Audiobook Review: Oracle 3 – Murder at the Grandview by Andrew Pyper & Craig Davidson & performed by Joshua Jackson
Title: Oracle 3: Murder at the Grandview
Author: Andrew Pyper & Craig Davidson
Narrator: Joshua Jackson
Release date: June 12th, 2025
In September of 2024, I was in Toronto to attend DreadCon,.
It was my second trip to Toronto in consecutive years to celebrate something horror with Andrew Pyper. 2023 was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Andrew’s The Demonologist, and I found myself there a year later, this time to host a panel with Andrew and Craig Davidson about pseudonyms, as all three of us used them in our writing.
When I was out there in 2023, Andrew had revealed to me the news about the upcoming William release as Mason Coile, and – while on the train to the Hockey Hall of Fame – I told him (smugly I might add) that even if he’d not shared the details, I would’ve known he’d have written it because of the prose. I’ve often spoken of Andrew’s writing voice, his prose, and those of you reading this right now who know Andrew’s work inside and out will be nodding your head. Andrew wrote like only Andrew.
After reading both the screenplay and the novel of William, I reaffirmed to Andrew that even under the Mason Coile moniker, it was Andrew Pyper’s writing and he found that hilarious.
So, on the way to DreadCon, Andrew in the drivers seat, myself in the passenger seat, we discussed a bunch of stuff, and I asked Andrew about Oracle 3. I’d like to think I’m a smart fella, though sometimes it takes me a bit to catch on, and Andrew’s reply was one that didn’t click until the details of Oracle 3 were released. He said “It’s done and dusted. It’s currently waiting for Joshua Jackson to find time in his schedule to perform it again but it should be out next year.” And then he added – “We’ll see if this one puts that prose theory of yours to the test.” Now, at the time, I just assumed he’d be referring to the change in structure. Oracle had been a single narrator in a single book. Oracle 2 was a full cast and production with ten episodes. So, returning to a single book single narrator performance was what I thought Andrew had been alluding too.
Alas, I was wrong and it became clear while I was in Toronto for the third consecutive year, in February of 2025, but this time at Andrew’s celebration of life. While there, I was talking to Craig Davidson and I asked him if he could spill the beans on the title of the third Mason Coile book. He’d mentioned in the memorial he’d provided for the Globe and Mail about helping Andrew finish a book, and to the masses, we all assumed that was the third Coile book that’d been mentioned in the Publishers Weekly announcement for Exiles. Craig said he had no idea and that Andrew had done that on his own. (I’ll add, Andrew had mentioned to me in the car ride to DreadCon that the third Coile was done, but wouldn’t share the title either). It clicked then, that Craig had helped finish the third Oracle and this was confirmed when the release information and preorders were announced.
So, that’s a VERY long-winded way of me saying, Oracle 3 had me intrigued. Andrew and Craig previously wrote an unpublished novel together and a short story, but nothing that’d been publicly available. Craig – who is one of the nicest guys in the world – has the monumental ability of being a chameleon when it comes to writing. His structure and prose is very different as Craig Davidson compared to his alter egos Nick Cutter and Patrick Lestewka. That made me hopeful that he could work along Andrew and emulate the Pyper-prose that has been a constant in my life for a decade.
I had no doubt that the narration would be phenomenal – Joshua Jackson’s performance as Nate Russo in the previous two were fantastic – so I was confident there. And, knowing Craig had worked with Andrew through an outline and key points, increased that confidence. But to me – a Pyper super fan – I was still stressing about how it would play out. How Andrew’s series would potentially conclude in the literary hands of another, even if those hands were from one of Canada’s biggest authors.
What I liked: The story follows Nate Russo, along with Claire and Tillman, head to a remote location in northern Ontario to investigate a murder. There, in a derelict former lodge – The Grandview – a reunion of friends was taking place, when one of them met a gruesome ending.
Now, if you’ve read/listened to the previous two audiobooks in this series, you’ll already know that Nate has powers – he can read people, see their thoughts and memories when he touches them and has a dark passenger – The Bone Man. Once on the island, Nate knows there’s more going on than a simple disagreement that turned deadly. Something else is there. Something worse than The Bone Man.
As the story picks up, we learn that two of the friends were also trying to use this trip as a way to get the others to invest in a synthetic drug they’d developed, one that opens your mind and let’s you go on a wonderful trip. Known as Blue Dragon, Nate wonders if the drug might’ve opened the door to something from somewhere else to slip through and infiltrate the Grandview.
Throughout, we get this cat and mouse game, this is it or isn’t it storyline that propels the plot forward. Even as things on the island are revealed and discoveries are made, the listeners never fully get a solid answer. Yes, this is something else. No, this is just a person having a bad trip. But that all begins to change with the introduction of The Traveler.
It’s here that the story really takes off and we go from a mass market thriller to a more straight forward horror story. It’s here where we see the shift from Davidson the literary writer, to Cutter the horror author. Things get dark. Dirty. Mucky. And by God, things get Pyper prosed.
There are brief moments in here where I’d believe Andrew wrote parts of it. From what I gather, and what Craig’s said in interviews and in the author’s note at the end, he wrote this off of Andrew’s outline and the two of them meeting up and discussing things. But my goodness did Craig manage to conjure some truly spot-on and phenomenal Andrew moments throughout.
The ending and epilogue of this both allude to a firm ending for Nate Russo’s journey, but also keep the door freshly open for more, and honestly, seeing what Craig’s done here, I’d be up for more in the series.
Nate Russo is one of Andrew’s greatest creations, and Craig wholeheartedly did that character justice.
What I didn’t like: In this case, the only thing I wasn’t too sure about, was the relationship between Nate and The Bone Man. Coming in, from the previous two, I’d come to believe it was a certain mutually-beneficial arrangement between the two, and it seemed to see-saw back and forth throughout this one. It’s a minor thing, and most likely a very purposeful thing based on how the plot plays out, but it’s what struck me.
Why you should buy this: If you loved the first two, you’ll absolutely love this one. Even though I only could listen to it in 20 minute increments on my drive to and from work each day, I was completed invested and couldn’t wait to dive back in each time. Jackson’s performance was great, and his ability to bring each character to life was spectacular.
Craig Davidson has absolutely delivered a wonderful, loving and phenomenal book in the Oracle series, and I can’t thank him enough for doing this for Andrew and for his fans.
A taut, fast-paced, who-dunnit, the third book in this series proves that Nate’s story is only getting started and I hope we see more entries down the road.
https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Murder-Grandview-Book/dp/B0F2NR3GZF/
https://www.audible.com/pd/Oracle-3-Murder-at-the-Grandview-Audiobook/B0F2NXDNVW
