The Black Dahlia
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.
Read it
Both halves point at the page: 10% of the reviews we read called it demanding, and Jeff Harding’s reading lands in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books, on 335 ratings of the narration.
Length does not decide this
13h 09m to listen, at 1×10h 31m to listen, at 1.25×8h 46m to listen, at 1.5×7h 31m to listen, at 1.75×6h 35m to listen, at 2×about 12 hours to readabout 9 hours to readabout 7 hours to readabout 5 hours to readabout 4½ hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 348 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 348 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 348 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 348 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 348 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.
If you must listen → dedicated listening only
Easier in audio than The Handmaid's Tale.
About as much work in audio as most of the books we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the fiction we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the middling-length books we hold.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books on both counts (effort on the page and effort in your ears). The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- −0.58It sits in the bottom 24% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the page.
- Narration payoff
- −0.28Jeff Harding’s reading is less well received than the book it came from: in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books, on 335 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. Before we allowed for how many people rated it, the reading stood in the bottom 22% of our shelf of books. The gap between the two places is us declining to let a handful of ratings move a verdict. That is the second mark on the bar, and it is the one our line is applied to: a rule tested on the damped number would pass the same recording at 25 ratings and fail it at 5,000. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 1.00. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- −1.57It sits in the bottom 5% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: not a book the crowds are precious about, so there is less to protect and we can be relaxed about it. Blended across 101,656 Goodreads ratings and 141 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The voice lets the book down
- The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply
For the recording
- Audio is neither helping nor fighting this one
- 335 listeners behind it
So the case for the page won it, but only just.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 0.94How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading335 people have rated this reading: enough to lean onThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 141 readers there: enough to lean onThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 26 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
360 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly4.2% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. More than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
14 of 336 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United
- Warm, this one
- Split
- Lukewarm
A warm room: most listeners are happy with the performance, and a small group are not.
336 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
335 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
101,656 ratings
The series
L.A. Quartet
Finished
4 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 1992 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 7 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Jeff Hardingour pick13h 09m10h 31m8h 46m7h 31m6h 35m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.46 · Story 4.36 · 335 rated the reading · 4.2% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 13h 09m at 1×
- Read by
- Jeff Harding
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B01B4ZCMUA · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 326 + 10 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 335 ratings of the narration
- Published
- Isis Publishing Ltd · 2016
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 13h 09m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.