A Fine Dark Line
by Joe R. Lansdale
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joe R. LansdaleReader: Dick Hill
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 2003-10-10
ISBN: 1590862856
Publisher: Brilliance Audio Paperback Audiobooks
Book Reviews of A Fine Dark Line
Book Review: Good Story, Good Voice Acting, but it stinks that it's abridged
Summary: 3 Stars
This audio book is abridged, and it shows. Unfortunately I love Lansdale's work and I love audio books, but Joe only has only a couple of books on audio and they happen to be abridged. Anyway, even though I own the book, I knew I would get to this story faster if I listed to audio book. The story only clocks in at 4 discs, and it feels short. I expect that all major plot points are covered by this abridgement, but it does feel like there needs to be more character development.
The story itself is a mystery, and it is about a family that buys a local drive-in in a new town. The protagonist is the boy, and his adventures. He finds out that behind the drive-in is a burned house, and that burned house has some mystery attached to it, in the form of a murdered girl. The boy and one of the workers at the drive-in decide to investigate for fun, but it doesn't turn into fun when the boy gets wrapped up in the real mystery of the murder.
It is an interesting listen, as the story is entertaining, but since it's an abridgment I can only recommend it if you've read the novel, as I feel like I need to go to the book to get more answers. Good voice acting by the reader, though. The voice was very professional.
Summary of A Fine Dark Line
The time is the summer of 1958. The place is Dewmont, Texas, a town that the great American postwar boom has somehow passed by. A sad, hollow beat trails the kids who tune into rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like thin molasses.For blissfully ignorant thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of an old trove of passionate yet troubled love letters that lead him to a long-ago house fire and the tragic deaths of two very different young women. Obsessed with investigating their fates, Stanley finds a guide and mentor in black, elderly Buster Lighthouse Smith, a retired Indian Reservation policeman who now runs the projector at the drive-in theater owned by Stanley's parents. The laconic Buster tutors Stanley on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's lost dreams.
But not every buried thing stays dead. And in one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will suddenly rise from the past to threaten the boy - and test the limits of Buster's strength and wisdom. In the end the old man teaches Stanley a lesson that will haunt him always, about the forever short distance between living flesh and the dust from which it came.
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