Seth Harwood's Jack Palms II Podiobook

As if to show me I'm wrong about my last post (see below, bunnykins), I heard a portion of a new podiobook by Seth Harwood, Jack Palms II on Podcast411 episode something. Seth does a good job of doing two things: one, reading and two, writing. A lot of people who read are either overblown Dramatic with a capital D or monotone; Seth is neither. He hit it quite nicely in the middle. He also used special effects but only as necessary. He didn't go overboard. And the writing, for the most part, held my attention which, of course, is the point. There were a couple of points where I grimaced at a forced transition or two but generally really good. On Podcast411, we hear an interview with Seth and a 15-minute clip teaser of Jack Palms II which is scheduled to be put up on Seth's podcast starting June 3rd. The 15-minute portion on Podcast411 leaves us with a cliffhanger but that was to be expected. (Ah, got it, episode 203 of Podcast411. Two hundred shows? That's incredible, eh?)

This is all to say that Seth's podcast came across as a good old fashioned radio drama minus a lot of overdramatic music but without the different voices for all the parts; Seth reads all the characters himself with one exception.

This is also to say that I realized why a lot of the crime dramas on old radio shows were told in the first person. First, because that was the way crime novels (hard-boiled, Chandler, Hammett,- two Ms, two Ts - and pulp fiction) were written - Think Bogart in the Maltese Falcon. And because it sounds more like the character talking to you instead of someone reading to you or pretending to read to you. That said, I think I'm going to check out Seth's serialized audiobook.

In the next post on this blog I'm going to talk about a podcast called Behind the Black Mask, which looks like interviews with several pulp/crime/detective novelists. Should or could be interesting. (By the same people who do a podcast on film noir called Out of the Past.)

Eat in Peace.