8/31/11

Fall of a Philanderer by Carola Dunn Narrator: Bernadette Dunn

Fall of a Philanderer: A Daisy Dalrymple Book 14
Carola Dunn
Bernadette Dunne
Publisher:  Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Duration:   8 hours, 10 minutes



Fall of a Philanderer by Carola Dunn book imgae
Fall of a Philanderer
Bernadette Dunne Narrator, Image
Narrator, Bernadette Dunne









Bernadette Dunne  has a rather raspy voice and pauses after each word breaking the flow of a sentence. In the Daisy Dalrymple books this is terribly noticeable. She gives a little punch of emphasis to the end of almost every word. She does an excellent job for supporting characters and excels in the voices of children and women. Her rendition of a posh English accent was sometimes hard to understand.

With the male characters there were a number of times I could not tell by a voice change who was speaking. Her voice is not bad but not that appealing either. In books like The Haunting of Hill House, she narrates far better, but still lacks the smooth flow in the sentences. In The Devil Wears Prada she speaks more clearly but still is stilted and she pauses to long on each word. Her narration just does not flow. Yet her less than stellar narrations would not prevent me from purchasing more books she reads.

Carola Dunn Author image narratorreviews.org
Carola Dunn Author


Fall of a Philanderer book number 14, in the Daisy Dalrymple series was a fairly interesting listen. It had a huge amount of build up to the murder and a lot of secondary characters that didn't really create any rapport with of them. They lacked any firm dimensions. Ms.Dunn's voice is rather flat, making her rendition of Daisy's husband fail to emanate any closeness or genuine affection between them. The children are so well behaved that it's scary by today's standards. Of course it is taking place in the 1920's, perhaps children were less mischievous.


Daisy is looking forward to going on a quiet and uneventful seaside holiday with her husband, Alec Fletcher, step daughter Belinda, and Deva, Belinda's best friend. In a small village like Westcombe, they soon hear about the local lothario, George Enderby. No one is surprised when his corpse is found on the beach, with no end of husbands angry at him and his own wife counted among the numbers. So many suspects makes it difficult to find the murderer.

At the end when the murderer is revealed it seems to fall flat on its face. I was very disappointed in the finale. Way too much time was spent on investigation and great detail more on each suspect. We are presented with  huge build up on each suspect and then they don't play a very big role in the rest of the book. A good editor could have lopped off about two hours of this audio book and it would never have been missed.