Believe Me

May 21, 2018
Delaney—a pseudonym for British adman Tony Strong—follows his debut, 2017’s bestselling The Girl Before, with a thriller undercut by a preposterous premise, cardboard characters, and arbitrary major plot reversals. For starters, readers are asked to buy the NYPD’s exploiting British actress Claire Wright’s lack of a green card to strong-arm her into a lengthy undercover operation designed to trap Patrick Fogler, a Columbia University English professor specializing in Baudelaire, who’s suspected of sadistically murdering several women, including his wealthy wife, Stella, according to scenarios inspired by poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. Once Claire and Patrick embark on their dangerous danse macabre—all the while with Det. Frank Durban and profiler Kathryn Latham listening in—the kinky mind games begin in earnest. Could Claire herself, who briefly met Stella the night she was killed, actually be the investigation’s target? For those willing to completely suspend disbelief, the author produces a bobsled run’s worth of twists. Agent: Caradoc King, United Artists (U.K.).

"Disturbing" and "confusing" are the words that describe this listener's experience of this audiobook. Claire, a young British actress portrayed by Sally Scott, takes on a job to entrap straying husbands. Using this opportunity to build her acting skills, she switches on an American accent. The result is confusing for the listener as Claire moves from dialogue to thoughts, continually switching accents. At the core is a disturbing story of a serial killer who is acting out, in brutal, graphically described ways, Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal" poems. The story twists and turns, leaving the listener not knowing which characters are reliable and which are not, especially when the twists seem really unbelievable. Overall, this production is disappointing, considering its stellar cast of narrators. E.Q. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine