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65) PD James -- A Taste for Death [audio book]

BBC Radio 4 full cast dramatisation of the novel, presented on 2 CDs. Two men are discovered with their throats cut in the vestry of St Matthews Church. One is a local tramp, the other a former government minister. The political implications make the murder investigation a job for Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team.

It's a good adaptation played by an excellent cast, and I enjoyed listening to it. But squeezing a long book down into 2 hours 20 minutes means that a lot of material has had to be cut, and I think the adaptation does suffer for it. It's still very enjoyable, but I think might feel a bit thin to someone who wasn't already familiar with the book.

http://www.librarything.com/work/14156
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73) James Goss -- Torchwood: Department X [audiobook]

One of the audio-only tie-in novels, read by Kai Owen on 2 CDs, and set between series 2 and 3.

The last of Cardiff's traditional department stores, GR Owen, has just gone into administration. A pair of very slick operators from the administrators have arrived to audit the company's assets, and it's clear that they're interested in more than just the usual stock and staff assets. They're not the only ones, because two of the staff present to be interviewed happen to be Ianto and Gwen, working undercover on a project of Jack's. Nobody has seen the Department of Curiosities since 1905, and Jack wants to know why. Pity the store tries to kill him every time he sets foot in it...

A well-constructed story with a very Torchwood feel to it, and some logical extrapolations of the Torchwood universe. It's very funny in places, not least because it openly references the similarities between GR Owen and Grace Brothers in Are you Being Served -- I particularly enjoyed the scene where Jack has some fun teasing Ianto about working in menswear.

Very enjoyable, although I think not quite as good as Ghost Train, also written by James Goss and read by Kai Owen. I was mildly irritated in this one by Kai Owen's habit of leaving a Significant Pause so that you know he's finished speaking dialogue and moved to the dialogue tag. He didn't do this in Ghost Train, because it was first person and thus didn't really have dialogue tags. It's a distracting irritation from an otherwise good reader.

LibraryThing entry
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Back to posting July's book log...

69) Agatha Christie -- "How does your garden grow?" and other stories [audiobook]

Five short stories taken from the collection "Poirot's Early Cases", read on 3 CDs by the man who plays him so perfectly on tv, David Suchet. The stories included in this set are "The Plymouth Express", "The Submarine Plans", "Problem at Sea", "How Does Your Garden Grow?" and "The Market Basing Mystery". Entertaining short mysteries, and Suchet is an excellent reader. I'd like to get more audiobooks read by him.

LibraryThing entry

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julesjones

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