Clara’s Verdict
A woman lies dead in the heather with a broken neck, her horse watching nervously from a few paces away. That is the first image Carol Cole gives you and it is a very good one, because it looks exactly like a riding accident and takes Detective Inspector Callum MacLean almost no time at all to establish that it is nothing of the kind.
What follows is a police procedural of the most companionable sort. MacLean has arrived in Hampshire from Glasgow, and the culture shock is what actually drives the story: a man used to policing a hard city, set down in Fordingbridge, where everybody knows everybody and the local pace bears no relation to anything he recognises. Nine hours and forty four minutes, narrated by James Macnaughton, and it is the opening volume of the DI Callum MacLean mysteries.
It sits comfortably in the Audible UK charts and carries a 4.5 average drawn from a very large body of ratings. I will be honest that this is not a book which will surprise you. It is a book which will look after you, and there is a considerable difference between the two things.
About the Audiobook
The victim is Mary-Ellen Mitchell, a well-known businesswoman married to a respected local artist and thoroughly embedded in the community, and Detective Sergeant Daisy Donaldson identifies her almost at once, having arrived at the scene on horseback. That detail tells you a great deal about the world of this series. It is a place where an officer may well arrive at a crime scene on horseback, where the local force knows the victim personally, and where an outsider’s ignorance is simultaneously a handicap and a genuine investigative advantage.
Cole’s real subject is not the murder but the position MacLean finds himself in. Having hoped for something gentler after Glasgow, he begins to suspect he is being used as a pawn in somebody else’s game, and the book is at its best when it stays unclear whether the obstruction he meets is small town awkwardness or something considerably more deliberate. The publisher promises that if he can avoid the pitfalls and get his team working properly, they may yet catch a killer who is very good at staying out of sight.
One thing worth knowing about the ratings. This audiobook was published in June 2026, but the feedback attached to it stretches back well before that, with one review dating from February 2025. The large rating count reflects the book’s earlier life in print rather than this recording specifically. That does not make the number less useful, but it does mean the average tells you about the novel rather than about the audio.
The Narration
James Macnaughton has one obvious job and one much harder one. The obvious job is Callum MacLean, a Glaswegian in Hampshire, and the accent has to be right or the entire premise collapses on first contact. The harder job is everybody else, because the whole point of the fish-out-of-water setup is that MacLean must sound audibly separate from the community around him across the whole runtime.
That is a structural requirement rather than a decorative one. A narrator who softens MacLean towards neutral loses the contrast. A narrator who plays the Hampshire characters as rustic caricature loses the listener’s sympathy for a community the book badly wants us to take seriously. Macnaughton holds the line, and Daisy Donaldson in particular comes across as competent and warm rather than as a comic local, which is essential given that she is being set up as the long term partner in a series.
The pacing suits the material. This is not a book of car chases and the reading does not manufacture urgency the writing has not asked for. The book is built in a straight line rather than in cross-cut fragments, and Macnaughton’s steady, sequential delivery is a good match for a novel constructed that way. If you like a procedural you can follow while cooking, this is one of the more forgiving in the current charts.
What Readers Say
Well over five thousand ratings at 4.5 is a serious endorsement, and the written feedback is consistent about what earns it: craft. Reviewers keep praising the things that usually go unnoticed.
“The characters are well drafted and I felt myself drawn to the entire team; even the ACC who I warmed to right away.”
That is FraserD, who also makes a point I have some sympathy with, namely that the story does not leap about from character to character and that “it had a definite ending which is always welcome”. Definite endings are badly underrated. A second reviewer describes the writing as refreshingly clean, free of the sloppy editing that blights a lot of what she reads, praises the character development and commits to reading the next one. A third calls it fast-paced with plenty of twists and good character development, which is a livelier reading of the tempo than mine.
The pattern is clear enough. Nobody is claiming this book reinvents the procedural. Everybody is saying it is well made, easy to follow and populated by people they wanted to spend time with, which for a series opener is exactly the right result.
Who Should Listen?
Comfort crime is a real category and this sits squarely inside it. If your ideal listening is a competent detective, a defined community, a murder that gets solved and a partnership you can follow across a series, start at book one and settle in. It is also an unusually good choice for listeners who find modern thrillers too frantic, since the tempo here is even rather than frantic.
The people who should look elsewhere are those who want to be outwitted. Reviewers praise this book for being clear, linear and satisfying, and those are not the qualities of a novel that will floor you with a final twist. Nor should you expect grit. The Glasgow background is characterisation rather than content, and the New Forest is a very long way from the tone MacLean has left behind. Take it for what it is and it does the job very well indeed.
Listen to Murder in the New Forest free with an Audible trial
