Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Raven Edition, Volume 2

I was sitting in my truck on a stakeout—well, technically waiting for a corporate client who thinks "1400 hours" means "whenever I feel like showing up"—and the rain started hammering the roof. Austin weather is bipolar, but this gloomy gray stuff? It called for something darker than my usual tactical thrillers. I decided to revisit the classics.

Edgar Allan Poe. The original master of the psychological op.

Now, I haven't touched Poe since high school English, back before I knew what a real dead body looked like. Listening to this collection—The Raven Edition, Volume 2—hit a little different now. Especially "The Tell-Tale Heart." That's not just a ghost story; that's guilt. That's PTSD. I've seen that thousand-yard stare on guys coming back from a three-day patrol where things went south. Poe captures that frantic, paranoid unraveling better than most modern shrinks.

The LibriVox Roulette

Here's the situation report on the audio itself. This is a LibriVox production. If you don't know what that means, it's basically the militia version of an audiobook. It's all volunteers. No professional studio, no paid actors. Just regular folks with a microphone and some spare time.

Result? It's inconsistent as hell.

One chapter, you've got a narrator who sounds like a trained theatric performer—deep voice, perfect cadence, really selling the gothic dread. Then the next track starts, and it sounds like a guy reading a grocery list into a tin can inside a bathroom. The audio quality shifts from track to track. Volume levels jump. Background noise creeps in.

For a guy like me who likes precision, it's messy. But—and this is a big but—it's free. And honestly? It kinda works for an anthology. It felt like sitting around a campfire where everyone takes a turn telling a story. Some guys are good at it, some guys stumble, but the stories themselves are strong enough to carry the weight.

The Tactical Breakdown

Let's talk about "The Cask of Amontillado." (I think that's in this volume—the track listing is a disaster, no chapter headings, which is a logistical nightmare). Montresor's plan? That is a text-book unconventional warfare operation. Isolate the target, exploit a weakness (pride/alcohol), lure them into a kill box, and eliminate the threat with zero witnesses. Cold. Calculated. Mission accomplished.

The narrator for that one actually nailed the arrogance of it. Didn't catch his name—again, the volunteer thing—but he had that smooth, dangerous tone that made the whole thing unsettling.

However, I had to crank the speed up. I usually cruise at 1.25x, but for a couple of these narrators, I was pushing 1.5x just to keep my heart rate up. Some of the pacing was agonizingly slow. If you're reading a thriller, you need momentum. Poe is wordy—he likes his descriptions—so a slow narrator can turn a suspense story into a sedative real quick.

The Debrief

Is it perfect? No. It's rough, unpolished, and the lack of chapter titles makes it impossible to navigate if you're looking for a specific story. You basically just have to hit play and see what you get.

But the content holds up. Poe understands the dark corners of the human brain. And for a free download to kill time while staring at a rain-slicked parking lot? You could do a lot worse. Ranger, my German Shepherd, slept through the whole thing, but his ears perked up during the "black cat" parts. I'll take that as an endorsement.

If you can handle the variable audio quality and you want to see where the modern thriller genre started, give it a shot. Just keep your finger near the speed control.