I continue to listen to audiobooks daily. I frequently drift off to sleep with a fifteen minute timer on. The BBC radio plays of the two Dirk Gently novels are regular late night listens. So is the terrific Marx Brothers homage, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel. It was originally done by the Marxes themselves. BBC radio made a new version in 1990 and I frigging LOVE it.

Since I often have an audiobook on while I’m doing other things, I re-listen to things; or listen to books I’ve already read. It works great for me. I get some through my library app, but I mostly use Audible.

Here are some recent listens.

LEE GOLDBERG’S EVE RONIN

In the most recent What I’ve Been Listening To, I talked about Goldberg’s ‘buddy cop’ series featuring Sharpe & Walker. They are arson investigators in LA, and book one was pretty good. I just got the audiobook for number two, and I’m thrilled it crosses over with Lee’s Eve Ronin series. Even more thrilled that Nicol Zanzarella is doing Eve again – she’s terrific!!

The books are part of Kindle Unlimited, and number six is coming out later this year. I re-listened to all five in less than a week. Eve and her partner Duncan are a terrific buddy cop pair. Eve rose to fame when she was off duty and subdued a drunken action movie star who was smacking around his girlfriend in a parking lot. The video went viral on the Net and she parlayed it into a big promotion.

She’s a hard-ass LA County sheriff homicide detective, and everyone but her partner resents how she got the promotion. Like, some fellow cops want her dead. I became a Lee fan from the scripts he co-wrote with William Rabkin for A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery. Lee was also the writer of the terrific Adrian Monk novels, as well as a screenwriter on the show. He has a lot of IMDB and novel-writing credits. In other words, he’s GOOD.

I recommend reading or listening to the Even Ronin series. And Nicol Zanzarella is absolutely perfect as Eve. I don’t think I could ever accept any voice but hers – even on screen. If you like Eve, definitely check out the Sharpe * Walker books, too.

STILL GUSHING OVER THIEVES WORLD

I talked about how excited I was to discover the first four Thieves World books had come out on audio. And here you can read about my love of that venerable fantasy series.

I feared it was four and done, but no! The next two dropped in May, and I had to get them. The narrator of the first four was replaced, sadly. Kim Morton narrated The Face of Chaos (book five), and his voice is a little thin. I thought he was just okay. Noni Alley took over for Wings of Omen (book six), and I thought that she was better than Morton.

But it was good to listen to another seventeen and-a-half hours of trouble in Sanctuary. If you’ve never read Thieves World – which I consider a foundational series in the dark fantasy genre – I think listening to it is a good way to go if it fits your lifestyle. My Thieves World shelfie, here.

MORE GUSHING OVER THE BLACK COMPANY

I mentioned foundational dark fantasy series’ regarding Thieves World. Glen Cook’s The Black Company has my vote for the cornerstone. Fletcher Vredenburgh dove deeper than I ever will, and you can find that Black Gate series here.

But I have read this series at least three times through. And I have now listened to the entire thing on audiobook twice. The initial trilogy still stands out from the rest for me. I intended to just listen to that. But once I got caught up in Croaker and company, I continued on through it all.

With the series resuming this Fall with Lies Weeping, I’m sure I’ll be back in this terrific world. One of my Black Gate posts, talking about my love of the Black Company.

AND EVEN MORE GUSHING OVER SPQR

I’ve written a couple times about John Maddox Roberts’ fantastic mysteries set in Ancient Rome. I wish I’d discovered them before he died last year. And I hope somebody completes the last one he was working on for several years before his death. Well, I bought a bunch of the series at last year’s Big Sale (see next item). I ended up getting all thirteen audiobooks. And as soon as I finished book thirteen, I immediately started back on book one and tore straight through the entire thing. It is easily one of my favorite series’. There’s no doubt I’ll be revisiting this again relatively soon. Probably next year. Here’s what I said back in March about it. And here’s some of what I wrote about it before. HIGHLY recommended. SEPT 2024

I’ve talked about John Maddox Roberts’ terrific Conan pastiche, Conan the Rogue. It’s an homage to Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled work, and a great read. Roberts passed away end of May. Folks have told me he was a nice guy, and he had commented on a couple of my FB posts. I liked him.

I had heard of his SPQR series of mysteries set in Ancient Rome, but had never read them. A friend mentioned them, and I decided I should check them out. Yeah, I was late to the party. Oh man, am I enjoying these audiobooks!

Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger solves a crime (murder seems to be common) each book. Usually the stakes are quite high, but the series has a nice level of humor interspersed. Metellus is an interesting protagonist. The stories are told in flashback, and there are intriguing tidbits dropped in.

Narrator John Lee is a PERFECT choice for the books. If you’re into historical series, and like the idea of a mystery as well, I don’t know that you’ll do better than this. And the audiobooks are excellent.

SPQR stands for ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus. You can look up what that means. 🙂

THE BIG SALE

Once a year, Audible puts every book on sale at once. Some are still relatively expensive. But I have bought well over fifty audiobooks the past two years combined. This year, I set a max of $4 per book. I passed on a couple that were $5-something, but a rules a rule. Well, you know what I mean. I picked up nearly two dozen books – many less than $3 each.

Aside from the two Thieves World books, plus The Black Company one, mentioned above, I got the Egil & Nix story mentioned next; Howard’s first Chronicles of Hanuvar book – Lord of a Shattered Land; two of his Pathfinder novels – Stalking the Beast, and Plague of Shadows; Dave Gross’ first Pathfinder book with Varian Jeggare – Prince of Wolves; The six Lee Goldberg books I mentioned above; the BBC radio play of Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals; Volume Three of The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer; The Two Towers read by Andy Serkis (I already have his The Fellowship of the Ring; A seventeen-hour dramatized adaptation of Robert R. McCammon’s terrific WWII werewolf/Nazi novel, The Wolf’s Hour (it’s like a supernatural Jack Higgins); the first volume of Moorock’s Elric audio series; a collection of Terry Brooks’ short stories- Small Magic; and Raymond Feist’s Faerie Tale. That’s long been a favorite supernatural fantasy book of mine and I’m way overdue for a revisit.

This Audible sale is a great opportunity for me to get audio versions of books I’ve read but don’t have the time to re-read. But I will re-listen to an audiobook with no problem. I definitely bulked up my listening library.

PAUL KEMP’S EGIL & NIX

My Dungeons & Dragons-playing middle-school self devoured Elric, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser; loving both series’. But while I’ve re-read the Melnibonian many times, Leiber’s series lost its appeal. I’ve tried re-reading it a couple times, and just wasn’t into it.

I did enjoy, however, the first two of three Egil & Nix novels by Paul Kemp. These are absolutely an homage to Leiber’s duo. Anyone who likes Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser should really like this pair. The constant non-swearing swearing (shite, farkin) is tiresome, but some authors seem to think it’s useful. Whatever.

I picked up the first two books – The Hammer and the Blade, and A Discourse in Steel – during the big Audible sale last year. I’ve mentioned here before. The series is suitably dark for sword and sorcery, but not too much so. Nick Pedehl does a pretty good job as narrator.

Of the two books, I liked the second better, but I recommend listening to both, in order. I have not yet gotten around to book three, but I’ll probably snag that on sale. I do want to finish the trilogy.

I have listened to the lone Egil & Nix short story of which I am aware – “A Better Man.” The boys, feeling bored, take on a body guarding job involving wizards. There is the usual amount of humor, and some O. Henry twists (not just at the end). At 54 minutes, it was a good listen.

Six years ago, Kemp posted on Reddit that he was very active sharing his political opinions and wasn’t in the mood to write fantasy. But he planned on continuing the series at some point. Hasn’t happened yet.

The individual Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories are included with my Premium membership. I tried “Ill met in Lankhmar.” It’s okay. These stories just didn’t hold up for me over the years, like Thieves World did, for example.

ONE THING I HATE

I like short story collections. But I hate half-ass audiobooks.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian has all seventeen Conan tales which appeared in Weird Tales. 17 stories. labeled Chapter 1, Chapter 2, all the way through 138. Want to find a particular tale? Hopefully you know where it fits between one and seventeen, then just keep clicking different chapters. And hope that a story doesn’t start mid-chapter.

Publishers who do this kind of thing, instead of using some kind of chapter titles that makes their book actually usable, suck. I would never buy one if I could tell ahead of time.

As you can guess, I recommend staying far away from this Conan title.

Prior Audio Posts:
What I’ve Been Listening To: February, 2025
What I’ve Been Listening To: November, 2024
What I’ve Been Listening To: Sepetember, 2024
What I’ve Been Listening To: August, 2024
What I’ve Been Listening To: July, 2024
What I’ve Been Listening To: September 2022
May I Read You This Book?

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Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXVII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.