Bring Them Home

Detective Karen Hart, Book 1

By: D. S. Butler

Narrated by: Henrietta Meire

A perfect village. A perfect crime.

When two young girls disappear from their primary school, the village of Heighington is put on high alert—and not for the first time. Called in to investigate, Detective Karen Hart is sure that parallels with a previous disappearance are anything but coincidental.

DS Hart is still reeling from a case she tried and failed to solve eighteen months ago, when a young woman vanished without a trace. She’s no nearer to the truth of what happened to Amy Fisher, but with two children missing now, too, the stakes have never been higher. As she looks to the past for clues, she must confront her own haunting loss, a nightmare she is determined to spare other families.

Hart soon realizes that nothing in this close-knit Lincolnshire community is what it seems. Pursuing the investigation with personal vengeance, she finds herself in conflict with her scrupulous new boss, but playing by the rules will have to wait. Because while there’s no shortage of suspects, the missing girls are running out of time....

©2018 D. S. Butler (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Review

I enjoyed listening to this book. The narrator brought the characters to life. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys listening to a well read mystery.

Unexpected

I enjoyed this story with its unexpected twists. It’s always interesting to read how different the UK is from the States.

This author has potential, narrator needs some coaching

So let’s start with the biggest frustration. I’ve heard this narrator before and I can tell she’s really trying. The challenge is that she has almost a flat affect at times and it’s possible she’s been getting some coaching because I hear a slight improvement. When the narrator does not modulate much, there are two unfortunate things that happen. First of all, it’s much easier to zone out. Secondly it makes the character seem like they’re devoid of personality, and it’s really becoming endeared to the characters that makes listeners want to continue reading the book as well as the series. Equally, a lot of her character voices for the ancillary characters become really nasally so I do hope someone will work with this narrator to help her learn how to do different voices that are a little easier on the ears. Oh, and I would also encourage some dialect training for her Scottish accent.

One thing I liked about this book, because it seems like almost all of them are now about missing girls (can someone come up with an original idea?), was that we didn’t have to go back-and-forth between the detectives, the suspects, and the missing girls. It was such a relief not to hear the missing girl’s perspective. That has become really contrived and trite in this genre.

Last of all, there are some inconsistencies as follow:

The reference to what Jasper says Dean would likely do is considered absurd by the detectives when they considered and investigated that very possibility almost as recently as one or two chapters earlier.

Emily’s mum blames herself for the abduction because she didn’t pick the girls up from school even though everyone knows they snuck out of school before school was out

The narrator uses a voice for the culprit in the Prologue that bears no resemblance to the voice the culprit uses throughout the novel. I suppose this was to try to prevent listeners from guessing the identity which would have been difficult to ascertain from reading instead of listening to the book. I guessed the identity pretty early but I still felt this device was dishonest. Note to Authors: with the popularity of audiobooks, you may want to consider how something will read visually as well as audibly so this technique doesn’t have to be used. The omniscient narrator should never lie, only throw out red herrings.

Enjoyable

I listened to the audiobook of this. It was pretty awesome! The British Accent took a bit to get used to but the language itself would have been harder to read I think! The story was fast paced, and I loved getting to know DS Hart, and the rest of the group. The mystery behind where the girls were was never ending, the twists! Whew.

Great read!

I really enjoyed this one and am looking forward to the rest of this series! Enough drama and mystery to keep you guessing. It was a straight through read for me!

Great storyline

I found this book very well written and the narration was incredible. I trying to discover who did what. This didn’t give away the mystery until it was almost in the end. Would highly recommend this author and narrator to anyone who loves good mysteries.

Plea…se

Fantastic story. Fantastic narrator. And then. The words. That should. Never reach. Anyone’s eyes. Ears. Or fingertips…”The smile that didn’t reach…”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg

Solid first book

I liked the book. The narrator was good at giving individual voices to the characters but her narration in between dialogues was monotone en ended in questions...story was great though and for once, there is a Detective series where the female Detective doesn’t have to fight with her male supervisor...hurry up and bring out the second book!!!

Blasphemy

Why is it necessary to use blasphemy in the book. Really make me put the book down immediately most of the time
😠

How can little girls go missing in a small town?

Two little girls go missing and it’s up to DS Hart and her team to find them before it’s too late. Hart is still conflicted by the case of a missing 19yo renter from the Palmer farm 18 months ago. She just knows that the head of the Palmer family had something to do with it but she couldn’t prove it. Now this and Hart is certain that the Palmer’s are involved...she just has to locate those girls. Good police procedural set in a small English town.