View from Valhalla

originally published May 21, 2012

Title: Paraffin Winter
Author: Peter Chowney
Genre: fiction
Released: 12 January 2009
Located: iTunes, Podiobooks
Formats Available: podcast
Rating: R – for violence and adult situations

This is another podcast I picked off of Podiobooks.com site on a whim. Authors, I don’t know about others, but be aware, I will choose a book by the title. Quite possibly even over the cover art. I know.. I’m weird.

So, on to the review.

Synopsis: Paraffin Winter is set in the South Coast UK town of Poole in the long, cold winter of 1963. This was a time when the country was still struggling with the after effects of the war, a time of fried spam dinners, starting handles and paraffin oil stoves, a time when the population eyed each other suspiciously across the class divide. Many young men had survived the war with high hopes and experience of killing: not a happy combination. The enlightenment of the nineteen-sixties had not yet begun.

Struggling to keep their heads above the icy water, Ronnie and Jenny Delaney are getting by. But then, when Ronnie allows himself to be dragged into investigating a murder, his past catches up with him and he soon finds that he’s out of his depth, in a mire of protected interests that stretch all the way up to the Government. It’s going to take someone cleverer than Ronnie to get to the bottom of this one. And that someone is closer than he could ever have imagined …

Paraffin Winter is a book about a murder, and tracking down a killer. But it’s also about Britain in the early 1960s, about relationships, about social class, and about how everything was about to change as the 1960s unfolded. For Ronnie and Jenny, for the abandoned heroes of the second world war, for the whole of Britain, nothing would ever be the same again. (Stolen from Podiobooks.com)

Production: The production of Paraffin Winter is quite good with a couple of largish exceptions, the largest being the outro music. At least to me, the music used (which is also the opening music, but there used to good effect) is faded in at a moment where the song shrieks. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one to notice as before the end the music is brought in a few bars earlier which made all the difference. I remember only one repeated line. Perhaps two. In a work this large, that is quite good.

Grade: B+

Cast: Paraffin Winter is a self read by the author. Mr. Chowney does more than an adequate job in voicing the characters in his story. He does both male and female voices in a unique way. Though I’m far from acquainted with accents of the U.K., I expect that Mr. Chowney calls some part of the London area home.

Grade: A-

Story: Paraffin Winter starts out strong with a series of events that are both macabre and challenging. The story is told in the first person perspective of Ronnie Delaney. Ronnie is a simple man that somehow becomes embroiled in the proceedings. This is unique in itself as he is a simple, undereducated delivery man. The story holds your attention and keeps moving forward; until that is, the perspective changes half way through to Ronnie’s girlfriend, Jenny. Once Jenny takes over the story, things slow down dramatically but continues until almost the very end.

Paraffin Winter is also a large story. With 27 eps, many in the 45 minute range, the listener will need to set aside a good amount of time to finish this story.

Grade: C-/D

Verdict: While the story started strong for me, the plodding quality of the plot overall makes me say give this one a pass. The second half of the story slowed the pace to a crawl. Truthfully, if it wasn’t for the pending review, I might have given up on this one. Something I rarely do.

Disclosure: I’ve never conversed with Mr. Chowney in any fashion. Nothing was offered or accepted in return for this review.

~ by odin1eye on 22 January, 2020.

Posted in Podcast Reviews