The Fine Art of Murder by Emily Barnes read by Carrington MacDuffie

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.

19 Years of Reviews

Two sisters convert a 19th Century whorehouse into a Bed and Breakfast for Arizona's tourists, helped by their grandmother's Ghost - the long dead madame of the House. A fun bed and breakfast fantasy. A Ghost for Maggie by Emily Carmichael read by Cristine McMurdo-Wallis

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

Remarkable introduction to a remarkable detective novel. The introduction explains that Crofts was an engineer who mapped out detailed specifications for his detective fiction much the way an engineer would draw up plans for a house or a bridge. Knowing this transforms the way we read and appreciate theThe Hog's Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts with an introduction by Martin Edwards read by Gordon Griffin

Slow, cloddish, cumbersome and overcooked dialogue stretches across this morality play about an ugly presidential election. Add the 'aching sadness' and 'fatal failures' and 'eyes shining with tears' of flat white characters, but read on. Hear the slimy campaign advise of slimy campaign managers: "Girlfriend is bad. BlackThe Race by Richard North Patterson Narrated by Michael Boatman

She is a portrait of competence. She works for the big distributor of computers that packaged itself after cows. She has a knack for customer relations. She enjoys convincing users, individual by individual, that the big company wants nothing more than to make nice and relate, long term. SheThe Echo Maker by Richard Powers read by Bernadette Dunne

A delightful, witty murder mystery about a small-town gated-community studded with the usual sociopathic suspects, albeit wealthy, and gorgeous social commentary. Waldorf Pines is an exclusive ex-1920's ex-golf-course on which marbled kitchens and bathrooms have been built, bricked over with Tudorish frontage and populated by odd, classless, moneyed characters badlyBlood in the Water by Jane Haddam read by David Collacci

Grass soup is exactly what it sounds like. It's a recipe for food of last resort that my father has apparently squirrelled away somewhere. I have never actually seen this recipe but it was referred to fairly often when I was a child. Should everything else turn to shit, weDavid Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable

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

At what point are you willing to pay for an audiobook? When you encounter a quote by Kipling that you have never heard before, and you want to memorize it ... When the reader has such a faraway voice, with a thousand ligatures, selective, discretionary accents, which gives a dDavid Ignatius, Bloodmoney, read by Firdous Bamji

Sun Mar 07, 2004 Forty years ago, this would have been a Sandra Dee movie. Rock Hudson would have played the smart, rich, charming, befuddled and gorgeous groom; a french actress would have played the loopy, eternally foreign mother, and Chevalier would have played Teddy: irresponsible, felonious, a sexual misadventurer. AndManeater by Gigi Levangie Granger read by Uma Thurman

A sweet perfectly staged gem of a romance, with no excessive sexual details and no drawn out “chapter 4” breakup before coming back together. An uncle’s unusual bequest puts a hold on Molly’s hotel management career: she is compelled to help out an old friend by agreeing to marry andPamela Kelley Six Months in Montana

For those with a curiosity about the kind of woman who is employed by Christie's and the New York auction scene: the girls, the clothes, their mothers, their mothers' wardrobe, the accents, the topknots, the hyper-academic cat-calls, the jealousies, the gallerinas: The gallery girls of New York are like starving attack dogs in really nice clothes. AllThe Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe read by Emily Durante

Charming English tale about a newly divorced English mother with ungrateful children and a lying, wretched, smarmy ex-husband. She talks to her neighbor about renting her lovely old house, and finds a job selling pretty cottages for a land developer... Sweet tale about moving on.Moving On by Anna Jacobs read by Penelope Freeman

Fiction that doubles as a helpful manual for out of work women, full of unemployment management tips and personality re-development exercises. Noreen, for example, is asked to say something about herself without reference to her job. She cannot. She can, however, use the fancy sneakers which she purchasedThe Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook read by Kimberly Dakin

A ruthlessly intelligent localization of the seven deadly sins, California style. Savages by Don Winslow read by Michael Kramer