Wed Sep 15, 2004 Leave the Grave Green by Deborah Crumb. Narrated by Christopher Kay. Clipper Audio. c2001. Bland, unexciting, English pudding: a boy-inspector, his prissy girl partner, a murder and a family. The plot is overboiled, the storytelling unremarkable. But there are some fascinating droplets toward the end: the respectableLeave the Grave Green by Deborah Crumb. Narrated by Christopher Kay.

Jake is the kind of guy that tells his girlfriend to stop using some pheromonal perfume by Clinique because it "messes with his head". But apart from perfume, he is singularly unfussed. He is streetwise, he is attentive, and he belongs inside his own body. But he belongs nowherePower Play by Joseph Finder read by Dennis Boutsikaris

Ed McBain's DOLL  (Pouty D, drag the O, tongue heavy on the L.)  is bedtime reading. The warped, lusty, utterly female voice of this slut-goddess kicks you in the groin, cuffs you to the radiator, and feeds you sex and ham sandwiches. You, or rather Steve Carella, who rarely gets tangled up withDOLL by Ed McBain read by

Robin Cook gives us another SMART & NUTS type physician, a dysfunctional, adulterous, snivelling subjectivity with a license to practice concierge medicine in Boston. Some seven chapters into the book we realize that it is still George Guidall reading. Good narrators, like good waiters, disappear, imperceptibly.CRISIS by Robin Cook::George Guidall

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

A pleasant lyrical description of the minute details of English country life presents the full world of a small town's folk, in all their deep old  habits, their social quirks and irritabilities, and their precious sense of the finite order of inherited obligations. Mrs Willett can tackle a hundred jobs withoutA Storm at Fairacre, Village Diary, Changes at Fairacre by Miss Read read by Gwen Watford

Smiley receives a letter from his ex, reads ("I want to make you an offer which no gentleman could accept. I want to come back to you. I'm staying at the Baur au Lac in Zurich till the end of the month. Let me know.") and thinks: "That was Ann. LetCall For the Dead by John Le Carre Narrated by Frank Muller(!)

Once upon a time, when the Bronx was a happy Italian village full of children in Catholic school uniforms, public schools measured reading levels in Grades: first grade, second grade, third grade. Easy peasy. Consider your contemporary girly fiction, focused on 29 year old nitwits going shopping: second grade reading2nd Grade Reading Level Mysteries

Kinsey is a tough dame. Brutally honest about herself and therefore about others. She's twice divorced, and is determined to stay that way. As Kinsey says: "I'm difficult". She says it to account for her reluctance to marry for the third time. Also because she likes toT is for Trespass by Sue Grafton read by Judy Kaye

We find the troublesome, 62 year old Detective Inspector in bed after a back operation, popping Percocets and abusing the hospitality of her ex-husband's new wife. Within a week she is thigh deep in a case of abduction, with a scene of crime and a bloody victimThe Taken by Inger Ash Wolf, read by Bernadette Dunne

The salad dressing was the only one Partain ever used: "9 parts olive oil, one part red wine vinegar, vinegar soaked salt, ground black pepper and more garlic than most people liked." Write this down. Ross Thomas' recipes are rare, legendary and authoritative. As are his stories, his characters, andAh, Treachery! by Ross Thomas read by Frank Muller

In his thuggy Italian voice, Ferrone rasps the staggeringly funny stretched-out Goombah logic of an ex con from Mulberry Street as he helps an ex-cop burgle a ritzy old-world Hotel and save Democracy. The two Italians stumble into the sub counter plot of a fanatic Cuban terrorist-doctor with a bad liver,Re-hearing: Vincent Patrick read by Richard Ferrone: Smokescreen

It is not  obvious that what happens to English in L.A. is natural, because what is natural in California is not natural anywhere else. But if nature is not local, what is?  What localizes language? Why does Hollywood Nate understand another cop who asks him whether an Indian girl isHollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh

A gentle voice with exacting intelligence  mourns England, its living unemployed and its generation of  tall, dead men:   Where are the monstrous men with chests like barrels and moustaches like the wings of eagles who strode across my childhood's gaze twenty or thirty years ago? Buried, I suppose, in the FlandersThe Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell read by Richard Green

fake cheese on fake crackers... shoplifted and served with warmed over leftovers. Shame on the publishers. Jennifer Crusie and Mary Kay Andrews and Cheez Whiz