Fetish

By: Tara Moss

Narrated by: Tara Moss

Makedde Vanderwall is a Psycho-magnet. A woman who has a habit of attracting the wrong kind of man. She's a single, Canadian, street-smart daughter of a cop, an alluring Venus who works in the lucrative world of modeling while studying forensic psychology.

When Mak travels to Sydney on assignment and discovers her best friend brutally murdered, she unwittingly opens a Pandora's Box of suspicious photographers, hired thugs, and mysterious lovers. She also encounters Andy Flynn, the handsome, cloyed detective investigating the Stiletto Murders, the most violent signature killings Australia has ever known.

In her quest to uncover the truth behind her friend's death, Mak falls headlong into a deadly game of cat and mouse, unaware she has become the obsession of a sadistic psychopath. She is driven into a corner, an evil place where she must suspect everyone and everything.

©1999 Tara Moss (P)2000, 2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.

Critic reviews

"A steamy, fast-paced romantic thriller....Marks the arrival of a bold new female voice for American crime-fiction fans." (Publishers Weekly)

Kept my interest

Not a really great listen, but it kept my interest.

Sydney stiletto serial slasher

The characters: (a) A Canadian model with brains, (b) a good-natured Aussie cop with anger management issues, and (c) a sleazeball with an obsession with stilettos (the footwear variety) and scalpels (the slicing variety). All the ingredients are there for a rather good crime thriller. To a large degree, the story succeeds, and is well narrated by the author herself. There’s a little more raunch and gore than in the average tale of this genre, but not so much that it smothers the storyline. A couple of carps: First, the story starts with an incredible coincidence that is never explained or rationalized. Second, both the model and the cop are meant to have above-average forensic abilities (she, in psychology, he in profiling), but neither seems to have the slightest clue what is going on. A suggestion to the author: If you’re going to give your characters brains, let them make a little more obvious use of them. Enough of the carping – the book is a good holiday read, provided you’re not too squeamish.

A good and gripping listen

What did you love best about Fetish?

The fact that Mak seemed like such a well rounded character.

Any additional comments?

I was surprised with how much I enjoyed the story and the narration. Tara Moss is not a professional narrator so I was not expecting much but I actually found her to be believable as the voice of Mak. Tara has a pleasant voice to listen to even if it is a little dry - I guess that lends itself to the character anyway. I am looking forward to listening to the rest of the series.

She can write but she can't narrate

What disappointed you about Fetish?

Tara Moss is great author but terrible narrator. The constant swallowing and monotone dialogue made this hard to finish

Would you recommend Fetish to your friends? Why or why not?

Try another of Moss' books that someone else has read for

What didn’t you like about Tara Moss’s performance?

Constant & obvious swallowing between sentences. Boring narration

Any additional comments?

Keep writing but let someone else read it for you

Bad narration

This is the only book I have bought from Audible that I just could not finish. I found the narrator, in this case the author herself, to be so smug and monotone that I could not even stand to listen to it. I made it through about 1 and a half hours and had to turn it off. I couldn't tell one chaacter from the other. Maybe I will go back to it one day and try again, but after having listened to so many excellent books with excellent narrators, and a few, average books with great narrators, that made the average book worth listening to, I don't know if I can waste my time listening to an average book with a bad narrator. Sorry.