I first came upon this novel purely by accident, I was doing an evening class course at a local technical college, and I went into the college library to check out useful books. I was surprised to see ordinary library books and chuffed to see a Ray Bradbury volume. Since discovering Bradbury I'd become an addict scouring every available source for my fix, this was an particular delight as I'd never heard of or seen it anywhere else.
I was living in digs and decided to start it one evening with the consideration of simply reading some before going to bed as I had to work the next day.
However I couldn't put it down such that I stopped checking the time, and just had to keep reading until I had finished it completely. When I did recheck the hour it was gone 2 o'clock in the morning, as I had been so consumed with it that I lost all track of time, I just had to read it all.
In searching for a copy of the novel I located an audiobook version, though not from even a United Kingdom source but from Tandor Media from the USA. I was honestly disappointed at the first hearing, in the way it was presented, as more of a conventional detective yarn, similar to what has become the rather hackneyed form of cops n' robbers. Reading a story gave me a sense of it that didn't come across in the audio version. Yes it is a detective murder mystery but oh so much more than that. Nothing is ever straightforward in a Ray Bradbury novel be entranced by its story and swept along by its momentum you won't know where its heading but you can't wait to find out.