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The Curious Dispatch
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I’ve been posting about this series all day (with more to come); on Monday, I called the text version of this one of my favorite reads of 2021…there’s not much to say about this that I haven’t already. But, for the record, here’s my original post about the book—if you don’t know anything about the book, you might want to give it a read.
So, Let’s Talk About the Audiobook
When it was announced that this was going to be released on audio this year, I was (naturally) curious. How was it going to translate to this medium? How would the narrator do at capturing the quirky flavor of this series?
Thankfully, the answer is pretty well. I figured there were two ways they could approach it: leaning into the comedic aspects of it and hamming it up a bit, or playing it straight and letting the text do all the heavy lifting. I’ve heard narrators taking both approaches, and I almost always prefer the latter, and that’s the case here.
Armstrong seems to be having fun with the material, but he’s not trying to convince the audience that the situations that Adam and Colin find themselves in are a little ridiculous, nor is he hitting anyone over the head with any of the comedy.
Stepping away from the audio experience for a moment, this is a clever little mystery—most (maybe all) of the clues are there for the reader to pick up and put together with (or before) Adam. For me, at least, this is what I want in this kind of story—a little bit of fair play so that I can match wits with the sleuth (amateur or not).
All in all, this is a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours—Armstrong and McDonald are a great pairing, and the news today* that we get another five of these is very welcome. Now’s the time to start listening to these.
* Incidentally, I’d planned on posting this today before I was invited to have all these other Stonebridge posts today, I’m not that much of a sell-out.
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