Anyone else addicted to audio books?  I’ve love them for years so I have favorite narrators as well as authors and when I get into a series with one narrator I want that voice to continue.  To me, that narrator’s voice BECOMES the author’s voice . So when the voice changes it can really throw me for a total loop – I have to grieve – everything.

The Missing Piece
by John Lescroart
2022 /
Read by Jacque Roy 8h 27m
Rating: A / legal-crime

I think the biggest change for audio mystery lovers was when Ralph Cosham,  Louise Penny’s  Inspector Armand Gamache, died and was replaced by Robert Bathurst.  There was an uproar even if it really couldn’t be helped. (I really should try Penny with Bathurst reading. There’s a whole story behind that one.)

I don’t know what happened to Alexander McCall Smith’s Lisette Lecat (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) but one day, after 20 books, alas – we got Adjoa Andoh who did not work out well at all.  So she was replaced by the totally perfect Bianca Amato and everyone seems happy.  

Sometimes we can adjust ourselves. John Lescroart used David Colacci for his narrator for books 1-7 and then he switched to Robert Lawrence.  Well – that didn’t work real well with me because I’d started with book #1 and was totally in love with the voice of Colacci. Lawrence lasted for 2 books and then Colacci returned back staying until 2015. But in 2018 we suddenly got Jacques Roy. Yeah? Okay, I tried, but no. Just no.

So now, after 7 years of no John Lescroart at all (!) I figured I’d finally had enough of a break to try a new Dismas. There were other Lescroart novels during this time, There was Abe Glitsky (of course) and Wyatt Hunter got 3 for a different series and there were a couple anthologies which included Lsecroart along with other really great mystery writers (Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard).  But I was not buying it, him, them. 

And now, with a 7-year break, it worked!  I was able to really enjoy Dismas Hardy again. And Abe Glitsky shows up a lot in The Missing Place. Roy seemed a bit soft at first but I got over it in 30 minutes and by the end of the book I’m ready for another. I might even go back and catch up on a few I’ve missed.  

Back to The Missing Piece. The theme here is different. Now with DNA testing law enforcement has better ways of determining guilt and “innocence projects” and “justice groups” can also go back in time and find that people who were convicted back in 2010 or whenever were sometimes wrongfully imprisoned (for many years) .That’s the background story for this novel.  

The fictional Paul Riley has just been released from prison after 11 years because the DNA and other leads were duly investigated by an Exoneration Investigation and it was found that his DNA was not even present at the scene.  Okay, 11 years and a few months later he’s shot point blank in the head in his apartment at his father’s house.  Why? Good question and it gets murkier when the prime suspect turns up dead, too,  

 Unraveling this tangle of a who-done-it is tricky and you have to pay attention because there are not just a couple leads to follow, there are three distinctly different main leads each of which seems to go nowhere. It’s not easy to keep track of the associated characters and their relationships. – 

The police department’s main detectives have changed over the years. Dismas Hardy is now doing more than trials while Abe Glitsky is supposed to be retired from investigating – ha! The poor guy can’t help himself. I won’t go further with this.  Enjoy.