#Audiobook #Review: The Dead Key by D.M. Pulley @DMPulleyAuthor #Thriller #Mystery

Title: The Dead Key
Author: D. M. Pulley
Narrator: Emily Sutton-Smith
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 13 hours 42 minutes
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Source: Audible/Self
Purchase: Amazon, Book Depository

Book Description:

It's 1998, and for years the old First Bank of Cleveland has sat abandoned, perfectly preserved, its secrets only speculated on by the outside world.

Twenty years before, amid strange staff disappearances and allegations of fraud, panicked investors sold Cleveland's largest bank in the middle of the night, locking out customers and employees and thwarting a looming federal investigation. In the confusion that followed, the keys to the vault's safe-deposit boxes were lost.

In the years since, Cleveland's wealthy businessmen have kept the truth buried in the abandoned high-rise. The ransacked offices and forgotten safe-deposit boxes remain locked in time until young engineer Iris Latch stumbles upon them during a renovation survey. What begins as a welcome break from her cubicle becomes an obsession as Iris unravels the bank's sordid past. With each haunting revelation, Iris follows the looming shadow of the past deeper into the vault - and soon realizes that the key to the mystery comes at an astonishing price.

My Opinion:

I really enjoyed this audiobook. I found that I liked being immersed into Iris's life and Beatrice's. This book goes back and forth between the two women's lives. One from 1978 and the other from 1998. We learn about Beatrice and how her life is being intertwined to 1998 and Iris's. We slowly see what is happening in 1978 with Beatrice and her Aunt Doris and Max. I find myself enthralled with the Mystery of this story.

Then you get transported to 1998 and Iris trying to figure out the mystery of why all this was left unsolved years ago.

Iris is sent out as a engineer to help her company make blueprints for The First Bank of Cleveland and discovers there is more than blueprints to be found. Iris is trying to piece clues from the past and put them together and make some sort of sense of all that happened. Which intertwines with Beatrice's life back in the 70s. I find myself captivated by this.

What was this bank hiding and why where they hiding it?

I really enjoyed the story and felt the narrator did a good job with the narration. She was able to get me to laugh at some of Iris's monologue to herself. Iris was down to earth and a realist and didn't understand her own need to figure this mystery out. The narrator with some of the accents that she did were good and made me smile. I felt immersed in Beatrice's life because she was so young and trying figure out the mystery in her own time. I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend this book and found that I really enjoyed this mystery of it all. I was a little sad at the end. I would have liked that one detail they didn't technically answer. I mean it was but it wasn't and that left me a bit sad. Overall, I enjoyed the book and the narration!

 One of my favorite lines in the audiobook  - "A bank is only as good as its records."

I give this story 4.5 of 5 stars!

About the Author

Before becoming a full-time writer, D.M. Pulley worked as a Professional Engineer, rehabbing historic structures and conducting forensic investigations of building failures. Pulley’s structural survey of a vacant building in Cleveland inspired her debut novel, The Dead Key, the winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The disappearance of a family member formed the basis for her second historical mystery, The Buried Book. Pulley’s third novel, The Unclaimed Victim, delves into the dark history behind Cleveland's Torso Killer and is due out November 14, 2017. She lives in northeast Ohio with her husband, her two children, and a dog named Hobo, and she is hard at work on her fourth book.

Connect with the Author

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Disclaimer: I purchased this book on my own.  No one sponsored or endorsed this post. All opinions are my own. All information on the book or author can be found at the authors website. 

Happy Reading!