Dragon Man

Peninsula Crime, Book 1

By: Garry Disher

Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy

Summer on the Peninsula.

The heat’s ramping up, the usual holiday madness building. D.I. Hal Challis is already recycling his shower water and starting to dread Christmas. But this year there’s something more. Women abducted and murdered on the Old Highway. A pall of fear over the scorched paddocks. The media are demanding answers - and Challis’s sleepy beat is set to explode.

©1999 Garry Disher (P)2018 Recorded Books Inc

Book deserved better narration

I have read all the Hal Challis books and thoroughly enjoyed them-- obviously, or I wouldn't have decided to listen to them as well. If your needs in this genre r for a lot of action though, u may be disappointed. These books gave me a real interest in Australia, and I look for other ways to "visit". You will not have the superman-type hero or the evil serial killer muttering pages of creepiness to fast forward through. The protagonist is kind. The first book is only the beginning to knowing the characters, who r generally pleasant or interesting people to spend time with. And flawed, as all people are. Of course there are the bad guys, who are either psychotic or mostly pathetic, or both. There is definitely suspense. The narrator doesn't have the best voice and isn't good at separating characters, so that was disappointing.

Awful Narration!

Who hired this guy? A high-pitched, feminine, nasal voice from someone who sounds about 90 years old completely distracts from the story. There’s no contrast for the various characters, his voices cracks and falls off at the end of sentences and his inflections are completely unrelated to what’s happening in the story. A good story ruined by the narration. Read it instead!

Wonderful Story - with the wrong narrator

As always Gary Disher serves up a terrific crime novel. Well plotted and cast with a wonderful sense of place. This is all undermined however because the narrator just misses the mark. Firstly he is not Australian and it shows. This is a novel which is fixed in its locality and really needs the local accent and dialect to be spot on. This is not. I looked up the narrator and he is British born with Australian parents, and a trained actor, but he doesn't quite nail the local pronunciations, even mispronouncing Melbourne. A local would say "Melburn" not "Melbourne", and every time these verbal missteps shook me out of the story. Australian stories need Australian narrators just as other regional accents do such as Scottish, Canadian, Western American ones and that of the Southern United States do. A Western for example would sound ridiculous if someone with an Oxford accent narrated it.

Terrific story and characters.

Heartily recommend this book. Hard to take the headphones off and do other things. The narration is quirky but I got used to it and quite enjoyed it- just wish someone helped him with his pronunciation of place names. Even mispronounced Melbourne!

So boring!

If you want a book that puts you to sleep this is the book for you. The narrator doesn't help at all