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A review by jenbsbooks
Buried by Jeffery Deaver
4.0
I enjoyed some of the short stories in one of Amazon's other "Collections" so I thought I'd give this a try (Hush Collection - available on Kindle Unlimited, text and audio). This was a crime/murder story. There were 20 chapters ... but the narration didn't announce them as is often done. Just went from one to the next. As they were complete scene shifts (POV too) sometimes that would really throw me. What's happening now? To who? I think just saying "Chapter Two" would have been better to let the listener know there was a change taking place. Maybe even a chapter heading indicating the POV. Dates were given, and I guess that was where the section headings (five sections) the breaks were announced. Still (easy to miss a moment during audio, get distracted) I got a little list when it jumped back in time a month, had to check the kindle copy to double check things.
The story was fine ... figuring out the murder mystery. I thought it was a bit of a stretch, everything that happened and that it was figured out. I DID really like the double meaning of the story title ... "Buried". That was clever ;)
I also had to laugh a little at the little history lesson included in chapter 13.
“You think this is new? What about yellow journalism? The 1890s, William Randolph Hearst and Pulitzer competing for newspaper circulation in New York? Look at the lies they published.” She had him there. The two publishers lowered their papers’ prices to a penny, to reach as many people as possible, and then slapped outlandish—and completely false—stories on yellow newsprint to draw attention. Historians still believed that phony dispatches from Hearst’s journalists in Cuba started the Spanish-American War.
This probably stood out to me more, because my son's history class covered this recently ... and I'd watched Newsies not long ago too. There were also some lessons on grammar, which I really should have paid more attention to. It's harder to do with audio though. For a short story, it felt a little like a school course at times!
The story was fine ... figuring out the murder mystery. I thought it was a bit of a stretch, everything that happened and that it was figured out. I DID really like the double meaning of the story title ... "Buried". That was clever ;)
I also had to laugh a little at the little history lesson included in chapter 13.
“You think this is new? What about yellow journalism? The 1890s, William Randolph Hearst and Pulitzer competing for newspaper circulation in New York? Look at the lies they published.” She had him there. The two publishers lowered their papers’ prices to a penny, to reach as many people as possible, and then slapped outlandish—and completely false—stories on yellow newsprint to draw attention. Historians still believed that phony dispatches from Hearst’s journalists in Cuba started the Spanish-American War.
This probably stood out to me more, because my son's history class covered this recently ... and I'd watched Newsies not long ago too. There were also some lessons on grammar, which I really should have paid more attention to. It's harder to do with audio though. For a short story, it felt a little like a school course at times!