Their Lost Daughters – Audiobook

/ SueBC

I finally signed up for an AudibleUK subscription. (UK seems to have more titles I want than the Canadian site.) I took the plunge so I could order the new police procedural written by Joy Ellis and narrated by Richard Armitage. I enjoy a good murder mystery and this series set in England’s Fens seemed right up my alley.

Richard Armitage Joy Ellis InterviewIt intrigued me, too, that Armitage believes the main character, Rowan Jackman, to be “tailor-made” for him. (See this recent free interview — if the link takes you to your home-country Audible, just choose AudibleUK at the top of the page to access the interview.) As Armitage tells it, “He’s a sort of loner, he’s quite a quiet man but he has an aggressive side to him, he lives alone, he’s a thinker, he’s contemplative, he’s kind of thorny, and there’s something a little bit wild about him which I really liked.” (Ooh! Armitage can be a little bit wild too? Tell me more!) Jackman even has a nephew that he dotes on, similar to RA with his real-life nephew. I do think that Jackman is missing Armitage’s quick sense of humour, but this isn’t really a genre known for humour.

The book begins with the body of a teenage girl found washed up on a remote beach. Another teenage girl is missing. And the detectives are also asked to re-open the cold case of a young girl who went missing almost ten years ago. Jackman and his partner, Marie Evans, must deal with an urgent search to potentially save someone in danger and work to uncover clues about the dead girl on the beach, all while juggling directives perhaps influenced by people in power and skirting illegal underground operations that keep coming to the foreground.

For the most part, I enjoyed the story and the characters of Their Lost Daughters — and are there ever a lot of characters! You really notice this in an audiobook and feel for the narrator, even though they are all necessary to the plot. Armitage commented that he “nearly rugby-tackled [the author] to the floor because there were so many characters.” Seems like an odd comment for a guy who only really played rugby for one role, but he must have just finished reading Ellis’s book — that’s a description that’s used near the end.

Armitage reads Their Lost Daughters 2I wondered as I was listening if maybe Armitage doing so many audiobooks in such a short space of time and in various studios might affect the quality a bit. Near the beginning of the book, I had trouble telling some of the voices apart, although this got better as the book went on. I think that it took Armitage a bit of time to really get the different characteristics of the voices going, but he did succeed admirably overall. I also noted that the editing of the voices (consistency of timbre, etc.) seemed to slip a bit in one of the chapters in the middle of the book. Other than that, though, I enjoyed Armitage’s performance and the audio quality.

The Murderer's SonJoy Ellis has created a lasting team with Jackman and Marie Evans. We get to know their personalities quite well and Marie’s backstory, but I wish that there were more back story on Jackman. I’d like to know why he lives alone, for example, and whether he finds it suits him or whether something is missing. Their Lost Daughters is actually the second book in the series, so I may have to get the e-book of The Murderer’s Son to find out more. I enjoyed the book and the main characters enough to give some of Ellis’s other books a try — especially the next two that Armitage will be narrating. (I wonder why Audible didn’t have him start with the first book in the series?)

LeapWhile I found the story interestingly complex and I liked the pacing, especially towards the end, I have to admit that there were points in the story where I was driving along yelling at my car sound system. There were at least two or three major leaps where logic and/or good police work were not what took the story to the next discovery. It made no sense that the particular avenue of inquiry around the middle of the book would have been pursued. Intuition would not have been sufficient, in my opinion. In fact, the next chapter even starts, “Jackman had no proof… little or no justification…” To me, that just says that the author couldn’t find a way to get to the next place she needed the story to go without making a leap of logic. There was also a loose end that I felt should have been tied up at the end, but it wasn’t, leading me to suspect that a logical explanation couldn’t be found.

I also found it strange that the police force in the book used so many seemingly unpaid civilian experts in their investigation. Is that actually how the police force works in England? I don’t think that that would happen here, what with clearances needed and potential privacy issues.

However, all that being said, Their Lost Daughters did hold my interest and make for a good listening experience. It was an interesting and complex story, with a pair of detectives that I would be happy to spend more time with. The pacing was good, with excitement building steadily towards the conclusion. And, of course, once he got going, I appreciated Richard Armitage’s narration of the book and would happily support a TV adaptation with Armitage in the role of Rowan Jackman, if that were to happen.

35 thoughts on “Their Lost Daughters – Audiobook”

  1. I kept my Audible.com subscription. The new Canadian site offers little by way of titles, thanks to licensing. Wish Audible would get their head out of its ass and offer a decent rate to libraries.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. SueBC that is a fantastic review of the audiobook- honest, engaging, good synopsis of the plot and constructive criticism. Makes me want to not only read her book series but
    listen to Richard voice those characters. I’ve only listened to Juliet and Romeo and not
    finished w that yet! I give you major kudos for listening to him in the car. I would probably wreck mine just hearing the various accents he uses in J and R. Thank you for the review!
    As an aside I found Sleepwalker really hard to follow and am going to give it another go. Richard is really handsome in it and the actress Ahna O’Reilly is ok just the story is a bit convoluted and confusing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. Still haven’t bought it (my low patience for audiobooks would have been rather severely tested the last month or so), but your description makes this sound like the kind of story I’d abandon halfway through if I were reading it. I guess we’ll see. I’m going to be teaching a F2F class in fall term at a campus that’s a two hour round trip, so it might be a good moment for an audiobook or books again. I may be driving dad’s truck which has a speaker hookup for a cell phone.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • The speaker hook up is great. I feel like I might be a dissenting opinion on this one… waiting for Guylty’s review. But I really did find the leaps of logic annoying, but I’m willing to give the author another chance because I enjoyed a lot of it. I’m reading Tana French’s “The Trespasser” right now. Now there’s someone who can write a good police procedural!

      Like

      Reply

  5. SueBC, I do thank you!
    Je saute de joie. Grâce à vos conseils donnés à un fan en 2017, je viens d’acheter mon premier audiobook sur e bay UK (en occasion bien sûr, une première version originale est complètement introuvable dorénavant). Il s’agit des 12 heures de narration de la saga épique de Bernard Cornwell: “The Lords of the North”.
    Comme plusieurs d’entre vous, je compte bercer mes heures de conduite automobile, avec les prouesses vocales de Richard Armitage. Mais je crains les accidents par défaut d’attention. Car il y a déjà eu un antécédent. Il y a plusieurs années, en refusant une priorité à droite, dans un rond point, j’ai failli emboutir une voiture. Mon esprit était occupé à divaguer sur les talents d’écriture de Sophia Quills, dans sa fan fiction: “North and South Retold”…De plus, lire ou écouter de l’anglais me demande toujours beaucoup de travail cérébral… Où est la prudence!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I hope you enjoy it! I really like “The Lords of the North”. Unfortunately, I seem to have scratched the disc — I must have had some dirt on the edge of the CD player in the car. It still works, but there is a part in the middle that’s just scratches.

      Be careful driving! I find that the driving part of my brain takes over and blocks out the audiobook when something happens that requires more intense attention paid to driving. But I can only imagine how much more difficult it is listening to something that is not in your first language! Enjoy… but be careful!

      Like

      Reply

      • Merci. Je viens juste de le récupéré et vje vais l’écouter ce soir.
        La présentation est très belle mais je n’ai reçu que les dix CD. Il y avait-il un livret explicatif accompagnant?

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        • Merci. De retour de vacances, je viens juste de le récupérer. Aussi, je vais commencer à l’écouter ce soir seulement .La présentation est très belle mais je n’ai reçu que les 10 CD. Y avait-il un livret explicatif accompagnant?

          Like

          Reply

        • I bought the MP3, which was just one disc in a case. Unfortunately, no book. However, I did buy an ebook set of the first 6 books on iTunes which wasn’t too expensive and which has The Lords of the North included.

          Like

          Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.