What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
The book has obviously been thought of as a spin off, and the author presumably thought it would be so much fun to shed light on the dear old housekeeper that we never learn much about in the Holmes Canon. She took pains too make Mrs Hudson the main character of the story but what she came up with is simply insufferably boring. Also, the specific ideas, especially regarding the relationship between Mrs Hudon and Sherlock Holmes are quite outrageous and vastly out of character for Sherlock Holmes, even the one depicted by the other King books.
Did Jenny Sterlin and Susan Lyons do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?
OK, so this question - "did Jenny Sterlin and Susan Lyons do a good job differatinating each of the characters" - was the first time I realised there was more than one narrator in the book... The voices were definitely too similar, and the different accents (an important aspect of the book) were quite artificial. Male voices, in particular, felt really forced, I'd have preferred the narrators to just keep to their real voices.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Murder of Mary Russell?
I would really and truly cut the endless, almostSEVEN HOUR LONG psuedo-Diceknsian sentimental predictable teary beginning depicting in gruesome details all the sufferings of a poor girl in the cruel XIXth century city. Like, MERCY. I was really close to quitting after two hours of this (I really have read enough of that in my life), I only couldn't believe it would go this way for SO LONG.