The Hand in the Glove (Mystery Masters Series)

Rating:
Summary: A good fit
Review: High-pitched and grating? We can't disagree with the one-star reviewer more. The voices are consistent and carefully chosen. We listened to this book while painting an apartment and found it thoroughly absorbing and well produced. We can't claim to own 30 unabridged Stout mysteries with which to compare this, but we can claim to know strong female characters strongly portrayed. Having listened to stories by writers such as Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, we think this performance ranks. It's consistent throughout, intelligently performed, and completely satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Narration hard to take!
Review: I am an avid audio-book fan, and own 30 unabridged, Nero Wolfe audio books. Naturally, this book interested me, and I purchased it with a Christmas gift certificate. What a disappointment!! The narration is high-pitched and grating. I truly cannot understand how the producers chose to use this narrator. My mother listened to the set before me and refrained from saying anything so as not to spoil the set for me. Once I commented on the poor narration, she felt free to say that she strongly disliked the narration to. What was Audio Editions thinking? Please choose the narrators with thought next time.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting work by the master of mystery
Review: This is a Rex Stout book, but Nero and Archie are no where to be found. This adventure features Dol Bonner, the tough-talking female detective who has appeared briefly in some Wolfe books. As a character, she's interesting. She had her heart broken before the book begins, and consequently insists that she "hates men." Yet some of her closest relationships are with men. She's proud and efficient and good at her work. However, while it's interesting to watch Stout flesh out a new character and to hear him write in a new voice, it's still not great Stout. Sometimes the story is told from Dol's POV, sometimes it shifts to her partner and friend Syliva, other times the story is told by some one else altogether. This is no where near as satisfying a way to tell a mystery as by telling it all from the detective's point of view, and letting us solve the mystery along with our narrator. So, while this book will be fascinating for Stout's fans, I don't think it holds up very well as a mystery on its own.