Devil’s Food Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke performed by Suzanne Toren

No mystery here. Lots of recipes, though. Maybe you could play it in the kitchen, as background noise for baking chocolate cake.

Getting Mad, Getting Even by Annie Sanders read by Suzy Aitchison

Two London twits, one Giantess and one Mum, run a domestic agency, performing unlovable chores for unlovable wives with money. The two twits  rehash I Love Lucy daffiness during the subprime era of extravagance.   Another  dose of the English language fading into bad American dialogue and imitation Hollywood idiocy.

Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

The lines are drawn quickly – boom boom boom. Here is Israel, here is Russia, here is history. Here is crime, here is terror. Here stands Gabriel Allon: here, on the side of art. And Ivan stands here on the side of death. Like a Tarot layout.

There is a bird’s eye view of wealth, apres ski, and the new moneyed KGB, false passports, false names, false paintings, false millionaires.

There are the usual types: A fierce, crude, merciless, amoral Russian millionaire with 3 lovers, 2 children, a wife and a fleet of bodyguards. The hoary old spymasters, the believers, the Zionists. The mercenaries, the Americans, the businessmen.

Racy beginning but then the book is put on automatic drive.

The Scoop by Fern Michaels read by Natalie Ross

A mature, stubborn wealthy widow gathers up a group of brittle, neurotic or lonely girlfriends to help her daughter succeed as a journalist for one of the lesser entertainment magazines.  The helpful project helps the girls in turn. A Red Hat Club imitation, without the charm.

The Defector by Daniel Silva read by Phil Gigante

Forget the tax on sugar. Tax bad dialogue, dreadful characterizations, idiotic psychological profiles. To wit:

When he was a child the twitch had made him the target of merciless teasing and bullying. It had made him burn with hatred. And that hatred had driven him to succeed. Victor Orlov wanted to beat everyone and it was all because of the twitch in his left eye.

Read it as farce.

The Race by Richard North Patterson Narrated by Michael Boatman

Slow, cloddish, cumbersome and overcooked dialogue stretches across this morality play about an ugly presidential election. Add the ‘aching sadness’ and ‘fatal failures’ and ‘eyes shining with tears’ of flat white characters, but read on. Hear the slimy campaign advise of slimy campaign managers:

“Girlfriend is bad. Black girlfriend is worse. Black actress girlfriend is the fucking trifecta.”

Yep, the divorced war hero candidate couples with a beautiful black actress in the middle of the campaign. Guess what happens?

Stone Cold by David Baldacci. Read by Ron McLarty

Good idea, poorly executed.

You’ve Been Warned by James Patterson & Howard Roughan Read by Ilyana Kadushin

Another New York City nanny? No, no. This one wakes up screaming every morning, unable to stop the dream of a body bag around a not yet dead body. This one is having an affair with the father of the children she is nannying. This one sees cockroaches crawling on her body, and dead fathers watching her from across the street, and transparent bodies in photographs. Because this is New York, this “weirdness” mixes in with all the other weirdnesses in the city and what, after all, are a few hallucinations when you spend your days behind a camera. That’s right, this nanny is also a photographer, who shoots first and thinks later.

So Christian wakes up screaming, every morning, not because of what she sees, but because she cannot do anything about what she sees. The terror, the suspense, come from the inability to act.

The guilt and the hallucinations come from the inability to stop acting.

Paint it Black by Janet Fitch read by Jennifer Jason Leigh

Well crafted words read by a dulled, depressed and depressing voice. Read it instead.

Drek, in pink: Wolves in Chic Clothing by Karasyov and Kargman, read by Gasteyer

When the big brained businessmen of Europe come home, they don’t want brainy, brilliant, succulent text. They want fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid words popping out of fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid secretarial types. On heels. They want to come to America, for a night. And wake up in England. For them, we suggest the newest round of Chic-lets: starting with Carrie Karasyov’s and Jill Kargman’s (Authors of The Right Address it says in slim pink letters, right on the cover, next to a picture of ultra-slim headless female figures in sexy business suits, pink shirts, stiletto heels) Wolves in Chic Clothing (it says in three tones of 18px serifated font, right on the cover, next to the picture of the blonde in the black turtleneck with tight nude panty-hose, sans skirt). No need to tell us what the book is about because the book is not about anything. Enough to know that Carrie and Jill both grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, that they are oedipalized, husbanded, and child-bearing. (Lucky like you, reader!) And that the lovely climbing thing reading this Chick-let is best known for her six year run on Saturday Night Live, that she (along with everyone else in the civilized world) has appeared in Law & Order. And that the pink plaid Random House Audio book cover was designed by Jean Traina and illustrated by Monika Roe. Everything a librarian needs to know to order a little drek for a European mind on vacation. Enjoy.