Aunt Dimity's Death (Audio)

Title: Aunt Dimity's Death (#1)
Author: Nancy Atherton
Pub: 1992; Penguin
Pages: 244
Audio Length: 7 hours, 28 minutes
Narrator: Christina Moore
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Series

FINALLY!  The first book in the series.  This is my third Aunt Dimity book and as I said waaaaay back in the beginning of the discovery, it was love at first sight.  I fully understand the term "cozy mystery"; there is just something warm and fuzzy like a treasured blankie, about these books.

Also, it was like hitting my forehead with my palm, because THIS book started all of the Aunt Dimity's.  (First in a series are kinda like that, you know?!)  My other two have been so sporadic: the first one read was the last one published - thanks to NG- and the second one read was dead smack in the middle.  Listening to this one, and hearing how it all began was a jouyful experience and I'm determined to read the series, in well, the order intended.

I'm assuming that all cozy mysteries are similar to this style, but with Aunt Dimity's Death, the mystery itself is so available.  You know, it's a life discovery sorta mystery...not this crazy CSI or Law and Order (du-dum) or even Rizzoli and Isles (which I know is based off of the books).  Instead, Aunt Dimity dies and Lori finds out that all of these cherished stories her mom used to tell her and Aunt Dimity are true AND Dimity and her mom had a correspondence for nearly twenty years.  Lori gets whisked off to an English cottage through the lawyers Willis & Willis to read the letters and write the preface for a published version of the Aunt Dimity's stories.  Bill Willis, nerdy lawyer extraordinaire, accompanies her.

Soon Lori and Bill find out that Dimity has a secret sorrow.  (Of course they find this out because Dimity is still there as a ghost in a journal - I love this aspect!)  Aaaaand that's the mystery.  What is Dimity's hidden sorrow.  See what I mean?  Totally a "mystery" that a normal person like myself would/could investigate.  I love these books so much I just want to squeeze them!

The Audio Aspect

Unfortunately the audio version was sub par.  And actually, to date, this might be the worst narration I've listened to.  It took me forever to adjust to Moore's voice; I just found it so nasaly!  And I wasn't a big fan of how she changed it for the different characters.  In fact, the only character that I thought she pulled off was Aunt Dimity.  (Also, a pet peeve, when she said Death it sounded like Deaf).

The voice I could have even moved past.  I think that for the most part I can audibly adjust myself after listening for a long period of time, but the WORST of it was the unnecessary pauses.  I think if all of these extended pauses (between chapters, between tracks, between anything and everything) the audio version would have lessened by forty five minutes.  At least!  I know that listen to an audio will take me longer than if I read the book myself, but I listen to be transported, because it's enhancing another sense and thus making it more enjoyable.  This one, not so much.

But hey, at least she had the English accents down.  :)