Murder at Crossways

Gilded Newport Mystery Series, Book 7

By: Alyssa Maxwell

Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo

The days are getting shorter as summer's end approaches, which means it's time for the Harvest Festival, the last big event of the season, held by Mamie Fish, wife of millionaire railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, at their grand "cottage", Crossways. The neocolonial mansion is decked out in artificial autumn splendor, and an extravagant scavenger hunt will be held. But the crowning jewel of the evening will be the guest of honor, Prince Otto of Austria.

As acting editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger, Emma had hoped to leave her days as a society reporter behind her. But at the last moment, she must fill in and attend the Harvest Festival. With nearly every eligible daughter of Newport high society in attendance, Emma can almost hear romantic dreams shattering like glass slippers when the prince fails to appear. The next morning, he is found dead in the side garden at Crossways, making it clear a murderer crashed the party.

The prince has been stabbed in the same manner as another man, recently found on nearby Bailey's Beach - who strongly resembles Emma's half-brother Brady's father, presumed dead for nearly 30 years after a yachting mishap. As Emma investigates a connection between the two victims, she is joined on the hunt by Mamie Fish herself. But they must hurry - before the killer slips away like the fading summer . . . .

©2019 Lisa Manuel (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Good

Not my favorite in the series but still enjoyable. As others have mentioned the narrator isn't great, and it was particularly noticeable in this book.

Good

Another fast paced story that will keep you guessing until the end.

Trouble at the newspaper Emma is running for Derek. Geez!

Book has potential

Light listen while doing housework, pleasant enough and requires minimal effort. Trade-offs are relatively flat characters and poor descriptive flow among the sensory perceptions, speech, paralanguage, and cognitions that form the full picture of communication in the setting of the human experience. Lots of “thought” and “said” (or similar). Occasional incorporation of period language comes off stilted in the face of otherwise unimaginative present-day-style writing that is soft on the wit, word play, command of connotation, and use of phonetic spelling that could have been used to distinguish among different classes, personalities and intellects. Good narration might have made the difference, as there seems to be room for the actor to build out the characters’ background stories and bring this “color” to the reading. However, the narrator did quite the opposite, barely succeeding in more than distinguishing male and female voices, plowing through the book in a monotonous simmering panic reminiscent of a television newscaster. The resulting auditory experience was much like the writing - “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Terrible narrator

The story is good and I enjoy this series very much. This narrator is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. She is robotic, has inconsistent and incorrect pronunciations, and uses the same tone for everything. I’m sticking with it because the narrator from the first few books in the series returns next book, but it’s been rough the last few books.

Why did you change narrators?

Was this story actually narrated by a real person? It sounds like it was read by a computer. So disappointing. I was really looking forward to listening to this next book in the series, but it was so hard to listen to the narration. 😬😬 Please go back to the other person! The actual story was very good tho, as usual.

Loving this series!!!

So happy to know about this series! I first found out about it when I was touring the actual Newport mansions and they had the series for sale… Then I looked it up on audible and was thrilled that the entire series was also on audible. I have been blowing through ever since! I just love the attention to detail, the accuracy of the time period and the storylines!

Disappointing narrator

The previous Alyssa Maxwell books I have listened to were narrated by Eva Kaminski, who performed much better. Lauren Ezzo's performance was too one dimensional. Emma's character is not a highbrow, snooty aristocrat, but that is how she and most of the character's sounded with Lauren's performance even when they should not. I also kept saying to myself, calm down and slow down, as the performance in many places made Emma sound hysterical, instead of calmly thinking through facts.

Intriguing

Love the brave and independence of Miss Emma Cross. I must confess though my hope is for Jesse and Emma. Seems he is more respectful and deserving of Emma’s Love.

Absolutely have enjoyed every book thus far.

Lauren Ezzo’s narrations…

make this a good read-it-yourself series.

And while the first narrator was way better than this one, neither of them do the writing justice.
Both narrations are far too modern-American. They were hired to perform according to the language of 100+ years ago & didn’t deliver. I hope in future, they’ll hire someone up to the task, or else just go Brit…

Lauren Ezzo’s reading, in particular, is far too clipped & jarringly abrupt. She shirked her work & handed in an “incomplete”.

She also has an Annoying habit of turning every short-voweled “o” into “awl”😖😵‍💫🤢
E.g.: Ch 18
“Acrolls town”
“Into the hawlspittle”
“Indeed nawlt”
(Add to that an “owltside”)

Drags out too much

Just couldn’t force myself to listen further. I wanted to get into I enjoy period books, this one just didn’t work for me. I did enjoy the reader.