Friday, September 28, 2018

Review: Three Mean Streets by Frank Tuttle



Genre: Urban Fantasy/Detective/Mystery/Audio Book

Description:

“Welcome to Rannit, an ancient city awash in magic and mayhem. Wracked by war, but embracing the dubious wonders of steam and iron, Rannit is on the path to renewal – but old magics and older shadows won’t go easily into the light.

Markhat earns his living as a finder. On behalf of his clients, Markhat will find anyone, or anything, for a fee. In Three Mean Streets, his clients include a dead man’s ghost, a mighty Troll warrior seeking his cousin’s mounted head, and the true identity of the corpse allegedly stalking the grounds of a rich widow’s mansion.

Markhat doesn’t believe in ghosts and walking corpses, but for twenty crowns a day, plus expenses, he’ll wade in swinging. With the aid of soothsayer and card-reader Mama Hog, Markhat sets out on three perilous cases, and they share only one thing in common – nothing in Rannit is quite what it seems, and sometimes good and dead isn’t good enough.”

Author:

“Frank Tuttle lives and writes in the perpetually humid wilderness of North Mississippi. Frank tried to be a proper Southern author and write about pickups and hound dogs, but trolls and magic kept creeping into his stories, so Frank is a fantasy author. Although hounds do make occasional appearances in his fiction.”

To learn more about Frank Tuttle you can check out his website. However, I suggest following his blog, it is always entertaining.  Of course you may also stalk him on Facebook.

Appraisal:

I don’t generally listen to audio books, I am a visual person and easily distracted. If I am reading a book my eyes are busy with letters strung together into words, punctuation, and spaces. And my mind is immersed in the story. I am not easily distracted when I am focused on a book. However, when Mr. Tuttle offered me his new audio book, Three Mean Streets, with no mention of a review, I thought I would give it a try and refresh my memory from the beginning of The Markhat Files at the same time.

I read these three novellas, long ago before I became a Pal and started reviewing for BigAl’s Books and Pals. I like that The Mister Trophy, Dead Man's Rain, and The Cadaver Client are all together in one volume now. They give the reader or listener a nice introduction to the finder Markhat and his world. He’s plain spoken, fair, easy going, and does all he can to get to the bottom of each case.

I easily became captivated by the voice actor, Conner Goff. He submerged himself into each character he is portraying. This made the stories enjoyable and easy to fall into. Each of the three cases Markhat works to solve are different, with an assortment of unique characters. Mama Hog, the elderly lady who lives a couple of doors down, has the sight and keeps Markhat apprised of things to look out for. She’s a fun character, but is usually all business. Markhat also has a three-legged office cat. He stretched his imagination in naming the cat Three-Legged cat. Markhat doesn’t joke around, the world he lives in is unforgiving and they had better adhere to the curfew if they want to live till the next day. The undead roam the streets at night looking for a meal. Death wagons patrol, picking up the bodies of those who violated the curfew.

I did enjoy the audio book experience, but I’m not ready to give up reading on my Kindle Paperwhite just yet. If you enjoy noir detective stories with a no frills type detective who is willing to eat his words if necessary, you should give Markhat a try. I highly recommend the whole series.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK
  
FYI:

Three Mean Streets is book 1 in Mr. Tuttle’s, The Markhat Files. My review is for the audio book.

The three Markhat adventures in Three Mean Streets were originally published under the title The Markhat Files. The stories included are The Mister Trophy, Dead Man's Rain, and The Cadaver Client. If you have previously purchased The Markhat Files with the titles stated, you already own these, so you don’t need to purchase them again.

Format/Typo Issues:

I listened to the audio book and didn’t notice any issues.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Approximate audio book length: 5 hours and 41 mins

No comments: