If you’ve ever listened to a good mystery – not just read, but listened to a mystery audiobook or heard someone read a mystery – then you’ve probably experienced that extra depth that can be added to a detective story when it’s read. What adds this depth and drama? What makes mystery and detective audiobooks so captivating? I can’t give you the full answer (that’s part of the mystery), but I think I can point out something that I’ve noticed that really makes up a good mystery or detective audiobook.
One of the most important things about an exceptional mystery audiobook is the narrator. These often under-appreciated men and women sit down, take a good book, and read it. But they don’t just read it, do they? They express it. They make the book come alive, build the mystery with their tones and inflections, dramatically raise the stakes as each chapter flies by . . . in short, they breathe life into the stories that have already been written. This is why it’s always good to not only check the author of a mystery, but also the narrator. The mystery genre is really like no other, so it makes sense that certain narrators are better at reading mysteries than anyone else. So, next time you purchase or borrow an audiobook, find out who the narrator is, and appreciate the work they’ve done to breathe a mystery to life.
