A Christmas Visitor

By: Anne Perry / Narrated By: Terrence Hardiman

Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins

Book 1? Very Poignant… Book 2? When do I shoot m’self…?

It ain’t all Romance over the Holidays for me.

Wellllll, uuuusually it is -BUT-!

Hold fast! Sometimes it’s getting into the Next in a Series. And so it’s time for Book 2 in Anne Perry’s Christmas Stories. I truly LOVED Book 1. It was moving, well-crafted, and so redemptive as to put me in mind of A Christmas Carol. Right?!? I mean, what on earth could touch THAT?!?

But it did.

So I went into A Christmas Visitor with, get this: Expectations (Oooooh, never a good thing!) and? A mighty High Bar (Yikes!).

First off, I was totally into it. Narrator Terrence Hardiman is top-notch, and Perry’s writing skills, her descriptive imagery of Victorian frozen beauty was breathtaking. Immediately, we’re with our protagonist Henry Rathbone (Apparently a beloved character from another of Perry’s series) as he journeys to support his goddaughter Antonia Dreghorn.

Tragedy has struck the Dreghorn clan when her husband Judah, and brother to other Dreghorns who will be coming together for their first Christmas as a family in 10-years, was found dead in a creek. Rathbone takes it upon himself to break the news to the other brothers, and to a Dreghorn widow. Forgive me if I don’t offer all their names, but I’m kinda just trying to trudge through this posthaste. Like I tried to get through this story by jacking up m’ x1.2 listening speed to x1.8.

Yeh. It’s like that.

A man has been newly released from jail after Judah sentenced him for eeeeons for forging land ownership documents. The man SWEARS he was set up by Judah, as Judah wound up purchasing that land, and he’s going about the village, kvetching, and just generally sullying Judah, and the Dreghorn clan’s, good name.

And so Rathbone, in an effort to further assist Antonia et al, starts looking into the case. After all, Judah’s placement in the creek seems a bit off now, so p’raps he was bashed over the head, his body dragged back?

I can’t tell you how bored I was, as it’s terribly slow-going. Plus, the brothers are hotheads, or just plain dull. The look-see into the documents, the gentle questioning of individuals, drags on and on. And when I FINALLY got to the end?

Dude! it was depressing as hell. A name was cleared, but poverty is poverty, no matter how genteel. And Judah, a much-loved husband, father, brother, brother-in-law, remained stone-cold deader ‘n a doornail. It would’ve been super duperly completely depressing had not boredom been my overriding sensation.

Terrence Hardiman is superb, but there’s only so much he could do to enliven dull characters who are deep in shock, grieving, and who are occasionally Out For Blood (One would think the latter would’ve added some excitement; alas, it did not). I fault him for nothing, and I’m thrilled he narrates the rest in this series.

Speaking of This Series. I went on to Book 3, and it’s an absolute delight. Death death death in that one as well.

But oooooh! How charming…!!!

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