Warning: The audiobook is defective. Stay away from it!
The world was introduced to the great scientific detective Dr. Thorndyke in 1907’s The Red Thumb Print, and they got to see one of Dr. Thorndyke’s cases in 1914’s A Silent Witness by R. Austin Freeman. Dr. Humphrey Jardine, a newly qualified doctor and the narrator of the book, is out on a walk in Hampstead Heath in London when he discovers a body. However, when he returns with the police a while later, the body has disappeared, making the police decide that the man was not truly dead and actually got up and walked away before they got there.
Shortly after this incident, Jardine goes to the autopsy lab at his medical school and is offered a week’s position serving as doctor of a local practice to substitute for the doctor in charge. He joins with the doctor in going to sign a death certificate for a man who has had a strange illness that the doctor has been unable to treat or diagnose. The woman who owns the house where the dead man lodged seems very uncomfortable with Dr. Jardine’s presence. A few days later, Jardine gets a note that a worker at the mineral water works nearby has been badly injured and Jardine is urgently needed. When he arrives, Jardine is abruptly shoved down the stairs and locked in the dark room. Then he hears the noise of gas being released and realizes that someone is trying to suffocate him. After losing consciousness, Jardine comes to awareness, looking at Dr. Thorndyke’s administering first aid to bring him back to life. When, the next day, Thorndyke, Jardine, and Thorndyke’s friend Jarvis return to the water works, they discover that someone has locked them in and set fire to the building. It is with Thorndyke’s scientific knowledge that they escape to safety. The rest of the book recounts numerous escapes from death faced by Jardine, as he and Thorndyke try to figure out who is out to kill Jardine and why.
Dr. Thorndyke is generally seen as the precursor to CSI, holding a predominance in the world of mystery novels for 25 years. Freeman himself, just like his protagonist, was a medical doctor, though not one who used his medicine to testify in court. His knowledge aided him in adding scientific details into his works. This book goes into details of fingerprint patterns, finger disfigurations, chemistry used with carbon dioxide, and further facts that would have been new especially to the audience of Austin’s books. The book ends with over half an hour of Thorndyke’s giving a summary of how he solved the crime. I found this to get tedious and with way too much detail in the explanations than were necessary.
The characters of A Silent Witness do not generally stand out other than the scientist Thorndyke and the narrator Jardine, the latter of whom we know only because of his thoughts on the case. This is not a character- driven book. Rather, it is one driven by plot and scientific discovery.
Caroline Collins performs the audio edition of this book. I have never quit a book because of dissatisfaction with the narrator, but I came really close to doing that and should have done so with A Silent Witness. For one thing, the recording starts out with very poor quality and confused me when the first words I heard were from another language. The sound quality improves, but Collins’s narration was less than stellar. Her mostly-British accent makes me suspect that she is not a native speaker of English, a fact that does not suit audiobook narration at all, especially when she mispronounces some common English words. For example, the greeting of “bow” becomes the ribbon of “bow.” A native speaker should know the difference. I further was annoyed by the way the book concludes each chapter with saying, “End of chapter two.” Then, after a few seconds it states, “A Silent Witness by R. Austin Freeman. Chapter three.” This extra conclusion to one chapter and introduction to the next is really annoying. Collins just was not a good choice to record this book, not the least because the book itself is narrated by Dr. Jardine, so having a woman read the part doesn’t make sense anyway. I am glad I did stick with the book, as I got used to the reading of Collins and ws able to enjoy the book despite my unhappiness with the narration itself.
But what most disturbs me about this recording is that chapter 19 is replaced by another chapter of another book, while chapter 21 is replaced by strange music. Collins narrates the other chapter and introduces the title to the other book, but I hoped it would still be part of this book. However, it was not, and this seemed to be an especially important chapter, as a murder happened during that chapter. Chapter 21 also seems to have contained an important test to determine the proof needed to convict the criminal. This is just unacceptable in a recording!
I found A Silent Witness to be of interest, especially with the knowledge that the book was written on the cutting edge of scientific understanding. The story kept my interest especially enough that I was upset at being cheated of two chapters in the audio version. I fully intend to complain to Audible about the recording. I give the book four stars.
To purchase this book for yourself, click here on Amazon.
