Hall Ways Blog: One to Watch ~ ~ ~ Audio Book Tour, Review, & Giveaway!

ONE TO WATCH

Detective Kay Hunter Series, Book 3

By Rachel Amplett
Narrator: Alison Campbell
Length: 7 hours 27 minutes
Publisher: Saxon Publishing
Sub-Genres: Mystery, Police Procedural

Sophie Whittaker shared a terrifying secret. Hours later, she was dead.

Detective Kay Hunter and her colleagues are shocked by the vicious murder of a teenage girl at a private party in the Kentish countryside.

A tangled web of dark secrets is exposed as twisted motives point to a history of greed and corruption within the tight-knit community.

Confronted by a growing number of suspects and her own enemies who are waging a vendetta against her, Kay makes a shocking discovery that will make her question her trust in everyone she knows.

One to Watch is a gripping murder mystery thriller, and the third in the Detective Kay Hunter series. A whodunit for fans of Jeffery Deaver, Peter James, David Baldacci, and James Patterson.

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Before turning to writing, Rachel Amphlett played guitar in bands, worked as a TV and film extra, dabbled in radio as a presenter and freelance producer for the BBC, and worked in publishing as a sub-editor and editorial assistant.

She now wields a pen instead of a plectrum and writes crime fiction and spy novels, including the Dan Taylor espionage novels and the Detective Kay Hunter series.

Originally from the UK and currently based in Brisbane, Australia, Rachel cites her writing influences as Michael Connelly, Lee Child, and Robert Ludlum. She’s also a huge fan of Peter James, Val McDermid, Robert Crais, Stuart MacBride, and many more.

She’s a member of International Thriller Writers and the Crime Writers Association, with the Italian foreign rights for her debut novel, White Gold sold to Fanucci Editore's TIMECrime imprint, and the first four books in the Dan Taylor espionage series contracted to Germany’s Luzifer Verlag.

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Narrator Alison Cambell

HALL WAYS REVIEW: Audio Book Review. Having listened to the prior two books straight through in one day, I prepared myself to do the same with One to Watch, the third installment in the Detective Kay Hunter series by Rachel Amphlett. It was a good move! One to Watch starts with a creepy crime and is non-stop twists and turns until the finish. In terms of the whodunit aspect, I was confident that I had solved the mysteries -- and was consistently wrong.

While the book can stand alone, there is a definite advantage to reading the prior books to feel the slow-build of the side stories going on in the background of the primary crime to be solved. In One to Watch, those backstories seem to be less prominent than in prior books and the focus is more heavily on the crime and all the interviews with suspects. Nonetheless, those sub-plots are moving forward and the tension is mounting. And grief is a common thread that runs through all the stories.

Admittedly, I am thoroughly hooked on this series, but I found this installment wasn’t quite up to the same level as the other books thus far. There were times when DC Kay Hunter seemed uncharacteristically insensitive, and the descriptions were at times lackluster with some repetitive words and phrases (too much glaring and too much repeating of “I can’t believe she’s gone.”). And, the characterization of Larch has gone stale – he just didn’t add anything to the story this time and has lost his threatening edge. Strangely, I miss that.

The narration by Alison Campbell is still excellent, and she IS Kay Hunter and several of our other regular characters. In One to Watch, for the first time in the series, I had some trouble distinguishing between a couple of the male characters’ voices. Additionally, though she has a convincing American accent, there are numerous slips that detract from it (namely, adding the ‘r’ sound to the ends of words: idea sounds like idear, for example.) On the other hand, one of the most charming aspects of the series is that it’s delightfully British, so I really didn’t mind the American mispronunciations.

That I eagerly listened to all seven and a half hours of One to Watch, straight through, attests to Amphlett’s skill as a master storyteller – and Campbell’s skill at bringing the voices to life. I absolutely recommend this book and series, and downloaded the next installment, Hell to Pay (book 4), as soon as I finished listening to book three.

Thank you to the author and Audiobookworm Promotions for providing me a free download in exchange for my honest opinion – the only kind I give.