Murder in Chinatown

By: Victoria Thompson

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

In Chinatown to deliver a baby, Sarah Brandt meets a group of women she might otherwise never have come across: Irish girls who, after alighting on Ellis Island alone, have married Chinese men in the same predicament. But with bigotry in New York from every side, their mixed-race children are often treated badly, by the Irish, the Chinese—even the police.

When the new mother’s half-Chinese, half-Irish, 15-year-old niece goes missing, Sarah knows that alerting the constables would prove futile. So she turns to Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy—and together they begin the search themselves. And after they find her, dead in an alley, Sarah and Malloy have ample suspects—from both sides of Canal Street.

©2007 Victoria Thompson (P)2008 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Vividly recreates the gaslit world of Old New York." (Publishers Weekly)

Great story ... poor narration

Frank's voice makes him gruff not at all likeable, but the story is good as usual.

Better narrator

Yes, it’s difficult to get used to a new narrator, but this one handles the tone, mood, accents, and character differences much better. However, she’s given the main characters unappealing voices, though she improves them in the next book. For example, for Malloy, it’s an odd mix of old-man smoker’s grizzle mixed with southern drawl mixed with old-time New England private eye. And for some reason, she stretches out his vowels (though he stops sounding as angry in later books, and particularly mellows out more by book 12). Sarah sounds more soft spoken than we were used to, but her voice gets better in subsequent installments as well). I found that increasing the speed makes both Frank and Sarah more tolerable. Stick with it to hear the narrator’s improvements in the next installment. The mystery was good, as usual, with plenty of suspects, twists, and history.

Much Improved Narration

I've been enjoying the titles in this series prior to this one, but the narration ALMOST drove me off - at first. However, a good story can survive a narrator who is learning the ropes, which is what the original narrator sounded like she was doing. It bothered me that there were no accents where there should have been, class distinctions/dialect between characters' voices were non-existent, it was hard to distinguish male from female characters, and ages of characters didn't show up in the voices. The narrator did learn as she went along and later books were getting better, but I doubt the Asian and other accents in this one would have been an easy task. I wish her the best, but I think Suzanne Toren is handling the characters well and the narration is MUCH improved.

Great stories! I love mysteries set in this time frame in New York City. And I am looking forward to bingeing the rest!

Voice makes or breaks a recorded book.

The story was as good as the others, but the narrator didn't work. Frank's mother was worst of all.

Narration very bad. A gravelly smokers voice.

Tries to imagine voices in stereotypical fashion. I skipped about 7 chapters to find out who did it. Unfortunately the next book has the same narrator so I will skip it.