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    The Smuggler's Daughter
    The Smuggler's Daughter
    The Smuggler's Daughter
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Smuggler's Daughter

    Written by Claire Matturro

    Narrated by Alicia Kelley and Kevin Stillwell

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Ray Slaverson, a world-weary Florida police detective, has his hands full with the murders of two attorneys and a third suspicious death, all within twenty-four hours. Ray doesn’t believe in coincidences, but he can’t find a single link between the dead men, and he and his partner soon smash into an investigative stonewall.

    Kate Garcia, Ray’s fiancée, knows more than she should. She helped one of the dead attorneys, just hours before he took a bullet to the head, study an old newspaper in the library where she works. Kate might be the only person still alive who knows what he was digging up—except for his killer.

    When Kate starts trying to discover what’s behind the murders, she turns up disturbing links between the three dead men that track back to her family’s troubled past. But she has plenty of reasons to keep her mouth shut. Her discovery unleashes a cat-and-mouse game that threatens to sink her and those she loves in a high tide of danger.

    Editor's Note

    Vivid portrait…

    Matturro paints a vivid portrait of Florida’s Gulf Coast in this modern crime thriller about three seemingly unrelated murders that are committed within 24 hours. Librarian Kate Garcia harbors a secret connection to one of the victims, and now she’s in danger. To complicate matters, her fiancé is investigating the violent crimes (and has no idea of Kate’s involvement).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Productions
    Release dateNov 30, 2021
    ISBN9781094433752
    The Smuggler's Daughter
    Author

    Claire Matturro

    A former appellate attorney and former member of the writing faculty at Florida State University College of Law and the University of Oregon School of Law, Claire Hamner Matturro lives in Georgia.

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    Reviews for The Smuggler's Daughter

    4/5

    352 ratings19 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Not sure what was worse: the storyline? Or the narration?
    • 5/5
      Kept my attention. Kept what could happen next my kind of mystery
    • 3/5
      It's ok. I got very confused with the book being narrated on various perspectives. With the book going back in time .
      It had a good story, but the characters aren't very likeable. And the end, seriously what was that, went to check if there was a second book snd couldn't find anything. Really disappointing, won't search other books from this author.
    • 4/5
      Build up followed by a u-turn where there was a further story to unfold. Both timelines comimg together to complete the pictures and plots. I shall be reading more from this writer.
    • 5/5
      Worth a read. Well done, but a bit hurried in the ending.
    • 4/5
      Laughed at the grammar correction in the book when the author was very dilligent abiut her grammar. The original you and me, in English is now replaces with a hypercorrected version - you and I.
    • 3/5
      The book started slow for me and I was a third of the way through before it peaked my interest. The second half picked up a good story line.
    • 5/5
      This was an extreme good book. The plot and characters were very captivating! I didn't realize it was based on a true story, until after reading it. Overall, I highly recommend it. I couldn't hardly stop listening to it, until I'd finished it.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. Complex and interesting. Flawed and yet fabulous characters
    • 5/5
      I binged listened it. Couldn’t turn it off. Please record all of her other books with the same narrators. They really made her words come alive. Thankyou Claire matturro for a great read
    • 3/5
      The story is okay but the MCs were hard to care for. The H was a bit too cold and the h made stupid decision after stupid decision. The end was abrupt and unfinished but I found that I didn't care because I didn't like either character.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Meh. No nailbiter – I figured it out early on. Kate seemed stoic, but I guess growing up as she had, that makes sense. My favorite character was Luke because he was real with flaws and emotions. Never had a sense as to what really drew Kate and Ray together. Nicky was a bit of a red herring. Despite being fearful for his safety, for many years, he quickly jumped in a vehicle, and drove with Kitty/Kate to an area which would seemingly be dangerous for him. It didn’t really make any sense. The ending was so so. However, I didn’t get why Nicky took the actions that he did in the end.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It ended without ending! Why? Where is the rest now?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Fantastic story, well told with really engaging characters. Great language and obviously good editing make this an absolute pleasure to listen to. Performance was also excellent. Thanks more of this quality please.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Good story with goid twists and turns. But I think it would have been good I'd the female narrator used the same accent for herself as the male narrator did. At times I felt that it was two different people. Worth a read though.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I thank Red Adept Publishing for providing a copy of The Smuggler's Daughter by Claire Matturro, in exchange for an honest review. The structure of The Smuggler’s Daughter created an experience that was like reading two novelettes. I begin to genuinely enjoy the story only after I got past the extended backstory.Matturro introduces Kittie Pettus and her two best friends in a brief prologue set in summer. 1959. The focus then shifts to the spring of 1992. Two detectives are investigating the murder of a state attorney and a local attorney. Coincidentally, a new attorney hired by the state attorney is injured in a hit-and-run accident while bicycling, and a community activist is run off the road and killed. The relation to the introduction is nebulous. The focus then moves to an extended backstory, set in 1972, and the murder of a young man and woman by drug smugglers. This longish flashback kills the forward movement of the plot. The actions that occur are somewhat interesting, but the stories feature different characters. As with most flashbacks, I experienced the sixty-page retrospective as more like something I had to get through than something I enjoyed. Following this detour, the focus returns to the summer of 1992, where the book concludes. Gradually working the events of 1972 into the 1992 narrative in a series of brief flashbacks would have been less disruptive. It takes an effort to stick with this book, but the effort is worth it. The author meshes the characters introduced in 1959, 1972, and 1992 and provides a satisfying explanation of the puzzling events. Nevertheless, the conclusion left important issues unresolved. I suspect the author was reaching for an artistic ending rather than a “happy ever after” cliché, but the decision left me with a sense of incompleteness and disappointment.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This book was a solid 4 for me until about 1/2 way through, and then I'm afraid it fell off for me. I loved the premise of the story about how a crime committed 20 years before impacts the lives of the people who were involved in that crime 20 years ago. Kate (Kitty) was there for both time frames, but in 1972 she was 18 years old, living without her mother who had died a few years before, and her drug-smuggling father Tank.who was such a surprise in the book Tank knows he's doing something illegal smuggling marijuana in the Florida panhandle, but his motivation is to make money so that his daughter can go to college. He's probably the most likeable drug smuggler you'll every meet. He know he is dying from lung cancer when he forces Kitty to leave and to take the money he has saved for her and go make a life for herself elsewhere. On her way out of town, Kitty catches the tail-end of a drug deal that went horribly wrong, and then hightails it out of there as soon as she sees what has happened. We meet her again 20 years later where she is a qualified research librarian with a cop for a boyfriend. Then lawyers start getting killed in her hometown, and Kate knows that it has everything to do with what happened 20 years ago in her old hometown. This book had me riveted up to this point. Then the plot seems to fall down a bit and things appear to happen haphazardly and the tight plot disappears into a shambling mess that just seems jammed together to get a whole bunch of action in before the book ends. Another thing that downgraded if for me is the unresolved ending. I received an early review copy of this book from the publisher (Red Adept Publishing) in return for an honest review, and I'd like to thank them for giving me the opportunity to read it. The book would be enjoyed by anyone that enjoys a quick and suspenseful read with a bit of a twisty plot.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Claire Matturro’s crime thriller takes you to Florida’s Gulf Coast where you can soak up the beachy atmosphere while her protagonist, Kate Garcia, gets into some mighty deep waters.Kate has a boyfriend who wants to marry her. Raymond Slaverson is a detective with the Concordia, Florida, police department, and he and his partner are investigating the fatal shooting of state attorney Alton Weaver. She is the head reference librarian at the county library and the fifth generation of her family to live on the Gulf Coast. She’s up in arms about a phosphate mining operation’s plans to open up a major facility likely to become an environmental disaster. An environmental activist working against the mine turns up dead around the same time Weaver does. These bodies are barely cold when a local real estate lawyer is murdered in his garage. Are these deaths related? If so, it isn’t easy for the investigators to spot any connections. As the investigations lurch along, Matturro does a good job describing the characters involved and their peculiarities, both good and bad. Kate learns that the murdered state attorney had been using the library’s newspaper archive the day before he died. And he isn’t the only one lately who’s been accessing that same old microfiche reel. Curious as to what Weaver and others are looking for in a 1972 Tallahassee newspaper, she narrows it down to the story of a young couple murdered at a remote spot on the shore called Bald Point. Back then, Florida’s Gulf Coast was prime marijuana smuggling territory, and speculation at the time was that the teenagers had stumbled upon a gang of drug smugglers, but the case was never solved.The past has become inescapable for Kate and maybe even dangerous, as people interested in those old murders have become targets. The recreation of the events of 1972 is strong and full of tension. The callous, desperate people involved seem just the type to have long memories and a strong sense of self-preservation, using the violent means they know best.Overall, I enjoyed this book and its interesting, well-developed characters. The plot is strong, and she does a great job with the setting. The lesson here is, if you’ve got some significant skeletons in your closet, keep that door shut!

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I received this book free as early reviewer in exchange for a review. The setting is in the Florida panhandle. I was a little confused by the start of the book, dropping back in time for a prolog. However, I enjoyed the rest of the book, with the exception of a few scenes that were in character of the plot. The story was well written and edited.