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

1235 12399 1234 First create a pattern. A pattern creates an expectation. Then, disappoint the expectation. So Lehane gives us a prostitute who turns into a decoy who turns into a very pretty woman who wants to take her detective-investigator boss to a hotel room, and does. But sheMoonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane read by Jonathan Davis (with a limping Boston accent)

A widowed librarian makes friends with an old man who leaves her his land in Australia, near Perth, on the condition that she will live there for a year, alone. She leaves her brother with his communication problems and moves to the charming Western Australian estate, where the passionate, difficultKirsty's Vineyard by Anna Jacobs read by Nicolette McKenzie

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

Even if you buy all your clothes at Walmart's, even if you never finished high-school and you still collect Happy Meal toys, even if your little girl never saw her father, who thinned out after a while, like smoke, you can still write a recipe book. Then someone with Aids,Going to Bend by Diane Hammond read by Hilary Huber

Another Nantucket version of Three Sisters, with three orphaned unmarried daughters living in the same old to-be inherited house. The sombre, fat, defensive A.B.D., teaching English at a Community College is writing a book about May Alcott - no, not Louisa May just May Alcott, her neglected younger sister.Island Girls by Nancy Thayer read by Cassandra Campbell

Short, spoiled and operatic is the 14 year old Persian Jewess who charms Gabe, the poor little rich foundling now living with Peter and Rena Decker. Gabe is a little lovable, a little weird, and very horny. But he is also a musical prodigy, with the lean blonde wits ofGun Games by Faye Kellerman read by Mitchell Greenberg

Miss Sophie Long is a Catholic School teacher who can't parallel park, until she meets Lois, Vietnam Vet, trained sniper, mechanic, and lesbian. They live in the same neighborhood as Morgan, a size 16-18 police detective with a demented mother. At some point, to make ends meet, Sophie and LoisRetirement Plan by Martha Miller read by Bernadette Dunne

A family is a system. For Annabelle, aka Tanya, aka Sienna aka Sophia, it is a rigorously cheerful, rigorously protective, rigorously mobile system. It packs up and moves every 18 months. Until Kansas City, when the system's mother drinks herself to death, and the rules are preserved byHide by Lisa Gardner read by Maggie-Meg Reed

Sit down at the kitchen table, have a cup of tea, and listen to the gossip, the rumours, the superstitions, the confabulations and conjurations of the people living in the village near Saint Anne's well, in the magic woods of Whitethorn, where everybody tells stories. For example,Maeve Binchy Whitethorn Woods read by Jenny Sterlin

Gruff, base, raspy, cutting: a voice with a fist wrapped around it. That sandpaper thing, that tough, tight, testosterone thing. That private dick thing, Slovak style. Ex-cop ex-husband Milan Jacovich spits out violently funny running commentary on the seraglio of rich snobbish dames, old time bosses and stubborn Slovenes that populateThe Cleveland Local by Les Roberts::Les Roberts

Dick Francis died in his home on the Cayman Islands. He was 89. A successful steeplechase jockey, Francis turned to writing after he retired from racing in 1957. He penned 42 novels, many of which featured racing as a theme. His books were translated into more than 20 languages, and inDick Francis 1921-2010

Has anyone else noticed a spectacular and embarrassing silliness among the old guard of East Coast scribblers? As though they were trying to write comic books, and couldn't figure out how to convert text into images? Gone are the wry, dry, street talk, the inside cracks of persons, cities, institutions.Capture by Robert Tanenbaum read by Charles Leggett

Another Wall Street soap opera about bourgeois boomie pretty boys in big trouble. Yes, we've got a situation here, as the Denver cops would say. Time to grab a big blonde with an MBA, rent a car, empty your bank account, and run. Fall in love with her on the road. Get shotThe Takeover by Stephen Frey read by Paul Hecht

The bored and boring life of a typically immoral English banker in the city of London in the 1960s.George Evans by A.F. Gillotti read by Philip Rose

Reacher heard the rack of the slide twenty feet behind him. He heard it very clearly. It was exactly the kind of sound he had trained himself never to miss. To his ears, it was a complete, complex split second symphony and every component registered precisely. The scrape of alloyBad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child read by Dick Hill