Aspire to Die cover art

Aspire to Die

An Oxford Murder Mystery (Bridget Hart Series, Book 1)

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Aspire to Die

By: M S Morris
Narrated by: Esther Wane
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About this listen

Lust. Ambition. Murder.

When a beautiful, wealthy student is found dead in her room in Oxford's most prestigious college, Detective Inspector Bridget Hart is called to investigate. The murdered girl appeared to have no enemies, yet was killed in a brutal and bloody assault.

Haunted and driven by her own personal tragedy, newly promoted DI Bridget Hart has a lot to prove as she leads her first murder case. Her investigation uncovers a tangled web of lies, lust and ambition, and brings her into conflict with powerful interests.

But no one can be above suspicion within the closed and claustrophobic confines of an Oxford college, where students and academics live and work side by side, and a ruthless killer waits to strike again.

©2019 Margarita Morris and Steve Morris (P)2020 Tantor Cosy International Mystery & Crime Mystery Police Procedural Fiction Crime Exciting Murder British Detective
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"Oxford was a strange place."
Lead detective D.I.Bridget Hart might live and work in Oxfordshire, even attended university in Oxford, and enjoys Italian opera in her car, but Inspector Morse she is not. Instead she is the rather trite dowdy single mother of a teenage daughter, sister to an unsolved murdered girl when she was teenaged and, despite always unapologetically leaving him in the lurch, mysteriously very attractive to an art gallery owner with whom her efficient sister wanted to match her. And Aspire to Die is the story of her first lead case, a police procedural of fairly incompetent floundering and self recrimination.
Though the plot lurches from one suspect to another, Oxford itself provides the enduring and intriguing background and the reader is treated to a comprehensive glimpse of some of the less than tourist aspects of the City as well as the beauty, standing in solid contrast to the people inhabiting it.

The characterisation is insipid and the plot lurches from one obvious suspect to another, and it is further not helped by the narration. Esther Wane has the pleasant sounding clipped English voice so beloved by classic children story presenters, clear, well articulated with certain words stressed for emphasis, but soulless, sounding dismissive and not really invested in what is being read. Plus, unforgivably, in a book so carried by it's setting, she fails to correctly pronounce some place names, such as St.Ebbes, known as St.Ebbs, is here given as St.Eebase, and Osney (Ohznee) becomes Ossni. Small differences, perhaps, but when the City itself is such a large part of the story, quite unforgivable.

Having lived in the city of Dreaming Spires for close on forty years, and married to a native, I enjoy books with an Oxford setting. This was not one of the best, but is readable - from a print version, preferably.

"Lust and ambition.."

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I feel sad to be writing my first review and it being negative. I have tried twice to listen to this book but I am afraid the narration, in my opinion, is just too clipped and emotionless. The Welsh accent was the thing that finally made me switch off, just embarrassing and made me cringe. The story may be very good and the narrator may be excellent reading a different type of novel but , for me, the two just don't marry. I tried to return the book but as I had bought it rather than use a credit I couldn't.

Not for me!

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Have never seen anything by this author before and I was very pleasantly surprised. Well written and beautifully narrated. I will look out for more.

Pleasant surprise

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...if writing a police procedural, authors really ought to research police procedure. Annual leave is protected, no superior officer can call someone in whilst on leave. Secondly, where the 2 ranks between inspector and chief superintendent? Thirdly, inspectors are called "guv" not sir or ma'am.

entertaining enough but...

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I was looking forward to listening to a new series of books but could not get past the irritating narration.

Story ok, marred by narration

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