Short audible audio story. A woman gets accused of a murder she didn't commit. Her late husband's friend who happens to be a homicide detective comes to her rescue. Interesting twist that I didn't really see coming. Quick Read ( )

Audible Originals, audiobooks commissioned, produced and owned by Audible is one of the win/win ideas in the publishing industry. The subscriber gets additional, exclusive, premium content, usually free (at least initially) and Audible gets to control the quality and cost of the content while strengthening the loyalty of subscribers to the Audible platform.

Of course, the win/win only happens if the Audible Originals are worth listening to. I think that 'The Wrong One' is a good example of what an Audible Original should be: it's written by an author I know and whose books I would buy; it's novella length so it's tempting to give it a go and will appeal to subscribers who prefer podcasts over novels and it's written to be listened to and to be enhanced by the use of two narrators.

The best thing about 'The Wrong One' though is that it's a literary IED waiting to explode when you least expect it. Because this novel is written by Dervla McTiernan, I assumed that 'The Wrong One' would be a police procedural with the pace of a thriller. This assumption was reinforced when I read the publisher's summary and saw that I was going to have a Police Detective trying to prove that his dead friend's wife is innocent of the murder she's been accused of.

The thing about assumptions is that they're what cons and magic tricks are made of. They suck you in and keep you distracted while the real game is played.

I don't put spoilers in my reviews so I won't tell you what the real game was except to say it was a good one and very well played.

Of course, looking back, I knew something was off almost from the beginning. That didn't help me, firstly because I didn't know exactly what was off and secondly Dervla McTiernan structured the storytelling to seed doubt about both of the narrators so I couldn't decide if just one of them was off, or which one it was or if both of them were hiding something unpleasant. I understood then that the title was a taunt to to the unwary reader because my problem was that I didn't know which one was The Wrong One.Then, just when I thought I'd figured out who not to trust, I realised that I hadn't been paying attention to the signals that I'd been getting that there was a supernatural element to the plot.

So I gave up trying to see how the magic trick worked and just Dervla McTiernan and the two narrators, Neil Hellegers and Michael Crouch, dazzle me.

I enjoyed the four hours I spent on 'The Wrong One'. It kept me entertained, helped me to relax and made me take a closer look at Dervla McTiernan's standalone novels. I'm thinking that her latest novel 'The Murder Rule' would be an excellent fit for Halloween Bingo. See what I mean about a win/win? ( )

I'm beginning to think I'm just not a fan of novellas. I find the rhythm, at least in the suspense genre, to be insufficient for building expectation, working in character development, and throwing in a plot twist. That said, The Wrong One did keep me guessing for a good while, although the culprit is obvious about halfway through the book. The motive doesn't really work, and the strange supernatural suggestion is like an itch that never gets scratched (the "explanation" made it seem like an unnecessary part of the story in the first place).

Simon is, not unlike McTiernan's Cormac Reilly, a rough-and-ready cop, but unlike the Cormac Reilly series, this one takes place in New Jersey (and Connecticut). The setup is fairly conventional -- Simon's best friend died, and he feels a sense of obligation to Clara Coleman and her teenage son (Sebastian), and rushes to help when Clara is wrongfully accused of murder. Aside from the fact that Simon doesn't care much for Seb, as soon as we hear Sebastian in his own voice, he's immediately likeable. A longer novel could have benefitted from more of the backstory and relationship between Simon and his friend (Clara's husband, Will).

A solid performance from Michael Crouch and Neil Hellegers that makes up for some of the plot weaknesses. ( )

Let the Wrong One In*
Review of the Audible Original audiobook edition (March 31, 2022)

Irish-born but now Australia-based writer Dervla McTiernan expands from her Eire-based Cormac Reilly series of Garda novels and novellas with this new Audible Original novella set in the United States.

Somewhat due to Ebert's Law of the Economy of Characters, the culprit was fairly predictable early on, but there was effective suspense in getting us to the resolution.

I've read that Audible Originals authors sign audiobook exclusivity contracts for at least a six-month period before they are allowed to issue the work in print or eBook formats, so non-audio McTiernan fans will have to wait for a bit. Meanwhile, her next novel The Murder Rule is available soon, expected May 10, 2022. It also appears to not be set in Ireland.

* I couldn't resist using this spoilery lede of riffing on Let the Right One In (2004) by John Ajvide Lindqvist. ( )

This confused me because it was set in the US for some reason, rather than the author's usual Ireland. The narrator who voiced the Sebastian sections grew on me, although I found him a little monotone at the beginning. The plot was initially intriguing, but then the ending felt as of the author didn't know how to resolve things. The culprit became obvious at a very specific point, and then there was the supernatural house that saved the innocent. The genres got rather blurred... ( )