Narrated by Tor Thom and Kirt Graves

Both J.M. Dabney and Davidson King are new-to-me authors, and I confess I picked up their latest collaboration, The Hunt, mostly because Kirt Graves is one of the narrators. The other, Tor Thom, is a name I’ve seen cropping up more and more frequently of late, and I wanted to try something of his – but the jury’s still out. My initial impression, from the first few minutes, was not at all favourable owing to a lot of audible breathing and Mr. Thom’s low-pitched almost-whisper; and had I not been reviewing this audiobook, I may well have set it aside never to return. But I persevered, and was able to at least make it to the end without ripping out my earphones and stomping on them.

The
Hunt opens with Detective Ray Clancy arriving at
the gruesome scene of the murder of a young man who was mutilated post mortem.
This is the third such killing he’s seen and the Medical Examiner at the scene
privately agrees with Ray that they’ve got a serial killer on their hands that,
for some reason, the higher ups don’t want to acknowledge. But before Ray can
get started on an investigation, his captain sends him back to the precinct –
to a meeting with Internal Affairs… and his suspension. Accused of taking
bribes and with no way of proving otherwise, Ray eventually quits the force and
sets up as a PI.

Some six months or so after this, Andy
Shay, a server at one of the city’s most upscale restaurants, arrives home
after his shift one night to find his roommate dead and the murderer still on
the premises. Running for his life, he calls 911 and then heads for a local
diner where he can wait until the police arrive. Unable to return to his
apartment – and not wanting to return anyway given what he witnessed there –
his colleague, Elise, offers to let him stay with her, an offer Andy accepts
gratefully. Although the police had taken on board Andy’s concern about the
killer having seen his face, he knows, deep down, that they didn’t really take
him seriously, which both worries him and pisses him off. When he sees the
murder being reported on the news as the work of a possible serial killer, Andy
does a bit of Googling and decides to see if he can get in touch with the man
listed as being the lead detective on the previous murder cases, Raymond
Clancy. He can find nothing indicating Clancy is still with the force; instead,
he can only find reference to a PI by that name, but decides to contact him
anyway.

News of this latest murder serves to
further convince Ray that whoever was killing and mutilating young, gay men has
started up again after a few months of nothing. He can’t work out why the
big-wigs in law enforcement are still refusing to admit they’ve got a serial
murderer on their hands, and determines to start looking into the case on his
own, knowing the police are no closer to solving the crimes than when he was
still on the force –and that the killer isn’t going to stop until they’re
caught. When he meets Andy Shay, Ray becomes even more determined to solve the
case – and to protect the young man whose guileless charm very quickly starts
to get under his skin.

The
Hunt is a very run-of-the-mill, predictable mystery
featuring a grizzled, cynical cop and a younger (by twenty years)
‘damsel-in-distress’ type that’s been done countless times before. That isn’t
necessarily a bad thing – tropes are tropes for a reason after all – but the
authors tread a very familiar path with nothing new to say or offer in terms of
plot or characters. In fact both those are tissue-paper thin with lots of
inconsistencies along the way; for instance, Andy goes from being (rightly)
terrified to then insisting on being left alone because he can take care of
himself and back again while Ray, supposedly an experienced detective, fails to
follow up on a lead, even when the identity of the killer is flagged up to him,
simply because it doesn’t make sense to him. There’s hardly any investigating
going on, lots of telling rather than showing, and the romance (and I use the
term loosely) is of the insta-love variety, with little chemistry between the characters
– and the sex scenes take place mostly “off screen”.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Tor Thom
is a new-to-me narrator whose name I’ve been seeing around more and more often
over the past year or so. (He has 84 titles listed at Audible all recorded
since the end of 2016). Unfortunately though, the poor impression of his
performance I gleaned at the beginning of this audiobook wasn’t changed very
much by the time I reached the end. The audible breathing I so disliked at the
start abated somewhat, but I found the rest of his performance to be pretty
uninspired; he sounds bored and his almost monotone delivery spoke to a
disconnect from his material. I liked his narration best when he was performing
Andy’s dialogue, because he became a little more animated and he changed the
pitch and timbre of his voice to differentiate him effectively and to (I’m
assuming) suggest something of the youthful tone used by his co-narrator. When
it came to differentiating the other characters, however, Mr.Thom was less
successful. Almost all the other male characters’ dialogue is voiced at an even
lower pitch than he employs for Ray and the narrative, and apart from coming
dangerously close to making them sound like Eeyore (in fact, one of them sounds
just like Eeyore!) it just sounded
strained and forced.

Kirt Graves, on the other hand, was very
good. His light tenor worked perfectly to depict Andy’s youth, and even though
he didn’t have much to work with in terms of characterisation, he conveys
Andy’s emotions and insecurities really well. His differentiation and pacing
are fine, although he does struggle a bit to lower the pitch of his voice sufficiently
for Ray’s dialogue, and sometimes ends up sounding a bit… off.

At time of writing, I have a couple of
audiobooks on my review pile featuring Tor Thom (one of them pairing him with Kirt
Graves again) and I’m hoping that perhaps I’ll hear an improvement. Wish me
luck.