Dead Man’s Pose

Award-winning narrator Rupert Degas provides a spirited reading of Rogers’s and Roosen’s (Surviving Paradise) first installment in the “Yoga Mat Mysteries” series. Set in Sydney, Australia, the story follows yoga instructor Elaina Williams, who is horrified when one of her students dies during class. With the death unexplained, another student, Ric Peters, offers to help Elaina discover what happened. Their investigation takes them to seedy bars, glittering casinos, and unspoiled hamlets on Australia’s coast. Degas keeps the action moving with snappy pacing, supplying an impressive range of accents and character voices as Elaina and Ric encounter addled professors, chilling mob bosses, and sleazy real estate moguls. Degas’s character portraits are entertaining but occasionally overly performative, owing to extra-textual details (e.g., enthusiastically rendered sounds of eating and drinking) that may take listeners out of the story. Additionally, some accents, such as for Ric’s Chinese informant, veer uncomfortably close to stereotypical. Despite these drawbacks, thoughtful Ric and warmhearted Elaina are a winsome pair; listeners will likely be eager to hear more of their sleuthing adventures.