Series ✦ Penny’s Take 🎧 Audiobook
True Detective Stories
Terry Deary · 2012
🎙 Narrated by Stephen Thorne
63/100
👎 Skip It
Terry Deary brings his trusted, fact-first Horrible Histories energy to real detective cases like the Lindbergh kidnapping, which makes for solid educational listening for curious kids. There's no independent critical coverage to confirm how well it lands, so I'm going on Deary's track record more than hard reviews here. The narration quality is genuinely unclear from what's available, so go in knowing this is a reasonable bet rather than a proven one.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
⚠ Parent note — our reviewers flagged: true-crime subject matter (kidnapping, real murder cases) presented factually, worth a heads-up for very sensitive young listeners. We still scored it 63; these are context for your family, not an automatic skip.
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🎙 Narration: unknown No independent commentary on Stephen Thorne's performance was available to judge the listen.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety78
Substance / usefulness62
Craft & writing60
Originality55
Evidence & accuracy58
Hype vs delivers52
Age-fit80
Human-eye read60
Penny’s verdict63
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