Picture 10

19 Years of Reviews

Solid, sensible text hulled out of an old, heavy earth: The farmer was a tense willowy man with a German name and a head as bald as a rock. and The farmer's wife was fine cook and a generous woman. Meals, too, are solid and heavy and bald: boiled ham,Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger read by Buck Schirner

Quiet, patient, relentless intelligence spills over the pages of this story about a girl geek, a journalist, a news magazine devoted to the critique of corrupt Swedish institutions, and an odd assemblage of Stockholm's thugs, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and cops. None are verbose. Men and women think. Thinking happens withoutThe Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson read by Simon Vance

A serious Swede, heir of a prestigious Accounting firm, talks to his tour bus driver who must, like him, return to an unwanted fate, a little farm waiting for him to take it over: "I'm no good at going out looking for sheep that have got stuck on their backA Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy read by Rosalyn Landor

There's nothing like a kitchen-fuck, standing up against an old refrigerator, the ketchup bottle and the jar of mayo rolling around inside, the bag of peaches falling off the top.... There's nothing like two cops, fucking. But its a signature love scene, painterly, pointilistic, confessional. Mushrooming metaphors. And very veryDarkness Peering by Alice Blanchard read by Alyssa Bresnahan

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

Nick, Miami news reporter, is a decent, semi-sad, semi-serious, guy. One day he is sent out to cover a typical Miami highway accident. Dead on the scene are his wife and one of his twin daughters. One year later Nick is a decent semi sad semi serious guy with one daughterEye of Revengeby Jonathon King

Have you ever wondered what a 70 year old ex-CIA agent is thinking while being greeted by an over-friendly young woman at a Senior Center? "Are you lost honey?", she asked in a volume more suitable for calling me from the other end of the hallway..." "Are you trained to speak louderGranny Under Cover by Harper Lin read by Sara Morsey

Publisher: Harper Audio ; Distributed by Recorded Books,Pub Date: p2001 Extraordinary work. Self-centered opera singer and doting Japanese businessman-fan hostaged by South American amateur terrorists at glitterati party. BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett

The real lover is, as always, God.... Unerring, abundant, furiously hopeful story about the possibility of loving a woman to whom one is wed. No religiosity, just a well told well detailed tale of Irish Catholic erotic marital life. Greeley is as always superb.A Christmas Wedding by Andrew Greeley read by Jonathan Marosz

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

A big man, a private eye, ex-military, school of Afghanistan, minus one leg and one girlfriend, hires a relentlessly normal secretary for a week. She stays on. He gets a case. She helps. Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

Good mystery full of thoroughly unlovable characters. Homeless hearthless ones: kitchenless characters. Unemployed clerk comes back to poor Florida town to find half-dead aunt. She putts about in the Florida panhandle asking questions and discovering bad neighbors and bad morals. Riptide by Michaela Thompson

There should be and will be a measure of a good writer, which is the number of words it takes for the reader to be INSIDE the story. Up, up and away. Peter Robinson: 10. Kristin Hannah/Hannah Kristin: 25. Ernest Hemingway: 4.The Measure

Clean, streamlined writing by STEPHEN COONTS; as always, wonderful technical-mechanical details of navy pilots planes and carriers; wry, politically prickly story about NAVY officer-dom, post-war bureaucracy, and the flow of military power-money.The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts read by Michael Prichard

It's always interesting to explore a place through its crime scenes. Like the not yet totally gentrified neighborhoods of Northwest Philadelphia, on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River. Which runs through this mystery as it runs through Pennsylvania. All along the river young women are being murderedMerciless by Rich Montanari read by Scott Brick