I am a huge John Scalzi fan, and I find his novels tend to make for great audiobooks. I listened to the first book in The Dispatcher series and loved it. Everything from the story to the narrator was great. Unfortunately, the second book in the series, MURDER BY OTHER MEANS, was not so great. 

The problem lies not with the story or the characters but with the narrator. Zachary Quinto sounds like he did not want to be there that day, which shows in his performance. His tone is flat. He inflects no emotion into his voice at all. He barely differentiates between male and female voices, and there is no difference between male characters. Worst of all, he takes Mr. Scalzi's trademark sarcasm and renders it moot. 

Because his narration is so monotone, the story has no drive. It is as if the events in the novella are occurring around the main character and not to him. Even though every word counts for story and character development in short stories, Mr. Quinto's narration lulls you into a stupor so that you find you missed entire paragraphs and have to rewind. Either that or the main character is supposed to be an emotionless automaton. 

As it was less than four hours of my time, and I listened to MURDER BY OTHER MEANS while doing household chores like I always do, I can't say it was time wasted. I can only hope that for the third book, Mr. Quinto was in a better mood when he recorded his performance.