Listen with Lillian - Once Upon a Haunted Moor by Harper Fox

Once Upon a Haunted Moor by Harper Fox

Narrated by Tim Gilbert

Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins

Gideon Frayne has spent his whole working life as a policeman in the village of Dark on Bodmin Moor. It's not life in the fast lane, but he takes it very seriously, and his first missing-child case is eating him alive. When his own boss sends in a psychic to help with the case, he's gutted - he's a level-headed copper who doesn't believe in such things, and he can't help but think that the arrival of clairvoyant Lee Tyack is a comment on his failure to find the little girl. But Lee is hard to hate, no matter how Gideon tries. At first Lee's insights into the case make no sense, but he seems to have a window straight into Gideon's heart. Son of a Methodist minister, raised in a tiny Cornish village, Gideon has hidden his sexuality for years. It's cost him one lover, and he can't believe it when this green-eyed newcomer stirs up old feelings and starts to exert a powerful force of attraction. Gideon and Lee begin to work together on the case. But there are malignant forces at work in the sleepy little village of Dark, and not only human ones - Gideon is starting to wonder, against all common sense, if there might be some truth in the terrifying legend of the Bodmin Beast after all. As a misty Halloween night consumes the moor, Gideon must race against time to save not only the lost child but the man who's begun to restore his faith in his own heart.

Buy links: Audible  

My Two Pennies Worth

This audiobook is book #1 in the Tyack & Frayne series. I look at my original review for the ebook and I find words like mysterious, evocative, creepy. And I have to say, they probably apply even more to the audio production.

Once Upon a Haunted Moor is set in a small Cornish village with Bodmin Moor as its backyard. A child has gone missing up on the moor and the local bobby, Gideon Frayne has had no luck in locating her. In an effort to try a new tack, a psychic, Lee Tyack has been called in to attempt to use his particular skills. At first this rubs Gideon up the wrong way, but mostly that is from a desire to protect the girl’s family from a charlatan and guilt at not finding her himself. But they soon find a way to work together, and more.

Gideon is a solid character, not easily spooked, and reliable. He’s been hiding in the closet, despite having been in a serious relationship previously, although it may have been a closet made of glass for all the good it did hiding the true nature of their relationship from the villagers.

Lee is a psychic, but he has other jobs, because finding lost children, or bodies, doesn’t pay the bills (because he doesn’t charge for those type of services). Lee is a good man, honest and not the type to give false hope. He’s also a man worth coming out of the closet for and Gideon does so in quite spectacular fashion (for him). Their romance progresses over a very short space of time but never once feels like instalove. At the end of the novella their relationship feels strong, a good basis to start something from, and if you never listened to another book in the series it is a solid place to end. But why would you, when there are so many more excellent stories to be told.

The narrator does an excellent job, imbuing the tale with an edge of mystery and the unknown. The MCs in particular have distinctively different voices and the accents convey those of really Cornish people that I’ve met.

All in all an excellent start to the series and I look forward to revisiting Tinsel Fish soon.

Easy Listening

I'm relatively new to audio books as a way of reading but I've discovered they are the easiest way to revisit some of your favourite characters. It should be obvious from my previous posts where I've recced audios that in the majority of cases I only listen to an audio once I've read the ebook. I like to form my own opinion of the characters and their actions without being swayed by a narrator. While a good narrator can and should bring a book to life, a bad one can kill it stone dead, and I'd rather give a book a chance to became a favourite because I read it and loved it enough to buy it on audio.

The audio book I want rec this week is Scrap Metal by Harper Fox.

Narrated by Sean Gormley

Is there room for love in a heart full of secrets? One year ago, before Fate took a wrecking ball to his life, Nichol was happily working on his doctorate in linguistics. Now he's hip deep in sheep, mud, and collies. His late brother and mother had been well-suited to life on Seacliff Farm. Nichol? Not so much.
As lambing season progresses in the teeth of an icy north wind, the last straw is the intruder Nichol catches in the barn. He says his name is Cam, and he's on the run from a Glasgow gang. Something about the young man's tired resignation touches Nichol deeply, and instead of giving him the business end of a shotgun, he offers Cam a blanket and a place to stay. Somehow, Cam quickly charms his way through Nichol's defenses and into his heart. Even his grandfather takes to the cheeky city boy, whose hard work and good head for figures help set the farm back on its feet. As the cold Scottish springtime melts into summer, Nichol finds himself falling in love. When tragedy strikes, Cam's resolutely held secret is finally revealed and Nichol must face the truth. He's given his heart away, and it's time to pay the price.

Scrap Metal is one of my favourite Harper Fox novels and I had my concerns about listening to the audio book. The landscape is as much a character as Nic and Cam and I wondered if that sense of place would translate into the spoken word. It does and for that we have to thank Sean Gormley who brings the biting wind, the smell of the grass and heather, warm spring sunshine, the vast bleak beauty of the landscape into this story as much as he brings life to Nic's grief and Cam's guilt and the stubbornness of an old man.

At over 12 hours this is a long audiobook but it is worth every second.

Highly recommended.