Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh > recordedbookreview.com

What happens to a hard cop in a hard city in an era below good and evil.

19 Years of Reviews

Wed Sep 08, 2004 After P. Cornwell it is impossible or almost impossible to fob off a respectable forensic report, fake a fictional autopsy, or counterfeit the routine day to day life of an imaginary female coroner. If you want to be taken seriously, that is. The rather silly scene thatBlindsided by Karen Slaughter

The voice is soft, delicate, unfinished. It tells a story about Noelle, a "human resources" admin with an infamous British great aunt whose estate she has just inherited. Long ago, her past had mixed with her aunt's and her aunt's paintings -- but for years they had not communicated.Painting the Moon by Traci Borum

Arkady, the permanently grim, dejected, despondent Moscow cop wants another autopsy done on the body of a prostitute and finds his old friend Willie at the morgue, having moved in. Immense and unshaven, Willie Pezenko shuffled around the morgue like a wooly mammoth in an operating gown. A cigarette hungThree Stations by Martin Cruz read by Ron McClarty

Connor O'Brien, our man in Pluto, does Tanenbaum, and all of his staggeringly brilliant, souls: Butch Karp, ex pro basketball player & New York A.D.A.; Mar-LENE, his smart, sexy, Sicilian one-eyed private eye wife; ex-cop Dead Harry, who props up the depressive position; Tron, Viet Cong assassin & Noodle maker,IRRESISTABLE IMPULSE by Robert K Tanenbaum::Connor O'Brien

How is it that Anna Jacobs always swaddles you into a world that feels cozy and safe and hopeful? Here is another story about a working woman who wants to retire but puts it off until she is at the edge of the world and has to fight her way backChanging Lara by Anna Jacobs

Deliciously understated English murder mysteries against a background of Hereford cows and curmudgeonly coppers. Here's a taste: Bastard, bastard, bloody stupid game! He beat the turf with his five iron and considered dispatching it after his golf ball into the undergrowth. Then he trudged on morosely, feeling the blood pounding inJ.M. Gregson: The Inspector Lambert Series

Libby, an archeological historian who works on historic preservation is informed that she has inherited a run down inn in a beach town where her father lived. "Why isn't this place in the historical register?" she asks the Sheriff, who is helping her find her kidnapped friend. The kidnapping makesTidewater Inn by Colleen Coble read by Devon O'Day

There are inside words and outside words. Sometimes outside words - like Inspector Wexford's "They don't have handbags anymore," - sound like inside words because they form a running commentary on something like the world. Sometimes, like Hannah Goldsmith's, they escape, aciduously, censoriously. Throughout theJohn Lee reads Ruth Rendell:End in Tears.

An intimate look at the arrangements, organization and order of small town French village life, through the eyes of the jovial, wise and well fed chief of police, for "...not a single pig made it to market without some part of it being offered as part tribute part toll toBruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker read by Robert Ian MacKenzie

An old book, a tits and bits insurance agent, an ex-intelligence bully, a rich chick on Malibu beach, a bitter ex-girlfriend somebody called "Virgie", a short tight crooked alcoholic cop, and a Go-Between man who gets an Eviction Notice and a letter from the Wall Street Journal saying he couldNo Questions Asked by Ross Thomas read by Malcolm Hillgartner

Charlotte, a romance writer who has recently broken her engagement to an unfaithful beau, moves to a small town and makes friends with her neighbors and the local pastor. Very pleasantly narrated by Crystal Sershen. Story well written but a little slow. Crispens Point by JoHannah Reardon narrated by Crystal Sershen

Maeve Binchy is the grand-mistress of the domestic imaginary: that hearty, busy, pretty space where women make themselves primal. It is late Capitalism and the lumpen proletariat of Dublin are caterers, not cooks. Katy is prole and caterer and the figure of a Dublin that caters to others, toScarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy read by Barbara Caruso

Again, we have Washington with its burials and its laudations betrayals become elegy -- where the ones praising the dead are also their executioners. A Roman tradition carried brightly on by moral gamesmen, whose empires are supported by three rhetorical questions: Is it ethical for men in power, men entrusted byA House Divided by Mike Lawson read by Joe Barrett

On the sidewalk outside of The Kitchennette on West Broadway, the old men are debating the apologetics of New York Liberals bending over to receive Islamic sensitivity training. One famous lawyer takes out the day's NYTIMES, which reports that: "The Islamic Society of America is complaining that television shows portray Moslems asEscape by Robert Tanenbaum read by Mel Foster

It could be any small college town and any next door neighbor. But the town is Promise Falls and the neighbors next door are The Langleys. The story begins when they are murdered. Bert the policeman investigates the neighborhood, starting with Jim Cutter's house. Jim has beenToo Close To Home by Linwood Barclay read by Christopher Lane