Jane E. James Audiobooks

The Landlady: eight hours of crime and thriller with an ordinary house at the centre

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.2/5 average

1,411 listener ratings

Who is Jane E. James?

Landlady is a domestic word doing sinister work. It belongs to rent books, spare keys and somebody else’s rules inside a house you are paying to live in, which is precisely the sort of everyday power arrangement that British crime writing has always found productive.

That is the territory Jane E. James occupies on the evidence of The Landlady. Our catalogue files it on the crime and thriller shelf without qualification, and the length, a shade under eight hours, is the build of a novel written to be finished quickly rather than one that sprawls across a fortnight.

Nothing beyond the work is asserted here. The novel is left to make its own case, which on the available evidence it does briskly.

Jane E. James in audiobooks

The Landlady is read by Alasdair Simpson, and the score it carries rests on well over a thousand listener verdicts, a substantial base by any measure. A rating that holds steady across a crowd that size is a far better guide than a perfect mark awarded by a handful of people.

Just under eight hours makes this a two-sitting book, or a week of commutes. It is the obvious place to begin with this writer, and a straightforward recommendation for anyone who likes domestic suspense in which the threat lives at the same address.

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