Jennifer Crusie and Mary Kay Andrews and Cheez Whiz

fake cheese on fake crackers… shoplifted and served with warmed over leftovers. Shame on the publishers.

19 Years of Reviews

Remarkably lean and unfussy novelette about a female chef who rediscovers that experimentation is the best part of cooking...The Wedding Gift by Lisa Kevin

If ever there was a language of L.A., a language in which each noun, common or proper, is localized, dated, and cast in a Hollywood movie, it is the language of James M. Cain. And if Cain's L.A. had a voice, she would sound like ChristineJames M. Cain and 'Sexological Advertiser'

Frank Muller reading William Caunitz Just a paragraph. Listen to Frank Muller saying: "All in a day. It's almost like there's a puppet master pulling all our chains." Somehow, he lets the sense roll in and then rides it with his voice so that the words are gathered up in a hugeFrank Muller reading Chains of Command by William Caunitz

It could be any neighborhood in the 1970s or 1980s or any conventional middle class development with young childless couples on the verge of divorce or adultery. The neighborhood librarian becomes a felonious sleepwalker before becoming the librarian at a Women's Correctional Institute, teaching other felons to read, doing sitNeighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern read by Coleen Marlo

A well upholstered, crisply intelligent middle aged police inspector newly widowed from her faithless, politically agile husband, is called back to work after many years. She colors her hair, tries to eat less, and reconnoitres her domestic life across and through the investigation of a murder, the enmity of theA Small Indiscretion by Denise Rudberg translated by Laura Wideberg read by Joyce Bean

"Your cigar fell down. You told me how good it was and how all the women liked your big cigar. We hardly started smoking and your cigar fell down." It is Havana radio. The whores are called hinateras, jockeys, to describe the way a girl might ride a pig.Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith read by Frank Muller

Schumpeter once wrote that the Stock market is a poor substitute for the holy grail. In other words, capitalism is more or less incapable of producing belief in itself. And yet, there are people who do believe in it. Ziad Abdelnour is one of them. ForMeet the Giants: An Interview with Ziad Abdelnour

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

Campbell Smith wants only to lie behind the S of Mrs Douglas Alexander, soon to be Senator from the great state of Delaware, a place where Washingtonians go to hide. But a woman who is hiding does not make a good political wife, and Campbell soon takes to gardeningOut of Order by Bonnie MacDougal read by Barbara Rosenblat

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Messrs. Gates and Jobs joked about the famous Apple commercials showing a boring P.C. suit and an eternally nerdy Mac user at a Carlsbad, California D: All Things Digital conference. "The art of those commercial is not to be mean. It'sBill and Steve and the Wall Street Journal's bad grammar

Why isn't this a Doris Day movie? Perhaps because Rock Hudson would never have accumulated old washing machines and bowling balls in the garage; and Doris Day's anger never lasted longer than a bubble bath. Otherwise, Doris Day could have played this pretty, perky, 53 year old wife who breaksSearching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish read by Barbara McCullough

Ex-police chief and widow returns to her home town to help her daughter recover from a divorce and gets messily involved in a murder. Mildly uninteresting.The Fine Art of Murder by Emily Barnes read by Carrington MacDuffie

A sister who witnessed her brother's murder goes back to her home town after 10 years to find the killer. As usual with Sharon Sala, the main character is layered, magnetic, surrounded by friends and neighbors each of whom reflect her differently... There are also the usual divisions ofBetrayed by Sharon Sala

He still thought wistfully of what he might have become... a Carrie Hawes, or a Paul or a Richard, but more than any of those, the name he most cherished -- and he had never revealed this to a soul -- was Lefty, Lefty Hawes. Was there a criminal anywhere in the worldLet's Hear It For the Deaf Man by Ed McBain read by Jonathan Marosz

Not since James Bond have we witnessed such a "spectacular mesomorph, built of nothing except large quantities of bone, sinew and muscle." Indeed, his body introduces him: ...with his shirt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts plus a dimpled 38 bullet holeLee Child's Jack Reacher in Nothing to Lose read by Dick Hill