Smoke and Whispers cover art

Smoke and Whispers

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Smoke and Whispers

By: Mick Herron
Narrated by: Julia Franklin
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as Private Detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her?

Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.

©2009 Mick Herron (P)2020 Isis Publishing Ltd Crime Thrillers Thriller Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Suspense Mystery

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Why We Die cover art
Down Cemetery Road cover art
The Last Voice You Hear cover art
My Name Is Nobody cover art
The Insider cover art
The Lincoln Lawyer: Booktrack Edition cover art
Delicate Indecencies cover art
The Brief cover art
The Scarlet Papers cover art
The Island cover art
The Mayfly cover art
The Dentist cover art
Dig Two Graves cover art
A Northern Wind cover art
Deceived cover art
Tough Crowd cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
A typical Mick Herron story. Convoluted, intricate and teasing to the end. One or two tests of credibility but these are easy to forgive in such a thoroughly enjoyable listen which is narrated immaculately by Julia Franklin

Thoroughly enjoyable listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I ,like a lot of other reviewers, love the Slough House books. So I thought I would try some of Mick Herron’s other books. I chose this one because it is set in Newcastle, my home town. I always try to read books in order but this one is actually the last in the Zoe Boehm series. I don’t think it will matter as it is almost stand alone although there are references to previous story lines .The writing is wonderful , very precise and concise but also evocative . He describes place and characters beautifully without mountains of description , which keeps the action moving . I really enjoyed this book the plot was good with a few twists, certainly kept you guessing . The narrator was good , her Geordie accent was a bit “Vera-esque” but if you don’t come from the area you would probably not notice.

Nice surprise

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the last in the series and it’s probably one of the best. Mick Herron is a brilliant writer, but these books are not up to the standard of Slow Horses. Having read all of those I thought this series might be a good next step, but I was wrong. I think my biggest mistake was listening to them as audio books. The narrator has her good points - she does an excellent Geordie accent- but her acting skills or at least her chosen characterisation fall below par. The worst is that she makes Sarah (and this applies to all the books in this series) appear even more stupid and reckless, and far worse, too often hysterical and shouty. The screeching is the worse of these. I often wanted to shout back ‘calm the *** down’. If I had read it by myself I would have made her a much steadier character, although this would not have improved her bewildering stupidity or impulsive behaviour. If you cannot like the central characters then it becomes a stodgy read. It’s almost impossible to flick a few pages forward in an audio book, so I’d recommend buying an actual book or Kindle version so you can - not to mention you won’t have to listen to someone annoyingly shouting at everyone for no good reason. The story is good and ties up loose ends.

A fitting end

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Does go on a bit. Several unexpected twists and turns when what you think where something is leading turns out to a completely different place. That's excellent but in the end the while process turned out to be tedious, which is not the usual Mick Herron experience.

When it's good it's very good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the story rolls along but the narator keeps bring in manerisms that are quite anoying
like Mannnnnnn goingggggg.

good story line spoilt by performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Edge of my seat. Kept me guessing. Brilliant and compelling. Sarah Tucker takes the lead in this thriller.

Impossible to review without spoilers

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A new word will surely be added to the dictionary as Mick Herron's books grow in popularity, as they surely will, when Apple TV release their Slow Horses dramatisation very shortly.
Smoke and Whispers follows a typically Herronesque plot line.
As usual, every page includes description, thoughts and dialogue which bring smiles to the reader's lips.
I particularly like the dialogue which is followed by "she would/should have said/didn't say".
Such a simple yet effective device which I've never seen used by anyone other than Herron.
And the only way to understand that sentence is to read the book - you will not regret it.
Julia Franklin does her usual exceptional job with a slight dent in perfection being some of her Geordie accents but then I AM a Geordie so probably far more critical than a non-Geordie!

Herronesque!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Found this audio bit slow couldn't get losted in the story to many uneventful, unnessasery twists.. Could have been better.

Not the best very boring..

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Slaccato delivery by reader slightly reduced my enjoyment and the characterisation was not very convincing.

Didn’t really grip

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am a great fan and admirer of MH’s thrillers, the audio versions of which usually make a long car journey go in a flash but this was convoluted and stretched my patience to - and beyond - its limits. And there wasn’t even the dark humour that usually illuminates his books.

Not Mick’s finest

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews