Narrated by Tom Beyer
When I picked this book, I was not aware of its original publishing date. I somehow did not pay attention to it. It was only when I was sitting down to write this review did I finally figure that out. This book is about one year older than me, which makes sense given the people the author encounters on the way.
If I had one word to describe this story, I would call it thorough. The narration was brilliant and brought the wry asides of the author to life. I enjoyed the book even with all the financial conversations. I have never completely understood the stock markets and do not really try to. Having a basic understanding of financial transactions would very well have helped. I would have rated this audiobook a full five stars if I was into that kind of thing. That said, I credit both the author and the narrator with producing a work that kept me hooked even when parts of it covered the driest facts possible. I might not have been able to finish the written version or would have skipped a lot of relevant parts.
Captain Alfred Lowenstein died under mysterious circumstances. His antecedents and his behavioural oddities, coupled with the surprising events in the days preceding and after his death, all add up to something a person with a penchant for research could not resist. The author puts his case forward in a very thorough manner (there’s that word again). He begins with who the deceased was and what he stood for. He then follows up by debunking proposed theories, following up with stronger ones of his own. As mentioned earlier, the financial transactions across the Western world feature heavily here and may have had a hand in how things came to pass. It was a highly satisfying listening experience. It shone a light into a completely new (for me) side of the Western world in the early 1900s. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes historical true-crime where there is no conclusive end result with regards to the world at large, but I was wholly convinced by the logical sequence of events.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 