The pace was maddeningly slow (I increased speed to 1.3 for it to sound remotely like real speech), and the delivery was stiff, over-precise, and clipped for these characters and this setting. As a native Louisianan who lived in New Orleans half my life, one of my biggest pet peeves is overdone, inauthentic southern accents. This went in the complete opposite direction, lacking any semblance of southern drawl or cadence. The repeated mispronunciation of “Les Mystérieuses” also made me cringe every time.
The story was otherwise engaging, so I finally swapped the audiobook for the hard copy, and it went down much smoother that way.