Clara’s Verdict
The title on this listing and the story inside it do not agree, and I would rather say so at the top than let you discover it on the drive to work. The listing is called DCI Ryan: The Met Years. The description is unmistakably a Northumberland case. A body is found on Good Friday morning in one of the largest cemeteries in Newcastle, a red-headed woman buried in a shallow grave with wings given to her by her killer, and the copy signs off by placing the whole thing amid the spectacular Northumbrian landscape. The series field says book four of The DCI Ryan Mysteries, and one of the reviewers calls it the fourth book too. The weight of the evidence says you are getting the fourth case in the main sequence rather than a London strand, and I would confirm that on the product page before assuming otherwise.
Taken as that fourth book, it is a well-made thing. Ryan’s life has finally settled and he is looking forward to an uneventful Easter weekend with his fiancee, which in crime fiction is a guarantee of the opposite. The killer’s signature, giving his victims wings, is the sort of detail that could easily tip into the baroque, and on the evidence of the description it is kept specific and grim instead of gothic. The second and third bodies arrive quickly, which means the copy’s line about panic spreading like wildfire reads as a consequence rather than as a promise.
About the Audiobook
Audible Studios released this edition on 6 December 2016, and it runs to seven hours and forty-eight minutes. That is short for a serial-killer procedural, and it is one of the reasons a book like this works so well in audio. There is no slack in it. You get a body, a team, a deadline and a landscape, and the book does not stop to admire itself. It is a two-commute listen, or one very absorbing Sunday.
On reading order, the answer is pleasantly relaxed. It is the fourth book, and one reviewer says outright that it can easily be read as a standalone while still recommending the whole run. Another observes that it moves away from the storyline the regulars call the Circle, which is presumably why a newcomer can start here without feeling they have walked into the middle of a conversation. If you are the sort of reader who cannot bear to begin out of sequence, go back to the first, but nobody is going to be lost.
Tonally, the description promises murder and mystery peppered with romance and humour, and it sets Ryan’s engagement and a quiet Easter weekend directly against a body in a Newcastle cemetery. That tells you the domestic thread runs alongside the murders rather than pausing politely while they happen. Readers who want their procedurals bleak throughout will find that jarring. Readers who have had enough of unrelieved grimness will find it a mercy.
The Narration
Jonathan Keeble narrates, and the casting question in British crime fiction is nearly always the same one: can the reader do a contained, analytical man without reaching for gravel? Ryan is written as a controlled professional whose private life keeps intruding, and that combination needs a voice that holds the surface steady while letting something move underneath it. Brooding is the trap this character invites, and staying out of it is most of the job.
That matters because of the one reservation raised here. At four stars, a listener finds Ryan one-dimensional at times, with rather a lot of angst. A narration that gives his professional voice and his private one the same emotional pitch would make that worse; one that separates them can quietly repair it, and this is the sort of flatness audio is well placed to fix rather than inherit. The other demand the book makes falls on the ensemble, since a reviewer describes the team being split to investigate two very different scenes. Keeping several detectives apart by voice, without tipping any of them into caricature, is what a plot moving back and forth between investigations requires.
What Readers Say
Loyalty shows in the numbers, 4.5 out of 5 from a shade over 47,000 ratings, and the comments beneath them are the sort a series with a devoted readership attracts: affectionate, specific, and willing to name faults without withdrawing support. One reviewer, Mrs H., recommends the whole run to anybody who likes a good crime thriller and puts her enthusiasm simply.
I can’t put them down.
The most useful review is the four-star one, which manages praise and reservation in the same breath.
Very fast paced with lots of twists to it. The character of DCI Ryan tends to be one dimensional at times, lots of angst.
That is a fair account of both the pleasure and the limitation. A third reviewer, Melanie, gets closest to what makes the book tick structurally, describing an intricate plot that throws you back and forth in time to bring the characters to life, with the team divided between what looks like a definite murder and what looks like a death by natural causes. She also confirms that moving away from the Circle storyline costs the book nothing.
Who Should Listen?
British procedural readers are the obvious constituency, particularly those who like a strong sense of place. Newcastle and the Northumbrian landscape are not wallpaper here, and the cemetery settings give the book an atmosphere that a generic city would not. It suits anybody who wants a tightly plotted whodunit at just under eight hours, with a returning team, a serial-killer structure and enough warmth in the margins to stop it becoming punishing.
Think twice if the phrase peppered with romance and humour makes you wince, because the description means it. And do satisfy yourself about which book you are ordering, given that the name on the cover points one way and the description points another. Once you have established which book you are getting, Keeble and Ross will look after the rest.
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