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    Duplicate Keys
    Duplicate Keys
    Duplicate Keys
    Audiobook11 hours

    Duplicate Keys

    Written by Jane Smiley

    Narrated by Ruth Ann Phimister

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Jane Smiley's talent for creating emotionally-gripping tales of family relationships was celebrated when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for A Thousand Acres. In Duplicate Keys, Smiley displays her flair for creating a haunting mystery. Everyone has keys to Susan's New York apartment: all her friends, and friends of friends. So one afternoon, when Alice unlocks Susan's door to water the plants, she isn't surprised to find two men sitting in the living room. However, that they are both dead is a shock. Now Alice must sort through a tangle of personal connections, schemes and motives to find the key to who killed them and why. As she talks with the police, the answer that starts to nag Alice is a chilling one. Ruth Ann Phimister's narration underscores the finely-phrased atmosphere and suspense.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 6, 2008
    ISBN9781440798412
    Duplicate Keys
    Author

    Jane Smiley

    Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

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    Reviews for Duplicate Keys

    3/5

    173 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Using a different narrator. Her voice puts you too sleep. The book is just okay and she made it even worse.
    • 4/5
      Suspenseful most of the time... gripping confrontation in apartment at end..
    • 1/5
      Dull - finally skipped to the last few pages to see “who done it” but really didn’t care.
    • 3/5
      Sub-par Smiley. Perhaps if you just read it as so-called beach or airport book, it works. But based on A Thousand Acres, Good Faith and Moo, I expect Jane Smiley (like Dickens or Zola or ...) to dig into a environment and its common characters and report back. It makes the story, so to speak, resonate all the more truthfully.In this novel, though, I didn't for a second believe that she knew anything about this kind of loose group of friends or rock bands. She never lived close to them, never knew any people like these paper characters. Can't blame her for trying her hand at a murder mystery, tho.
    • 5/5
      Alice Ellis is a refugee from the Midwest living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, Alice depends on the companionship and camaraderie of a circle of tightly knit friends. At the center of this circle is a struggling rock band trying to navigate New York City's erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One day, Alice enters the apartment and finds two of the band members shot dead.As the double murder sends shock waves throughout all their lives, this group of friends begins to unravel, and dangerous secrets begin to be revealed one by one. When Alice begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, she realizes that she's not the only person with a key, and that she might not get a chance to change the locks before something happens to her.I enjoyed this book and was hooked in to trying to discover who the murderer was. I found that although the plot was slightly dated for being written in 1984, it was still a great story that showed off what a talent Jane Smiley is an author. I give this book an A! and have placed several more books by Jane Smiley on my Wish List.
    • 3/5
      Odd Jane Smiley book. Picked the book up on the premise that nearly every author tries their hand at mystery and was curious what Smiley would bring to he genre. After finishing, I wouldn't really characterize it as a mystery. Similar in tone to Woody Allen's "Manhattan Murder Mystery", except with he 30 set instead of the 50 set and no where near as well done. Definitely inferior Smiley, had to be early in her career. The book is most successful of a character examination of Midwest transplants in Manhattan and unfulfillment of their romantic relationships. It's funny in that Smiley treats her 31 yr old characters as middle aged and failed instead of continuing to find their way. Not a bad Smiley just a lesser.
    • 2/5
      Hmmmm. I left this book with 9/15 chapters completed five years ago. I'm the sort of person who generally soldiers on through books I'm not enjoying and all my memories were that I did enjoy this book. So I've been kind of bemused for a long time that I didn't finish this book up and decided it was about time for another go.I enjoyed the beginning, like last time, but hit a severe case of the blahs in the middle. I guess that was like last time too. I could have happily abandoned it again.In the end it was okay. I expected more really. It turned out to be an alright mystery novel, but I was expecting something more exciting, more bent, more literary, more rule breaking and not at all like a standard mystery.
    • 2/5
      I love Smiley, but this was the wrong book at the wrong time. Also? 1980 was weird. I'm glad I pretty much missed it.
    • 3/5
      This 1980 thriller about young people on Manhattan's Upper West Side captures the mood and flavor of the times very well -- how odd to think that a librarian could swing a six room apartment with no visible strain. It's also an interesting psychological study of different varieties of love, intimacy, and the reaction to both. But the mystery gets weighed down by all the relationship stuff, and doesn't remain mysterious for long enough. OK read, particularly for those who remember the time and place, but not too thrilling as a thriller.
    • 3/5
      Set in Manhattan. "Friends" - like murder mystery, with a girl hero for a change, opens on Alice's discovery of murder of two of six friends from Minnesota who had moved together to NYC and who still hang out together. The murder investigation plods along like a silent partner in the background of the story of Alice, her oscillating lust interests: the guy across the street and the widow of murder victim #1. Interesting for its description of the emotions of a "normal" person involved in a murder. Lots of reminiscence of the two dead dudes interweaved with inexplicable food lusts, eighties angst, Minnesotan descriptive interludes, NYC platitudes: Zabars, Fairway, BBG, and some nasty post-murder action. Self-absorbed yuppies self-analyzing can retain only so much interest, but writing, action and timing were good enough to keep me to the end.
    • 1/5
      God, I hated all these characters and hoped they would die, just to get the book over with sooner. I really like most of Smiley's other stuff, but failed to find redeeming qualities in any of the people in this one. Yech. 1/2 star awarded for complete sentences.