Gruff, base, raspy, cutting: a voice with a fist wrapped around it. That sandpaper thing, that tough, tight, testosterone thing. That private dick thing, Slovak style. Ex-cop ex-husband Milan Jacovich spits out violently funny running commentary on the seraglio of rich snobbish dames, old time bosses and stubborn Slovenes that populateThe Cleveland Local by Les Roberts::Les Roberts

There is always a boy and a dog (....and a psychopath) After all, you're inside the mind of Dean Koontz , and its the loneliest night in the world, and you've just seen the saddest thing on earth, and there are monsters in the backyard, and youONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN by DEAN KOONTZ read by ANNE TWOMEY 

Short cuts to well told endings of British crime novels don't usually work. They leave out the localized, linguistic pulp of English thought. And it is thought not plot that makes a novel so very relentlessly English. Tim Curry's reading resonates with localized, idiomatic, parochial, inherited sense, regionality, territoriality. Listen up. TimMartha Grimes read by Tim Curry: The Old Silent

As Marcus Aurelius would say, there are good mixtures and bad mixtures. Consider: A man, a dog, a Ford Explorer. An American, a surfboard, a wave. Or: an experiment, a scientist, the DOD. Good or bad? Koontz doesn't say. But incredible the speed with which we move to position ourselves behind the good, or theSeize the Night by Dean Koontz read by Keith Szarabajka

"The thing you have to understand and understanding this explains so much about Murdoch's success is that happy newspaper families are alike and unhappy newspaper families are, well, quite alike too: in the end they all lose their papers. As cautionary tales go you could hardly find a more hothouseThe Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff read by Paul Boehmer

  Published by Random House. Pub Date p2003. Cutesy 70's Lois Lane tells odd, offbeat, seriously funny story of buddy-comedians (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis? Bob Hope and Bing Crosby?) bound by repressed hostility (Freud) and girlicide. ". . .the world is divided up into four different types WHERE THE TRUTH LIES by Rupert Holmes. Read by Anna Gosteyer and Michael McEan.

  '...This grand vehicle was a color not seen in nature... metallic, shimmering kind of not-chartreuse, not-gold, not-silver, not-mauve with just a hint of not-maroon....' Thinks Kelp, not-thinking, not-talking to himself in a kind of not-Bronx, not-Queens, not-Staten Island, in-your-front-lawn five-borough accent while looking for a car to steal in Long TermThe Road to Ruin by Donald E. Westlake Read by William Dufris

Well crafted words read by a dulled, depressed and depressing voice. Read it instead.Paint it Black by Janet Fitch read by Jennifer Jason Leigh

It is not inconceivable that the prime minister should don a cheap blonde wig, heels and a little a after his first name , in order to ride on broken trains, wait on soda-machine queues, lie untreated in a public emergency rooms, drink and flirt in roadside pubs, and re-connectNumber 10 by Sue Townsend read by Barbara Rosenblat

Imagine Frank Muller doing   CZ Sakall, the jowly, bespectacled, hysterical Hungarian who cannot stop wiping his spectacles, shaking his head and concocting scenarios of doom ... "today... its going to happen today..." etc. The stammering, anxious NYC diamond dealer calls Jimmy McShane, well heeled ex-cop and private dick, who bodyguardsTHE GAME OF THIRTY by WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE ::FRANK MULLER:

Rest, it seems, is a peculiarly English thing. Restfulness in all its timorous, melancholic glory cushions the indoor lives of Oscar and Dorrie Livingstone, in a peculiarly English way. Not as the accidental sidebar of an otherwise busied existence but as an aspiration, a calling, a rigorous end in itself.A Friend From England by Anita Brookner read by Cherie Lunghi

This was supposed to be about four retired couples, cops and wives, living in Florida and solving crimes (not cases). But Spillane turned it into a study of memory. Imagine a blinded amnesiacal lover secreted away inside a community of retired cops in New Jersey, and rediscovered by her oldDead Street by Mickey Spillane read by Richard Ferrone

The spunky wife of a floor licking, scum sucking, receptionist-nailing hack accountant discovers her husband's infidelity and writes up the dastardly deed in his monthly newsletter which she emails to kith and kin and customers. She accumulates notoriety ("SCORNED LOCAL WIFE SUED FOR SCATHING E-MAIL") , attractsAnd One Last Thing by Molly Harper read by Amanda Ronconi

Witty, enchanting and enchanted spectacle of Catholic familydom. Utterly charming characters; slightly wooden plots.Younger Than Springtime by Andrew Greeley read by Jonathan Marosz

For those of you who have been reading or not reading Koontz lately, it may not be obvious that there are two Koontzes: the early Koontz and the late Koontz. Like the early Heidegger and the late Heidegger. The distinction should open the door to hours and hours and hoursThe Door to December by Dean Koontz read by George Guidall