I queued this one up expecting a straightforward true-crime audiobook and got something closer to an audio documentary, which tracks with how the listing itself describes it: a "genre-bending" project from Ronan Farrow, the New York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, who also narrates. At four hours and seventeen minutes, Not a Very Good Murderer moves fast through a case that apparently kept Arizona law enforcement circling for decades without an arrest, released as an Audible Original in March 2025 rather than through a traditional publisher's imprint.
Celia "Cece" Doane, a former Miss Arizona and well-to-do socialite, is the subject at the center of it all, her two marriages both ending under suspicion of attempted murder plots against her husbands, according to the synopsis. As a well-to-do ex-beauty queen in the 1970s, the listing notes, Doane had no trouble attracting husbands, though considerably more trouble getting rid of them. Farrow's reporting reconstructs her "checkered past" through what the listing calls countless hours of interviews and painstaking investigative legwork, building toward a question the synopsis poses directly: did Doane actually conspire against her spouses, and how did she avoid arrest for so long despite remaining a person of interest to Arizona law enforcement for decades? The project also turns partly inward, with Farrow reportedly realizing partway through that the interview subject driving the investigation might also be the most unreliable source in it, a twist that reframes the whole documentary as much about the difficulty of getting at truth as about Doane herself. The synopsis calls the result part true-crime thriller and part character study, a fascinating exploration of what it takes to uncover a story and what it means to keep one buried. No named co-narrator or additional reporter appears anywhere in the listing, which reinforces how much this project rests on a single voice carrying both the investigation and its telling. The synopsis also frames the setting itself almost as a character, calling it "Paradise... Valley, Arizona," a small aside that hints at the same wry tone the title promises before the story even begins. The title itself is worth sitting with too: "Not a Very Good Murderer" reads as a judgment on Doane's competence as much as her guilt, which is an unusual framing for a true-crime project to lead with.
Farrow Narrates the Interviews He Conducted
Farrow's byline carries weight in investigative journalism, and hearing an audio documentary narrated by the reporter who did the interviewing is a different experience than a third-party narrator reading someone else's reporting secondhand. Reviewer SimplyMeTaraMarie describes the format accurately: interviews with various parties connected to the story, structured like a true-crime investigation rather than a straight narrative, drawn originally to the case through repeated social media accusations about a former political figure that Farrow's reporting apparently follows back to their source. Lena Kennedy's review is even more telling about how this project reads to listeners, referring to it as a "Podcast" throughout rather than an audiobook, drawn in initially by the promise of kidnapping plots, arson, jewelry heists, and attempted murder laid out in the description, admitting upfront that Kennedy does not usually review podcasts at all, and calling the setup impossible to pass up on paper. That gap between how the publisher categorizes the release and how at least one listener experienced it says something about how blurry the line has become between audio documentary and long-form podcast, at least from the listener's chair. Neither review dwells much on Farrow's delivery itself, focusing instead on the case and its loose ends, which is a reasonable thing to prioritize in a project built around unresolved suspicion rather than a tidy narrated conclusion. Both reviews were also posted within about two months of each other in mid-2025, so at least the written feedback on this listing reflects a fairly narrow window of listener reaction rather than opinion accumulated across years.
Seven Full Stars Short of a Unanimous Sweep
Both available reviews land on the same complaint from different angles: not enough payoff for the setup. SimplyMeTaraMarie found "a lot of repetition and no real resolution" across the four hours, and Kennedy describes being left wondering, by the end, whether Doane truly got away with everything or whether some of it was overstated to begin with, and how the whole case even started in the first place. Only two written reviews sit beneath a rating count of eight, so the two accounts here are working with a thin sample relative to the full audience that rated the title, six of whom left a star rating without any accompanying commentary at all, a common pattern for shorter Audible Originals where curiosity outpaces the motivation to write a full review. What the eight ratings do allow is exact math: they total thirty-three points out of a possible forty, meaning the collective score falls seven full stars short of a unanimous five-star sweep, evidence of at least a few lower marks hiding behind the two visible write-ups that never got written down for the rest of us to read. That gap between a middling 4.1 average and two written accounts that both lean critical is at least internally consistent, unlike some listings where the visible reviews and the aggregate score seem to describe two different audiences entirely. This sits categorized under both biographies-memoirs and mystery-thriller-suspense, which fits a project that is really neither a straight biography of Doane nor a conventional thriller, but something built in the space between the two categories.
An Easy Commitment on a Single Afternoon
True-crime listeners drawn to Farrow's investigative reputation, and anyone curious about a documentary-style audio format rather than a scripted narrative, will find the shorter runtime an easy commitment on a single afternoon. Skip it if an unresolved ending frustrates you, since both reviewers here specifically flag the lack of a clean resolution as a letdown, or if you were hoping for the traditional linear true-crime structure rather than the interview-driven documentary approach the synopsis promises from the start and the two available reviews confirm it delivers. Listeners who already know Farrow's investigative work will likely find the format a natural extension of it, while those coming in cold off the true-crime description alone should temper expectations for a tidy ending.
Quick Take
- Read by: Ronan Farrow narrates the documentary in the same voice that conducted the interviews.
- At its heart: unreliable sources, unsolved suspicion, investigative process
- Vibe: unresolved and interview-driven, closer to documentary than thriller
- Short version: worth a try for Farrow's investigative reputation, though both available reviews flag a lack of resolution.
Common Questions
Is Ronan Farrow both the reporter and the narrator on this audiobook?
Yes, Farrow both conducted the reporting and narrates the finished project, so the same voice that interviewed sources throughout also delivers the audiobook. That continuity is part of what distinguishes it from a typical true-crime title, where a separate narrator usually reads someone else's investigative work secondhand.
What does the Not a Very Good Murderer audiobook's rating reveal?
The math behind the 4.1 badge resolves precisely to thirty-three points out of a possible forty across eight votes, seven full stars short of a unanimous five-star sweep. Only two written reviews sit underneath that count, and both lean more mixed in tone than the number alone would suggest to a browsing listener.
