Rating: WARTY!
Last trip to the library to pick up a requested book, I happened upon an audiobook titled Sixkill by Robert B Parker, which is about a private dick named Spenser (and yes, he's for hire!) who is investigating a murder. Over in the young readers section I happened upon a second audiobook also by Robert B Parker, which was about the same character but when he was younger. I thought it would be an interesting study to compare and contrast.
Was I ever wrong! Nauseating was a more apt description, and the major reason for it was that this author sucks at writing prose. His problem is that he has all the individuality and inventiveness of a metronome when it comes to writing conversation between two people, and he writes a lot of speech with nothing to break it up. It's like listening to two automatic tennis ball throwers trying to play tennis with each other, and every bit as engrossing.
Here's an example from the beginning of chapter nine. Note that this is a transcript of the audiobook, so my punctuation may differ from the printed page.
"Not what you had hoped for," Susan said.
"In those days," I said, "I knew less about why women cried."
"And now?"
"I understand why men and women cry," I said.
"The advantage of maturity," Susan said
"Being young is hard," I said.
"Being grown is not so easy either," Susan said
"But it's easier," I said.
She nodded. We were quiet for a moment; then Susan said, "You hunted!"
"Sure," I said. "We all did."
"You don't hunt now," Susan said.
"No," I said.
Seriously? Good God! What is wrong with this guy? I quit this novel right around that point, because quite literally, I could not bear to listen to another word. I moved on to the adult version of Spenser only to find it was no better! I'm done with this "author"! The reading of the novel by Daniel Parker (the author's son) wasn't bad, I have to add, but neither was it anything special, although to be fair, you'd have to do a super human job to make this garbage palatable.
