The Amateur: A Novel of Revenge by Robert Littell read by Scott Brick

Although less terrible than usual, Brick can’t do funny. And this book can be funny. The ram rod straight CIA trainer; the queer, ruthless, demented Director of Operations; the stubborn, nerdish, accidentally lucky pseudo-operative determined to avenge his murdered girlfriend….. Then of course he bumps into a woman who can help…..

10 Years of Reviews

There is no question that there is a story here, about an otherwise nice city and an otherwise nice cop who is married to a rather understanding Englishwoman. But it is not a story about the city and the cop and the Englishwoman in the 1960s. It is not enough toToo Many Murders by Colleen McCullough read by Charles Leggett

A distressing picture of the unhappy situation of the losing class within a classless society. Grace is a 37 year old female loser within this losing class. She lives at the edge of a self-consciously wealthy Palm Beach ghetto of sectional wealth. She has a teenage bitch-daughter with a whine.Mourning Glory by Warren Adler::

"Dear Chatter: To answer your question, when a Southerner looks at you with a blank smile and doesn't answer you right away, it's because he doesn't trust you and he's lookin' you over and seein' how much damage you can do as a human bein'...Have a nice day!" Chatter is aSouthern Living by Ad Hudler read by Cynthia Darlow

In some possible Doris Day movie about a perky blonde secretary and a rich executive bachelor there is a perpetual secretarial pool typing out Nora Roberts novels in time to Sinatra or Liszt. There is no Nora Roberts. There is a pool of Nora Roberts, a herd of Nora Roberts,The Nora Roberts Pool

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

At St. Alban's Church there is a stained glass window picturing a Roman soldier with a halo dressed as a Priest. The Roman soldier was Alban. When the Priest who converted him was sentenced to death, Alban switched clothes with him and died in his place. A soldier disguised as aAll Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming read by Suzanne Toren

It is truly comforting to hear good old Tony Roberts playing good old Stone Barrington sitting at good old Elaine's on 88th and Second, looking at the girls again, working another case. Stone is hungry. Hungrier than usual, for a rare hamburger, cooked for lawyers, not by lawyers. AndFresh Disasters by Stuart Woods read by Tony Roberts

Constructed as a series of letters to a slightly fay, newly divorced, 45 year old antiques expert, this whodunit offers criminality inset in decorating news and auction house frippery. Mrs. Sterling Glass is keeping her ex-husband's last name because "who would give up the nameStealing with Style by Emyl Jenkins read by Linda Stephens

Everything good comes together in this slow moving L.A. smoothie with the wizened, reflective, and much humbled Harry Bosch. Gone is the bull in the china shop attitude, the stubborn in your face overconfidence. In its place is the humility that comes from being too old or at least olderThe Overlook by Michael Connelly read by Len Cariou

A catholic tailor used his life savings to go to the Vatican. When he returned his parish gathered to find out what he had seen. "What kind of a fellow is the Pope?" they asked him. "44 Medium," he said. This is the kind of obsession Buffet is lookingWarren Buffet's Management Secrets by Mary Buffett & David Clark. Performed by Mary Buffett.

It is said that this book does not reconstruct the Diana accident. It doesn't. It reconstructs what might not have been an accident if a sensitive, guilt ridden orphan named Samuel Carver ("Call me Carver") who threatens to break pinkies had arranged for a car to blow up in aThe Accident Man by Tom Cain read by John Lee

Only Anne Tyler can make an off-license church appear as American as apple pie, and it's off-beat flock, a fumbling but cuddlesome assemblage. The Church of the Second Chance is both a hovel and haven of forgiveness, a familial supplement to a family no longer familiar, a familySaint Maybe by Anne Tyler read by George Guidall

A few Jewish words referring to a few ritual baked goods eaten by a few Jews does not a Jewish novel make. Nor does a description of a modestly clad woman with her hair tied back by a long scarf. If the Peter Decker novels wielded some specific charm byBlindman's Bluff by Faye Kellerman read by Mitch Greenburg

Not all old women from the South are funny. Only the ones who know what they don't want, and what they want: All I want in this life is a reasonable man who's self supporting, who's nice to me, funny, you know, likes straight sex, not role playing modelled onThe Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank read by Nanette Savard

This second in the "Allison Campbell Mystery" series is disappointing. It would have been nice to come back to a different kind of detecting woman -- a woman whose job it is to detect -- and re-configure -- a social image. The image of a person is of course aDeadly Assets by Wendy Tyson read by Tanya Eby

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