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Every Contact Leaves a Trace Audiobook
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(2.78) - 18 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
“This is more than a murder mystery. It’s an examination of the subjectivity of accounts of truth. It’s a desperately moving love story about a lonely man who finds salvation in another only to have the idyll destroyed. Finally, it’s a tale of revenge, served cold and deadly.” —The Independent
Elanor Dymott’s gorgeous debut tells the story of Alex, a solitary lawyer who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one midsummer night on the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College, Oxford, Alex’s life as he knows it vanishes.
He returns to Oxford that winter, and, through the shroud of his shock and grief, tries to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. Playing host to Alex’s winter visit is Harry, Rachel’s former tutor and trusted mentor, who turns out to have been involved in almost every significant development of their relationship. Alex also turns to Evie, Rachel’s self-centered and difficult godmother, whose jealousy of her charge has waxed and waned over the years. And then there are her university friends, Anthony and Cissy, who shared with Rachel her taste for literature and for the illicit.
As he delves further into the mystery surrounding her death, Alex discovers in Rachel’s wake a tangled web of sex and jealousy, of would-be lovers and spiteful friends, of the poetry of Robert Browning, and of blackmail. Brilliantly written and suffused with eroticism, mystery, and a hint of menace, Every Contact Leaves A Trace introduces a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction.
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"I found this a really refreshing read. It was unusual and turned and twisted through the revelation of the final pages. An excellent debut and I look forward to further dark and murderous tales of the complexities of human nature."
— Rhona (4 out of 5 stars)
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“Elanor Dymott’s gorgeous debut novel is a murder mystery that’s also a brilliant meditation on love and memory and loss. Like the Robert Browning poems her characters read at Oxford, the book is spooky, lovesick, dark, and lush, its narrator circling obsessively back on the death at its heart.”
— Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It -
“A beautifully written.”
— Taylor Stevens, New York Times bestselling author of The Informationist -
“Lyrical, haunting, and beautifully told, this book is a compelling mystery wrapped inside a tender love story.”
— Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Heartbroken -
“Superb…A quite exceptional novel.”
— Observer -
“Shrewdly plotted and elegantly written…A narrative that is alert to life’s unknowable randomness.”
— Financial Times
Every Contact Leaves a Trace Listener Reviews
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" Read in what was close to one sitting thanks to a long day of traveling full of delays. Comparisons to Donna Tartt on the jacket are fair - in more ways than it being a literary murder mystery in an academic setting. "
— Katywhumpus, 12/7/2013 -
" Listened to most of this on a playaway. Found it boring and a little depressing, though there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the writing. Just not my cup of tea. "
— Lou, 12/2/2013 -
" Not impressed with this novel & was very disappointed, so much so that I didn't even finish it. I found it to be overly descriptive & contrived, with most of the main characters unpleasant or dreary. "
— Kate, 11/27/2013 -
" What a pile! Long winded, convoluted pile of well... not very much. Disappointed.. Was so excited to read it. Perhaps best not to judge a book by its cover. Which is.. Gorgeous. "
— Philippa, 9/9/2013 -
" Liked it a lot in the beginning but got impatient with the pedantic - but beautifully constructed - style of prose. It's hard to imagine real people actually talking in such considered sentences. It also left the reader to decide which version of events to believe. "
— Sandy, 7/6/2013 -
" Engrossing read but one of those where I just hated all the characters. "
— Sara, 4/16/2013 -
" Too long. Bit dry in places. But v atmospheric. Cinematic. "
— Susan, 7/23/2012 -
" Karakters goed beschreven maar het boek beweegt zich zo langzaam voort... "
— Lia, 6/27/2012
About Elanor Dymott
Elanor Dymott was born in Chingola, Zambia, in 1973. She studied literature at Worcester College, Oxford, later working as a commercial lawyer and legal reporter. She lives in London, where she plays jazz flute and is writing a new novel.
About Simon Vance
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.