Everyone told me Barbara Rosenblat was a Golden Voice narrator. Multiple Audies. AudioFile royalty. So I went in expecting polish, expecting something close to what Juliet Stevenson does with Austen or what Jim Dale does with Potter. What I got was... complicated. And honestly, that's what makes this worth talking about.
I started Double Shot during a Saturday morning walk along the lakefront with Denise, who was half-listening through my earbud share and kept giving me this look — the one that says "why does that woman sound like she's been smoking Parliaments since 1974?" And look, I get it. Rosenblat's voice is heavy. It's gravelly and lived-in and sounds about twenty years older than Goldy Schulz is supposed to be. If you've built a picture of Goldy from the books — energetic caterer, mother, someone who's clawing her way out of an abusive marriage toward something better — Rosenblat's voice might feel like cognitive dissonance.
But here's the thing. By hour three, I stopped fighting it.
The Narrator You Didn't Order But Maybe Needed
Rosenblat does something that most cozy mystery narrators don't bother with: she acts. Her transition into Tom — Goldy's second husband — has this quiet steadiness, a lower register that actually conveys the man's calm authority without turning him into a baritone cartoon. And her Sandee? The way she pitches that character is genuinely funny, a little unhinged, exactly right. When Goldy and Marla — the first two "ex-Jerk wives," as the book calls them — start responding in unison during their duo detective scenes, Rosenblat plays it like comedy, which it is. She gets the timing. Not every narrator does.
Now. The mouth noises. I need to address this because it's real. There are moments — audible swallowing, what sounds like candy being moved around in someone's mouth, and reportedly a burp that I honestly might have missed because I was crossing Lake Shore Drive and trying not to die. But other listeners caught it, and I believe them. This is 2004-era audio production, and it shows. The narrator understands that pause is punctuation — Rosenblat clearly knows when to breathe for effect — but whoever was in the booth should have caught the biological extras.
A Cozy That Actually Has Teeth
Let's talk about what the author is really saying with this one. Davidson has written, what, twelve Goldy Schulz books by this point? And Double Shot is the one where the psychopathic ex-husband comes back. This isn't just plot mechanics — this is the emotional core of the entire series finally detonating. The violence here isn't cozy-mystery-polite. There are attack scenes that Rosenblat performs with genuine intensity, and the tension of Goldy's past abuse threading through a story about catering and recipes and the catty Aspen Meadow Christian women's group... it's a weird tonal cocktail. Davidson pulls it off better than she has any right to.
This reminds me of what Hemingway said about writing — the dignity of an iceberg is that only one-eighth shows above water. Davidson's surface is recipes and small-town gossip. Underneath it is a woman who survived something terrible and keeps having to prove she's moved past it. The Denver Post called this her best book, and while I'm not ready to crown it without reading the full series, I understand the impulse.
The recipes, by the way — scattered throughout the text — are a strange thing in audio format. Rosenblat reads them straight, ingredients and all, which is either charming or maddening depending on your tolerance. Denise said it made her hungry. I said it broke the narrative momentum. We agreed to disagree over brunch.
Who Gets a Seat at Goldy's Table
If you're already deep in the Goldy Schulz series and you've been reading in print, switching to Rosenblat's audio will be an adjustment. Full stop. Some people never make it past the voice. I almost didn't. But if you can give it a few chapters — if you can let go of the Goldy in your head and accept the Goldy in your ears — there's a surprisingly sharp performance underneath the gravel.
If you've never read Davidson? This is book twelve. Don't start here. Go back to the beginning. The ex-husband's return means nothing without the history.
And if you're someone who can't tolerate audio imperfections — mouth sounds, production artifacts, a narrator who sounds like she could be your aunt at Thanksgiving after her third glass of Merlot — read the print edition. No shame in it.
The Grade I'd Write in Red Ink
My students would hate this. Not enough explosions, too many soufflé recipes, and the protagonist is someone's mom. Savannah Breeze sits in that same comfortable-but-not-toothless space — another cozy that my podcast listeners kept recommending before I finally caved, and yeah, the appeal is real even if the genre gets no respect in faculty lounges. But that's exactly why cozy mysteries endure — they're about ordinary people refusing to let the world be cruel without consequence. Rosenblat's performance is flawed and sometimes physically distracting, but when she's locked in — those duo scenes with Marla and Goldy, the menace she brings to the ex-husband's reappearance — she earns the Golden Voice title. Mostly. Worth pausing the faculty meeting for, but maybe not the budget presentation. (Sorry, Principal Martinez. Still not sorry.)
