Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

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.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Amateur Executioner

By: Dan Andriacco, Kieran McMullen
Narrated by: Martyn Clements
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
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.

Summary

London, 1920: Boston-bred Enoch Hale, working as a reporter for the Central News Syndicate, arrives on the scene shortly after a music-hall escape artist is found hanging from the ceiling in his dressing room. What at first appears to be a suicide turns out to be murder...the first of several using the same modus operandi. What's the connecting factor among all the victims? Or isn't there one? That's what the dogged journalist Hale aims to find out. Covering the Hangman Murders brings him into contact with a diverse cast of witnesses and interview subjects that include Winston Churchill, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ezra Pound. Hale, whose best friend in London is the chain-smoking poet and banker T.S. (Tom) Eliot even makes a pilgrimage to the Sussex Downs to get an opinion on the case from the great detective Sherlock Holmes. The trip is in vain, but he eventually does meet Holmes in a most surprising encounter. Through it all there is another mystery, which perhaps goes to the mystery of the human heart. What is the lovely music-hall singer Sadie Briggs concealing from Hale - just her past or also her present?

©2013 Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen (P)?2014 Apley Media
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Sherlock Holmes and the Hellfire Heirs cover art
The Case of the Russian Chessboard cover art
Of Course He Pushed Him and Other Sherlock Holmes Stories - Volume 1 cover art
The Further Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes - Volume 1 cover art
The Rediscovered Annals of Sherlock Holmes cover art
Sherlock Holmes and the Crystal Palace Murder cover art
Sole Contact cover art
The Final Tales of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1: The Musical Murders cover art
How Briggs Died cover art
Black-Eyed Nick cover art
Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring cover art
Sherlock's Home cover art
Bodies from the Library cover art
Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon: A Minnesota Mystery cover art
Freddy Pilkington-Soames Adventures: Books 1-3: A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia, A Case of Murder in Mayfair, A Case of Conspiracy in Clerkenwell cover art
These Names Make Clues cover art

What listeners say about The Amateur Executioner

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A good idea, badly done.

What did you like most about The Amateur Executioner?

I really liked the idea of having factual characters from history rubbing shoulders with the fictional. I thought the Authors handled that really well

What other book might you compare The Amateur Executioner to, and why?

As it has a lot of characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories, including the man himself, I guess it joins the ranks of Sherlock fiction out there.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Martyn Clements?

I'm afraid not. He has to be one of the worst narrators I've ever heard. A robot could have read with more expression and the man can't do accents to save his life. It says something for the book that I was able to keep listening in spite of him.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

It's not that type of story.

Any additional comments?

This was a really great idea and I liked the tongue-in-cheek way it was written, but the revilations at the end just didn't make sense to me and the narrator was dreadful, so all in all, a disappointing read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!