Good mystery with SLOW narration!

I read Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series when my grandchildren were reading them, but I had no idea that Riordan had written mystery thrillers. This book is part of his 7 novel Tres Navarre series and is it quite good. Despite the fact that Tom Stechschulte has a great voice for audiobook narration and has narrated hundreds of them, I down rate him for excessively slow reading speed. I have to listen at 2X recording speed to make his narration acceptable.

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7 people found this helpful

Middling, meandering, dated.

I remember reading Mr. Riordan's books when they came out in print and being mildly amused. Tres Navarre is a likable character, a literate PI from Texas. However, now the genre seems to have passed by Mr. Riordan. With Tim Hallinan, Thomas Perry, Lou Berney and the like, we can read the work of much better writers. Mr. Riordan has a sense of humor, and Chapter 1 sets us up to think that this book will be much more interesting than it is. For one thing, Mr. Riordan has never met a word that he didn't like. The books are about twice as long as they should be, which I guess is done to make them the standard 300+ page novel. Someone once asked Elmore Leonard why his books were so popular. He said, "I leave out the parts that people skip." Mr. Riordan leaves out nothing. In this book we hear WAY too much exposition, way too much about the Southern country music scene and all the miserable crooks behind the scenes. There are too many characters that we don't care a thing about. For instance, Tres's sometime supervisor, Irenya. She adds nothing to the book other than her kid, Jem. Also, Mr. Stechshulte is an average narrator, and his voicing of this particular woman is grating and unpleasant. A good editor would have cut her. Better to listen to eight hours of Elmore Leonard than twelve hours of Rick Riordan. This series is only for Texan fans of the genre. The rest of us really don't care how many rest stops there are between Austin and San Antonio.

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6 people found this helpful

Just aweful!

As a huge fan of rick riordan I was very disappointed with this tres Navarre series. Aweful story telling only made worse by the performance.

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3 people found this helpful

Fav Tres Navarre Story so far!

I've so far listened to the 5 of the books, and am in the middle of the 6th book. I must say that this was my favorite out of the bunch. Great story, with great tension. Shows how different City and Country life in Texas can be.

Again with all of the books, being a Texan sometimes the immersion in the story is broken with all the mispronunciations. Like someone said on a review of a previous Tres Navarre book, you would think it wouldn't come up too often... but it does more often than you think. Like Gruene Hall is pronounced "Green," and there are other mispronunciations of other cities.

However even with this, it is a great story with a great narrator that really brings the characters alive.

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3 people found this helpful

Don't Waste Your Time

This is the first audio novel I've listened to that was a struggle for me to keep coming back to hear. It had a lot of characters' names who played relatively minor rolls (until the conclusion), so I had to wonder who he or she was every time that person was mentioned. It came together for me at the end, but the process was tedious and pretty much boring, until the last chapter or so. Not much of an emotional grip to this one.

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2 people found this helpful

Vague

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

No real purpose for what any of the characters were doing. And after wasting time trying to figure it out, you find you don't really care.

Has The Widower’s Two-Step turned you off from other books in this genre?

Not by the genre, just this author and narrater.

How could the performance have been better?

Worked so hard to sound board that I really was.

What character would you cut from The Widower’s Two-Step?

The author.

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2 people found this helpful

Fun Frolicking Listen

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Not on the edge but definetly wanted to know what the heck was going to happen next!

Which character – as performed by Tom Stechschulte – was your favorite?

They were all good. Male and female which can be hard to do!

Any additional comments?

I love all the bizarre characters and how they all fit together. The tai-chi master twist is fun too.

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2 people found this helpful

Good story with keep you on your toes plot twists.

Keeps you guessing. Lots of well developed players - a bit hard to keep up with all of them, but not terrible....

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1 person found this helpful

San Amtonio detective

Riordan is a South Texas treasure. Before he made it big with Percy Jackson, he gave us private dick Tres Navarre and a world well known to the many societies that make Austin/San Antonio our home.

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1 person found this helpful

Rick Riordan is a true Texan…

An absolute fun second book in the Tres series… makes me feel like I’m back home in Texas….

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