Publishers Weekly - Audio
This audio edition contains two novellas from Walters—“Chickenfeed” and “The Tinder Box.” The first is based on an actual murder case that took place on an English chicken farm in 1924; the second charts the community’s rage at the prime suspect in two savage slayings in the village of Sowerbridge. Given the premium that Walters places on the plausibility of average, everyday people committing evil and violence, it’s vital that narrator Simon Prebble maintain the illusion of normalcy when voicing the novellas’ characters. The aural deception Prebble creates is so effective that listeners will be stunned when the mask is finally removed. Prebble’s rendition of different genders and accents is skillful and brings to life the author’s characters. The result is a deliciously chilling listen. A Mysterious Press hardcover. (June)
Publishers Weekly
Fans of Edgar-winner Walter will welcome this collection of two previously published novellas. The poignant Chickenfeed, based on an infamous 1924 murder case in East Sussex, charts the tragic course of the courtship of Norman Thorne, a city boy trying to make a go of an ill-conceived chicken farm, and the mentally unstable young woman determined to marry him, Elsie Cameron. The Tinder Box, a compelling tale of prejudice and gossip set in 1999, opens with the trial of Patrick O’Riordan, a 35-year-old unemployed Irish laborer, for the brutal murder of a 93-year-old woman and her nurse in an English village where the Irish are despised. Though the evidence against Patrick is overwhelming, his crippled mother persuades fellow Irishwoman Siobhan Lavenham to help exonerate her son. Siobhan discovers plenty about the victims, the O’Riordan family, and the escalating threats to the O’Riordans before everything falls into place to produce a shockingly different picture than expected. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company. (July)
From the Publisher
PRAISE FOR MINETTE WALTERS
“A Walters novel is like no other. She bases her books on facts [and] embosses with her own painstaking research and fertile imagination.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The Tinder Box is a compelling tale of prejudice and gossip [where] everything falls into place to produce a shockingly different picture than expected.” —Publishers Weekly
BookPage
Simon Prebble is at his best, evoking time and place and using his estimable gift for dialect with spot-on accuracy.”
—BookPage
Library Journal
In "Chickenfeed," based on a notorious 1924 murder on an East Sussex chicken farm, Walters explores how Norman Thorne met Elsie, the girlfriend he reputedly killed. In "The Tinder Box," everyone in town unites against the O'Riordan family when Patrick O'Riordan is accused of murder, though neighbor Siobhan Lavenham proclaims his innocence. Then secrets emerge that make her start to wonder. Walters is a Gold Dagger and Edgar Award winner (among other honors), these two works were both No. 1 best sellers in the UK, and you were wondering whether to purchase?
MAY 2012 - AudioFile
British crime writer Minette Walters offers a diversity of time and place in these novellas. INNOCENT VICTIMS, set in 1920s England, is by far the superior title. Narrator Simon Prebble is his usual excellent self in both stories, but even he cannot save the melodramatic TINDER BOX. In the former work, Norman Thorn’s kindness moves him to court a mentally ill spinster named Elsie, who lures him into an engagement that ultimately leads to his death. The latter work is a more predictable 1990s story of English-Irish conflict, which becomes difficult to buy into when the police rely on a civilian woman and treat her as an insider. However, the title story and audio delivery are so outstanding that it's worth enduring or skipping the weaker mystery. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
