1796: Read Me a Story

Since I was getting really quite frustrated with my daily commute to and from work — there is no good time of the day where you can set out and head back without getting caught in a traffic jam with seemingly no cause — I decided to try something a bit different with my audio entertainment for said journey.

Rather than listening to the radio, with its same five adverts and playlist of approximately twelve songs, or the same albums on my phone over and over again, I decided to listen to some audiobooks.

I’ve listened to audiobooks a few times over the years, most recently when I was in the habit (that I should probably get back into) of taking a long walk most days. They provide a good accompaniment to tedious activities like walking or driving, and I’ve found they’ve had a positive effect on my mood overall, even when the M27 is at its most frustrating. The fact that I can tune out the fact I’m moving at approximately 15mph on a road designed to be travelled along at 70mph+ and instead concentrate on an unfolding narrative is pleasurable, and getting to spend more time immersing myself in a story becomes nice rather than frustrating.

The audiobooks I’ve been listening to most recently belong to a genre I haven’t read a lot of in the past: crime fiction. I can’t remember how I first came on to the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, but I’ve been enjoying them so far: I’m currently about a third of the way through the third book.

For the unfamiliar, the Kay Scarpetta series follows the eponymous heroine, the chief medical examiner for Virginia, and her obligatory “buddy” cop Pete Marino. The two have an enjoyable working relationship and rapport with one another, Kay being rather sensible for the most part — with occasional lapses in judgement and a tendency to attract the main villain of each book to cause some sort of dramatic final confrontation in the closing chapters — and Marino being brash, outspoken and not always entirely tactful.

The stories are interesting when compared to other crime fiction I’ve encountered — be it in books, on TV, in games or in movies — in that the main focus isn’t on the police investigation, the work of an agent on the case or a private investigator. Rather, Kay is essentially a civilian, albeit one with access to information about the corpses that show up in each novel that the public would probably rather not know about. This doesn’t stop her ending up embroiled deep in the mysteries, however, and indeed it’s usually her actions that, if they don’t outright solve the case altogether, certainly put into motion a chain of events that draws the main villain out of hiding (and usually into Kay’s bedroom) in order to be caught and/or killed.

They’re formulaic and somewhat predictable at times, in other words, but they’re filled with interesting characters, and the narrator for the audiobook versions, one Lorelei King, does an admirable job at putting on unique voices for the different characters — even if all her “male” voices tend to end up sounding terribly serious about everything they say… or perhaps this is a side-effect of Cornwell’s male characters?

Anyway. I’m enjoying the experience of listening to audiobooks, and I’ve been enjoying discovering a series of entertaining crime novels in the process. There’s plenty more where that came from, too, so I should be kept reasonably sane on my journeys to and from work for the immediate future, at least…