Belgium Building

By: R.J. Johnson / Narrated By: Andy Packard

Length: 3 hrs and 25 mins

If you read the Publisher’s Summary, there’s more there than in the book

Seriously. I did it again. I read the Publisher’s Summary before listening to this audiobook. The Summary is about 58 MILLION words and is packed with things suggesting an incredibly involved storyline fraught with detective work, city politics, Hell come to earth. Really, a LOT.

So I kept finding myself disappointed as the book zipped along with character development and relationship development happening at lightning speeds. A detective who’s never gotten over the death of his wife, for YEARS, is suddenly asking a chick out on a date? A little boy who’s traumatized after witnessing the horrific deaths of his parents suddenly gets over it all and becomes all involved in what transpires at the end? We go from a two-sentence suggestion that maybe a miffed tenant murdered the apartment complex owner to we-don’t-know-what-happened to maybe-ghosts-did-it within a couple of hours?

I mean, really!

This left me scratching my head until I remembered: Jeez: It’s a novella, for cripes sake; get over it. EVERYthing is S’POSED to happen fast cuz there’s not many words to work with!

But… but… but the Publisher’s Summary!

Don’t read it, pay no attention. Here’s what you need to know: Brutal murders where the bodies are swallowed INTO a cloud of white smoke. An irreverent detective deduces stuff, kinda sorta witnesses stuff, comes to the belief that all this could be the results of other-worldly interference within our own plane of existence. There’s a kid. There’s a beautiful social worker. There are coffins in another parallel plane of existence that touches our own because the apartment complex owner dabbles in dark and evil magic. And always, always, ALWAYS there are “pools of blood”. It got so I’d roll my eyes every time I heard those three words with a, “Lemme guess! There were pools of blood. He saw pools of blood. He stepped into pools of blood.”

Andy Packard does a capable job with narration. The story clips along at great speed (Remember: Fewer words means action has to happen IMMEDIATELY!!!), and his voice gets all excited and dramatic as it goes along. There’s a huuuuuuge cast of characters, and he goes to great lengths to differentiate them all, to make some lovable, to make some earnest, to make some obnoxious. Tho’ Packard has kinda a smooooooth voice for such a gritty story, the dissatisfaction I felt with the book was no fault of his.

Then too, things were wrapped up with a neat little bow, and I haaaaaate that. This winds up, after all the carnage, to be a feel-good story…! Whoulda thunk it? Certainly not after reading—the—Publisher’s—SUMMARY!! (I really HAAAAVE to stop reading those things!).

Belgium Building is not quite 3 1/2 hours long, but I kinda sorta wanted my time back by the end there.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.