Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    As the Crow Flies
    Unavailable
    As the Crow Flies
    Unavailable
    As the Crow Flies
    Audiobook4 hours

    As the Crow Flies

    Written by Damien Boyd

    Narrated by Napoleon Ryan

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Rock climbers can't afford to make careless mistakes. But Detective Inspector Nick Dixon's former climbing partner, Jake Fayter, died doing just that. Or so it seems. Dixon suspects foul play, but his only leads are unreliable accounts of something odd happening in Cheddar Gorge seconds before Jake fell.

    The more Dixon learns about Jake's life, the more he realises that Jake hadn't been quite the man he remembered…and a lot of people could have wanted him dead. Once Dixon gets too close to the truth, those people will emerge from the shadows and kill to protect their secrets.

    As the body count rises, Dixon bends the rules to breaking point to lure out a killer and unravel a conspiracy of silence that will rock the sleepy town of Burnham-on-Sea to its core.

    As the Crow Flies is the electrifying first novel in the DI Nick Dixon Crime Series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9781501217135
    Unavailable
    As the Crow Flies
    Author

    Damien Boyd

    Damien Boyd is a solicitor by training and draws on his extensive experience of criminal law, along with a spell in the Crown Prosecution Service, to write fast-paced crime thrillers featuring Detective Inspector Nick Dixon.

    Related to As the Crow Flies

    Related audiobooks

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      80 Who Killed Claude Kendall? The Mystery Murder Of Charles Fort’s Publisher

      Dec 3, 2020

      Millions of Americans celebrated Thanksgiving in the comfort of their homes on 25 November 1937, but for one man fate reserved a different outcome. That same night, in a room on the eighth floor of a New York hotel, Claude Kendall was brutally beaten

      7 min read

    • Article

      Cleave Artfully

      Dec 4, 2023

      Cleave Artfully
      4 min read

    • Article

      Their True North

      Jul 5, 2022

      Their True North
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Road Back to Law & Order

      Feb 10, 2022

      The Road Back to Law & Order
      3 min read

    • Article

      Top 4 TV Musts

      Feb 16, 2021

      The crime drama returns with Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as London cops DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan. The six-parter begins with the discovery of a dismembered body in a scrap metal yard, which the cold-case team believes has bee

      1 min read

    • Article

      Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 12a

      Dec 15, 2022

      OUT NOW CINEMAS 23 DECEMBER NETFLIX Super-sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is sitting in the bath, in just a fez, playing an online mystery game with friends. He loses. He’s been in the bath for a week. It’s May 2020, mid-lockdown, and he’s going o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Television

      Nov 28, 2021

      Television
      3 min read

    • Article

      No Way Out

      Oct 18, 2019

      No Way Out
      3 min read

    • Article

      Face To Face With Oz’s Most Notorious Armed Robbers

      Oct 15, 2020

      Mark Dapin, 57, Sydney, NSW Driving around the car park, we couldn’t work out how to pay. But I wasn’t trapped in the car with just anyone. Behind the wheel was John Killick, 78 – one of Australia’s most notorious bank robbers – whose girlfriend ha

      3 min read

    • Article

      Viola Davis, Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen enter Chicago underworld with 'Widows'

      Nov 8, 2018

      CHICAGO - Opening next week, the heist thriller "Widows" takes place in Chicago, where it was filmed. But you know what? You never get a shot of the Bean, the Millennium Park sculpture formally known as Cloud Gate. You don't see any of the usual tour

      5 min read

    • Article

      “The Old Ones Are The Best…”

      Dec 1, 2022

      When the festive season rolls round and Slade vocalist Noddy Holder for the umpteenth time barks “Does your granny always tell ya, that the old songs are the best” from his band’s 1973 hit Merry Xmas Everybody, I like to paraphrase such lyrics and ap

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Nation Had Lost Its Mind’: The Extraordinary New Documentary About The Death Of Princess Diana

      Jun 17, 2022

      Only a genius of longform plotting could have planned the sting in the tail of the royal 2022. In the rolling melodrama of the British monarchy, the platinum jubilee was always slated for this year, gratitude splashed across the Daily Express. But no

      5 min read

    • Article

      All The President’s Men

      Jul 6, 2022

      MY new job is dog-sitting for my grand-dog Merlin, a 14-month-old wire-haired vizsla who has the bone structure of a kangaroo. His parents can’t WFH, so Merlin spends his days with us. The resident Old Dog practices labradorial transcendental meditat

      4 min read

    • Article

      James Kennedy

      Aug 9, 2023

      THE FIRST TIME HE SAW TWIN PEAKS, JAMES Kennedy immediately identified with the suburban eeriness that David Lynch had conjured up. “[My childhood world] seemed very well-manicured on the surface,” he says, “but crazy stuff was going on.” Not that Ke

      3 min read

    • Article

      Serial Drama

      Aug 21, 2020

      Serial Drama
      3 min read

    Reviews for As the Crow Flies

    3.5/5

    65 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      In the Prologue we are there when Jake Fayter falls from the Crow climb at Cheddar Gorge. The fall is so uncharacteristic of Jake who is Nick Dixon's former climbing partner that Jake's father John contacts Nick to ensure that the police carry out an investigation into whether this really was an accident.The book nearly lost me right at the very beginning: the details about climbing felt so very technical that I wondered whether I would persist.Dixon is newly appointed to the Avon & Somerset police and is currently involved in a case where funeral notices appear to be leading to burglaries. Nevertheless, on a Sunday, when he gets Jake's father's call, he heads over to Cheddar Gorge to see the scene of the accident himself. He decides that, for his own peace of mind, there is something to investigate.This is one of those novels firmly bedded in the 21st century: FaceBook, Twitter, mobile phones and the tracing of calls etc. I understood most of that but it did add to the technicality of the plot, and wouldn't suit every reader.There are now 9 titles in the series, and it will be interesting to read another to see what direction the author has taken. Here is the list from Fantastic Fiction.1. As The Crow Flies (2013)2. Head In The Sand (2013)3. Kickback (2014)4. Swansong (2015)5. Dead Level (2016)6. Death Sentence (2016)7. Heads or Tails (2017)8. Dead Lock (2018)9. Beyond the Point (2019)
    • 3/5
      OK, here we go...

      I got this book for 99p on Amazon, and for 99p, it was well worth it, and I'd recommend it.

      What I Liked
      Climbing stuff. Now, I don't do climbing. I don't even stand on a chair if I can help it. But I always find it interesting to read a book where there's technical information about a subject of which I know little. It's obvious that the author is a climber, and climbing plays a part in the story. So I've learned some things about climbing that I didn't know before.

      Pace. The story moved along at a fair clip, which kept me reading. I think I read this through in less than 24 hours.

      What I was Less Impressed With
      Characterisation. This is not a character-driven book. The characters felt rather lightly sketched - not cardboard, but as if the author had just done a couple of lines, but not bothered with the detail or colouring-in. I would have liked more detail.

      The End. You'll know it when you get to it. And there's that other thing, once you've got there, you think back, and go "What was going on with that, then?" There are conventions with murder mysteries, and I think this book broke one of them - and not in a good "that's a cool trope inversion" way, more in a "you just short-changed your reader" way.

      To be fair, the end spoiled it for me, because the end of a murder mystery is what ties it all together, and showcases the author's ability to write a mystery that's actually mysterious, while still giving the reader enough clues to guess what's going on - if they're smart enough. And in this book, there was that thing, which you'll know when you get to it.

      Conclusion
      A three-star read for me. I enjoyed it, and I'll probably even read more books in the series - and for 99p on Amazon, I count it 99p very well spent. But that thing and the sketchy characterisation stopped it getting more stars.
    • 5/5
      Great book a quick read police procedural novel but interesting and great location of cheddar and burnhan-on-sea its about a dead climber and the investigation about his death.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable holiday read although not a book that I was unable to put down occasionally. The use of climbing technology and phrases was a bit tiresome as I have no interest in that sport. However the story was good and hasn't put me off reading further books in this series.
    • 4/5
      An unusual take on the usual detective fiction, in context and location. Rock climbing is central to the plot, set in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset where the author grew up apparently. DI Nick Dixon has moved to Somerset from London, returning to his roots and finds himself investigating the suspicious death of an old climbing friend in Cheddar Gorge. Although I guessed who one of the villians was from some heavy hints, it didn't really spoil it too much. However the motivations of some of the leading characters wasn't explored in any depth, leaving them a bit one-dimensional. Nonetheless Nick Dixon is clearly a character with potential as several sequels have been published.
    • 3/5
      This book proved to be a reasonable read, but it could have been so much better.,The basic premise was sound enough: Detective Inspector Nick Dixon has transferred down to the Somerset force after a few years in the Met, and is generally enjoying the slower pace of life. However, he hears of the death of Jake Fayter, a close friend from his youth and with whom he had regularly gone mountaineering. Dixon is particularly surprised to learn that Fayter had died in a climbing accident on one of the challenging peaks around Cheddar Gorge. Further investigation uncovers some unpleasant truths about Jake Fayter.Unfortunately, from seeming to have the workings of a sound novel safely in the palm of his hand, Damien Boyd lets it slip away. The characterisation is flimsy, and the dialogue lacks any hint of plausibility. I guessed the identity of the culprit very early on, and while I would like to think that this demonstrated my supreme intelligence and infallible skills of perception, I think that a more likely explanation was that it was simply lamentably predictable.Still, on the plus side, I did get this novel free from the Kindle Store!
    • 4/5
      unexpected ending; plot centers around the theft of falcon eggs sold illegally in Dubai
    • 3/5
      It's not bad nor great. It's a quick read, a bit predicable plot wise until the shock end. Don't get bogged down in the rock climbing references but just enjoy a British crime book. I received a copy through Goodreads First Reads in return for a review.
    • 3/5
      I am giving all of these DI Nick Dixon books three stars. I don't like them all that much but other readers probably will.For me these books rely too much on coincidence and too much on DI Dixon being smarter than everyone around him. In this book he tells the police tech squad how to do their business and then finds out something that the professionals don't. Then he breaks a code. Then he tells his team to bring lights along to a night exercise. He is rude to his staff with his constant carping and shouts orders to a junior officer across a crowded staff room.Mr. Boyd is not a careful writer. DI Dixon speaks of police matters in front of witnesses. Dixon, who supervises a team, reviews hours and hours of CCT footage instead of delegating the job to others. And Dixon, making a baseless assumption that there is only one gun in play, risks himself and another police officer by refusing to ask for backup while undertaking a dangerous operation.The birds on the cover art are vultures, not crows.I received an advance review copy of "As The Crow Flies: DI Nick Dixon Series Book 1" by Damien Boyd (Amazon Publishing/Thomas & Mercer) through NetGalley.com.
    • 3/5
      Unfortunately I didn’t relate to the narrators.
      The ‘breathy’ voice of Jane was really incongruent and I felt Nick was read with little warmth - seemed to be more conscious of reading perfectly. Not a series I need to follow.
    • 3/5
      The reading lacked excitement, the story was good, it kept my interest, but I would prefer a little more character development. I don’t feel that I came to know Jane or Nixon or any of the characters. Also, too many F words for my taste.
    • 3/5
      Jake Fayter a former climbing partner of Detective Inspector Nick Dixon is killed in a fall in Cheddar Gorge.
      Convinced that it was not an accident his inquiries uncover criminal activity involving drugs.
    • 3/5
      This story is set in a small seaside town in Somerset called Burnham on Sea. Detective Nick Dixon is newly moved back to the area from London. He is investigating the death of his old Rock climbing partner Jake Fayter who fell in a climbing accident, it looks like there was foul play involved. It turns out Jake was a small time Drug dealer and Rare bird ggg stealer him and his accomplice Dan Hunter were doing this and sending the rare eggs to Dubai. Dan's body is found shot at the bottom of the River. Detective Nixon finds a secret Twtter account belonging to Jake he then flushes out the Murderer by pretending to be Jake's girlfriend Sarah. The Murderer of Dan Hunter is a Policeman called Steve Gorman who then shoots himself. It then turns out Jake actually killed himself and made it look like a Rock climbing accident. OK book far to much technical stuff about Rock climbing for my liking though.
    • 4/5
      A short book and I think a new author. Not bad. Will look for more from this writer.