Listening to crime - The Child, a full cast audio dramatisation of a chilling story that made me shiver as soon as I heard about it.

I travel a lot in the car for my job and although there’s often something good on the radio, it’s never enough for long journeys. I like to listen to audiobooks, but my preference is for dramatisations, rather than books read by famous people. In the past I bought quite a few CDs, but the place I always defaulted to was Audiogo, who had a huge catalogue of downloadable radio drama. The prices were good and they were flexible about downloading to different devices and burning CDs. You can imagine that I was pretty unhappy when they went into liquidation.
 
 

I’ve since relied on radio podcasts and although I’ve found lots of interesting documentaries, I’ve been hankering for a good crime or thriller drama. I’ve just come across an audio dramatisation of Sebastian Fitzek’s novel, The Child. The dramatization is by Audible – nice to see them producing as well as selling – and it looks like they’ve pushed the boat out with a great cast including Andy Serkis, Rupert Penry-Jones, Emilia Fox and Stephen Marcus.
 
 

So, what’s it about? Well, the story’s about defence attorney Robert Stern, summoned to meet with a client who turns out to be a ten-year-old boy, Simon. Simon’s a fragile child with a chronic illness, but the strangest part is that the boy insists he was a murderer in a former life. Stern follows up the Simon’s information and horrified when he searches the cellar described by the boy to finds a human skeleton whose skull has been split by an axe.
 

I like the idea behind the story – a strong mix of crime, thriller and a touch of the supernatural. There’s also been a big investment in producing a high quality unabridged audio drama, which makes it doubly attractive to me. Here’s a link to a Youtube video I think you’ll like:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OjGAWHrVNM
 
 

If you want to find a little more about the story or pre order for the 7 August release date, just follow this link:
 
http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Crime-Thrillers/The-Child-Audiobook/B00LEVX8LM
 
There’s also some good promotional pricing for this on the Amazon website, although you will need an Audible account:
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Child-Audible-Drama-Unabridged/dp/B00LF9X0TS/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406296214&sr=1-4
 
 

For once, I’m looking forward to a long car journey – if you buy this, I’d be interested in your feedback – just send comments through in the usual way.
 
Romancrimeblogger