerful families to the alleyways of its poorest neighborhoods. As they delve into the life of Esthers murdered husband, they discover that his ostentatious Puritanism hid a deeply sinister secret life, and that far too often tyranny and treason go hand in hand.

Members Reviews:

Excellent First Novel!

Would you consider the audio edition of The Midwife's Tale to be better than the print version?

I didn't read the print version.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The person)s) who committed the murders was not even suspected until near the end. Kept me guessing.

What does Leila Birch bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

The different voices of characters, their moods and feelings.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I had great sympathy with the two main women in the story.

Any additional comments?

Please make the next books by Sam Thomas available in audio as soon as they appear!

Only so so

The narrator of this book was so annoying I almost stopped listening. I'm not sure if my rating would have been higher if I had read the book. The main character's dialogue was so slow I wondered if there was an issue with the speed. But other characters were okay, at least from a speed standpoint. Most of the male characters who were or could be one of the bad guys sounded like old crones. When they were annoyed, they even sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West. The sitcom Italian reading of one character, with sing songy sentences and lots of words ending in "a," was laughable at times.

Bridget Hodgson, the Midwife in the title, is based on an actual person. I understand it is normal in a novel to take liberties with actual happenings in and around a character's life. I felt, however, one of the liberties the author took with Bridget's life was unacceptable. Throughout the book Bridget mourns the loss of her only two children. She doesn't mourn the death of her second husband and there were no surviving children from their brief marriage. According to the author's website, however, Bridget actually had six children with her second husband that survived to the point she named them in her will.

Regarding the story, I didn't like the Bridget. She was flat and uninteresting. Her obsession with forcing unmarried pregnant women to name the father of their bastard children became a problem for me.