Smoke and Mirrors

A Ray Elkins Thriller

By: Aaron Stander, x

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Sheriff Ray Elkins returns in this haunting crime thriller.

On the 4th of July, what should have been a quiet night explodes into horror when two bodies are found brutally murdered in the dunes of a remote beach. A couple, naked and vulnerable, lies dead, sparking a complex investigation that dives deep into the darker corners of human nature.
The victims' identities lead the investigation down a path filled with drugs, secrets, and a past that refuses to stay buried. Ray and his team come face to face with a culture of poverty, addiction, and fragmented family bonds that explodes both lives and beloved landscapes.

Computer voice ruins the experience

This narration is computer generated. There's no differentiation between character's voices so it can be difficult to follow who's saying what. There’s no emotion, so proper pacing of dialogue is nearly non-existent and sometimes stilted. Words are mispronounced: 9-11 becomes "nine to eleven," M.O. becomes "moh," air bnb is "air b on b," and in a sentence on wind direction, wind is pronounced with a long "i" like wind a clock. It's painful to listen to and hard to appreciate the story with such poor narration. If this is becoming the new norm, I'll give up audiobooks for print, where my imagination adds life back into the characters. I wonder what authors think when their stories are so poorly performed as to ruin experiencing them.