From Library Journal
Long ago, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) totally hoodwinked this reviewer, who has since been suspicious of any mystery written in the first person. This distrust was intensified by Nicholas Farrell's seemingly innocent interpretation of Robin Timariot, the protagonist of Borrowed Time. Is he the honest, ingenuous Englishman he seems? Or is he capable of complex lies, rape, and murder? Farrell's outstanding reading is as ambiguous as the story is layered. Initially, his neutral tones introduce a colorless, joyless government employee. Yet Timariot meets a lovely woman on the evening of her murder, and his emotions are stirred by her beauty and, later, by horror at hearing of her rape and murder. Even though he is unable to adequately explain his obsession with the dead woman and her family, his subsequent involvement in their lives brings some meaning to his. Farrell unobtrusively effects this transformation by orally coloring Timariot with shades of admiration, anger, disgust, disappointment, embarrassment, and concern. Mystery fans will appreciate this recording's characterization, plot, and performance. Recommended.Juleigh Muirhead Clark, Coll. of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A thriller in the classic storytelling sense...hughely enjoyable"
-The Times
"An atmosphere of taut menace...suspense is heightened by shadows of betrayal and revenge"
-Daily Telegraph
From the Paperback edition.
Borrowed Time FROM THE PUBLISHER
It is a golden evening of high summer. Walking a ridge on the Welsh Borders, Robin Timariot meets by chance an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later Timariot learns from the newpapers that, just hours after their meeting, the woman was raped and murdered.
A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Fascinated by the dead woman's memory, he is sucked into the complex motives and tortured relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgemnt for the secret of what really happened the day she died.
The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live.
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