Audiobook Review: Tallowwood by N.R. Walker

Tallowwood
by N.R. Walker with audio narration by Anthony Ferguson (Hoopla Audio)

This is a well-done mystery with a decade’s long serial killer, and a slow romance between the main characters that takes place in New South Wales, Australia.

 

Sydney Detective August Shaw works the cold cases for his police department and has had some success in closing a few. But he has not been able to resolve a string of apparent suicides that he believes could be Australia’s worst serial killer. Then Senior Constable Jacob Porter, from (fictional) Tallowwood, calls with a death similar to those suicides, and the victim is a police officer. Porter is an indigenous officer who grew up in Tallowwood and loves his job, but this death has initially shaken him. This provides Shaw with the excuse he needs to continue his search for the serial killer.

 

The author weaves us a good tale as we follow clues and dead-ends, and perhaps obstruction, along the way. The slow-burn, quiet romance between Shaw and Porter is a given, though you wonder with Shaw’s roots in Sydney and Porter’s ties to Tallowwood how this will all work out. I love an epilogue and everything is sewn up there very nicely.

 

Antony Ferguson, the reader, does an excellent job with each character, and gives us Australian accents that are understandable to U.S. English-speakers. If you intend to binge this book, give yourself 10 hours and 13 minutes to do so.

 

( official N.R. Walker web site )

 

Recommended by Charlotte M.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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