Monday, June 22, 2015

The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne

Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3's | iTunes)
Length: 6 hr, 55 min
Reader: Kristen Hughes

The book: Arriving at a friend's house in the English countryside a few minutes after a murder has taken place, Tony Gillingham is thrust into a classic-style locked room mystery. He takes on his role as amateur detective with enthusiasm, finding false identities, hidden passages and blown alibis as he delves deeper into the secrets of the Red House and its inhabitants.

The best mysteries are those that use the mystery as a backdrop for an additional layer of complexity: The mediation on guilt in And Then There Were None, the exploration of a corrupt town in Red Harvest , the fusion of magic and the modern world in the Dresden Files. This book is simply a fun mystery novel, not much more.  It's worthwhile as a few hours of entertainment or as an insight into Milne's writing outside his Winnie-the-Pooh series, but it's also not a must-read.

Rating: 7 /10

The reader: I've mentioned it before, but Hughes is an excellent amateur reader. She doesn't have the polish and voices that are the hallmarks of the pro's and some of the other great readers at LibriVox, but her narration is warm and pleasing. This style of reading is less of a dramatic performance and more of a friend reading to you at your bedside. The little quirks and imperfections make it more enjoyable knowing it's an ordinary person on the other side of the microphone.

Buy a paperback copy of The Red House Mystery

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