Beyond Belief
Written by Helen Smith
Narrated by Alison Larkin
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
When famous psychic Perspicacious Peg predicts that someone will drown at the Belief and Beyond conference in the seaside town of Torquay, twenty-six-year-old amateur sleuth Emily Castles is recruited to investigate.
The potential victim of this “future crime” is celebrated magician Edmund Zenon. He provokes outrage and excitement by offering £50,000 to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal, then announces he will stage a daring walking-on-water stunt the same weekend.
Potential suspects include local fortune-teller Madame Nova; kindly Bobby Blue Suit and his three psychic dachshunds; grieving parents Sarah and Tim Taylor; and religious cult members Hilary, Trina, and the Colonel.
Edmund Zenon doesn’t believe he’s in danger. If he’s right, Emily will enjoy a weekend of séances and positivity circles, puzzling over nothing more troubling than the fish supper menu at the Poisson d’Avril restaurant.
But if he’s wrong, Emily will have to use good old-fashioned detective skills to solve the case. Fortunately Emily's best friend, eccentric philosophy professor Dr. Muriel, is on hand to assist.
Helen Smith
Helen Smith is a novelist and play-wright and the recipient of an Arts Council of England Award. In addition to Alison Wonderland, she is the author of Being Light, The Miracle Inspector, and two children’s books. Her plays have been produced to critical acclaim in the United Kingdom. She has traveled all over the world, and currently lives in London.
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Reviews for Beyond Belief
16 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book, read in the 8th grade, was my introduction to science fiction literature. Each story holds a place near and dear.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Beyond Belief is a fun story that felt more like a murder mystery party than just an ordinary thriller. From the very beginning, we're thrust into the heart of the mystery and find ourselves immersed in the lives of several oddball characters all drawn together to the Beyond and Belief conference at a seaside resort by the impending fate of magician Edmund Zenon.
As far as main characters go, Emily isn't the most interesting, and it was a bit bizarre that her main qualification for the job was her "connection" to her dead dog, but the rest of the side characters surely made up for it. Composed of a mismatched group of philosophers, magicians, psychics, and religious fanatics, each character has their own eccentricities and beliefs that made their interactions enjoyable to read about. I particularly liked Bobby Blue Suit, an endearing psychic, and his three dogs with a few special tricks you don't see in other dogs. I'm not sure yet if there will be more books in the Emily Castles Mystery series, but if there are, it would be really nice to see if Bobby Blue Suit were to make another appearance in the future.
The beginning was a bit heavy on exposition, but it's forgivable considering most of it was used to build up the backgrounds of many of the key players. The story really starts to pick up halfway through the book when the body count starts to rise, and by that point, I was fully engrossed in the mystery. Who is this murderer? Why are they killing certain people? Why are they so focused on Edmund Zenon? And what is the password? I found it difficult to put the book down in anticipation to the answers to all my questions. Helen Smith actually managed to answer them all with an ending I didn't expect. I wish the climax of the story could've been more exciting instead of just Emily explaining everything, but I was satisfied with the answers.
As I said before, the story reminds me of a murder mystery themed party. You have a group of random people thrown together for a short time (one weekend) at a relatively isolated place (Hotel Majestic in the small town of Torquay) who are united and forced to work together to solve a murder. As someone who has always wanted to participate in such a party, this style worked for me. I especially like the touch of humor Helen Smith added to her writing that kept this book from getting too dark, so if you're a casual reader of mystery thrillers who would prefer something lighter without the gore and violence, then this book is for you.
[ SEE REVIEW @ BOOKCHARMED ] - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Beyond Belief by Helen Smith is an entertaining enough read. There is a likable but somewhat eccentric group that all gather at the England’s Belief and Beyond Conference in Torquay, a lovely little seaside town, Some are there to prove to famous skeptic Edmund Zenon that the paranormal is real, and collect the fifty thousand pounds he has offered to whoever can do this to his satisfaction. His criteria is a mystery, and some are skeptical that the skeptic will actually deliver. Some, like Bobby Blue Suit and his three possibly psychic dachshunds are just there to try to score more gigs on the psychic circuit.Poor, quite Emily and her notebook tend to disappear into the crowd.She has come along at the request of her friend Dr Muriel, who has convinced her friends Gerald, and Perspicacious Peg of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and culture to hire Emily as Future Crimes Investigator. This came about after Peg had a premonition that the famous Edmund Zemon would die at the conference...or if not Zemon, that someone certainly would.What follows their arrival in Torquay is a rather madcap adventure, where the original group accompanying Muriel and Emily, attract other convention attendees, including a poor young magician and his very limber girlfriend, a couple whose son passed away, and the psychic medium who has convinced at least the mom that he in in touch with the deceased Liam, and a group trying to save Edmund's soul.You get the picture. Someone does indeed get all wet, but as for the premonition, does it come true? IS Emily able to use her notes to discern if a crime is occurring and if yes, just what it might be? And what about Muriel? Are there shenanigans affot? OR is there at least a flirtation? Well, you will have to read it to find out. If I told you, it would spoil it all, wouldn't it?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For the first hundred pages or so, "Beyond Belief" was more like a slice of British life, albeit with folks who might or might not believe in extra-sensory perception or other paranormal talents. It was interesting, that is, it held my interest, but as it continued with nary a dead body, I found myself wondering when the mystery was going to start. Once folks started dying, however, the bodies piled up and the last one hundred pages were a solid mystery.I found the premise fun and interesting, with a magician offering a reward to anyone who can prove their paranormal talents are real. There was quite a large cast of people involved, and I sometimes mixed up some of the secondary characters, particularly Sarah and Hilary. The main character, Emily, was kind of lackluster. In fact, I found her boring and her constant writing down of mundane things in her notebook was incredibly irritating to me by the end of the story. Personally, I liked her friend, Dr. Muriel better. She was much more fun and interesting as a character. She seemed smarter, too, and generally more likable and less of a drip.All of that sounds a lot more negative than it should. It really was an enjoyable British mystery. Fans of cozy mysteries will probably not be disappointed.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This British flavored mystery has just the right mix of the endearingly quirky characters and reserved/absurd humor to make reading it a delight. I thought I was in for a treat when I read the premise: murder at a seaside gathering of skeptics and believers including psychics, philosophers, astrologers, ethicists, magicians, psychologists, and anthropologists. Beyond Belief didn’t let me down. When several psychics predict a death by drowning at the Belief and Beyond conference and police won’t take this not-yet-committed crime seriously, they actually have the gall to snigger, conference organizers turn elsewhere. Emily Castle is a very amateur sleuth, most of the time she has a boring desk job that suits her just fine, thank you very much, but now she is getting a free weekend at the conference’s spa resort location to be a “future crimes investigator”, which the psychics believe she is qualified for because she’s a vegetarian, she has a dead dog that she thinks about a lot, and she always carries a notebook to jot down her thoughts. More than half of the book goes by before there is a murder, but I was having such a good time with the characters debating beliefs in oceanside cafés, warding off evil in positivity circles, and seeking guidance from the indifferent dead in séances that I didn’t mind the delay. This is not the first book in this series, but that caused me no difficulty as I was reading.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5For all the tweets and Twitter mentions of Gerald Ayode, president of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture, this book actually feels as though it takes place in the 1930s and 1940s of the "Thin Man" movies starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. Beyond Belief moves along at a leisurely pace, and its humor is gentle-- those aforementioned tweets are one of the best parts of the book. Smith excels in creating setting, atmosphere, and a dazzling array of characters, but the book lacks cohesion.This is the fourth book in the Emily Castles series, and the first that I've read. From the beginning I felt as though I was missing some important background on the main characters, and this feeling never went away. Although the cast is marvelous, several of the characters' motivations were never clear. The tone of the book jerks back and forth between Smith's wacky, gentle humor to a more sinister note. If anything, I felt that this story needed about fifty more pages to add more detail and to smooth out rough spots. There's much to appreciate in Beyond Belief: the author's ability to set a scene, her talent for characterization, her use of humor; but in the end the story itself isn't quite up to the task.