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Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

It is the story of a happy Captain of a sinking ship. It is the story of Chernobyl, afterwards. It is the story of provisional investigators, provisional policemen, provisional scientists who are provisionally accepted as the mad inhabitants of a zone officially uninhabited, in which no crime officially occurs. The mood is of a cocktail party on an asteroid hurtling toward earth. There we find Arkady, sullen, stubborn, singular, biting at radioactive pickles (“Crisp, tasty, and with a touch of strontium”) and asking questions.

False Memory by Dean Koontz read by Stephen Lang

If you’re going to murder somebody, ten to one there’s an old Cheez Doodle underneath the front seat of your car. Which is why Cheez Doodles have become some of the very best indicators of feloniousness among otherwise reasonable novelists like Dean Koonz, Jim Hall and Harlan Coben.

Think of the genetic misfit in Mr. Murder; the ex-mafia garrotist in Mean High Tide or the usurist’s thugs in Chinaman’s Chance. It’s not enough to be a psychopath, youve got to be a psychopath with a neurosis, a psychopath with a sweet-tooth, or a psychopath with a hard on for Frito-Lay.
Too often, the eating habits of terminally guided goons have taken a back seat to other seemingly more exciting personality traits…Narcissism, for example.
Consider the thoughts of the once beautiful assassin with the dreadful
new face in The Marching Season as the girls in the street, the waitresses, the laundrette,
stop looking at him, stop flirting with him, stop liking him. Tragic? No;
ugliness is just points to a misguided gene pool, a fucked up son, a joke
against a father.

The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts read by Michael Prichard

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 Cleveland Local by Les Roberts::Les Roberts

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 populate Cleveland Society, while looking for a killer.

The Enemy Within by Larry Bond read by Michael Russotto

Your average everyday Mohammedan maniac, trained
by your friendly neighbourhood terrorist, puts on a baseball cap,whistles
‘Freebird’ and disintegrates the 14th street bridge, the Dallas-Ft Worth
Airport, and suburban D.C. before his Tourist Visa even expires. Welcome
to America, stay as long as you want, come back anytime.

The Weatherman by Stephen Thayer read by George Guidall

Incongruous, unlovable, post-Vietnam:

a weatherman and a reporter make the Minnesota TV newsroom hummm. Dixie

Quinn locks into the weather and doesn’t let go. Rick Beanblossom, burn-victim,

works behind the scenes, behind his mask. Their curious, uneven characterizations

are ambushed midway by a grim, hopeless plot.

Quotes: “Y’all take care now” (The weatherman’s last words)

19 Years of Reviews

Not all old women from the South are funny. Only the ones who know what they don't want, and what they want: All I want in this life is a reasonable man who's self supporting, who's nice to me, funny, you know, likes straight sex, not role playing modelled onThe Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank read by Nanette Savard

It is not unusual for women's books to lay out women in groups, like a plate of madeleines, a silver tray of cream cakes. But this circle of quilters is not a dainty or delicate array. Chiaverini quilts stories about a dozen or so women who quilt, whose separate livesJennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilting Series narrated by Christina Moore

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

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

Two mothers. Iris, mother of the bride, is pushy, ambitious, Jewish, overpresent, and proud of her Red Hook genealogy, which can be traced back to the Battle of the Bulge. But Iris is not exactly a local. Yes, every summer Iris comes back to the oceanfront Queen Anne house,Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman read by Kimberly Farr

Rest, it seems, is a peculiarly English thing. Restfulness in all its timorous, melancholic glory cushions the indoor lives of Oscar and Dorrie Livingstone, in a peculiarly English way. Not as the accidental sidebar of an otherwise busied existence but as an aspiration, a calling, a rigorous end in itself.A Friend From England by Anita Brookner read by Cherie Lunghi

No, this is not a book about a new pope. It is about a Roman Catholic arson investigator-ette. Of course, she's blonde. And she has a huge, overprotective, overloving and overlovable family who teach us right and wrong and manners, like old Italian recipes that work. Joyce Bean reads Nora Roberts: Blue Smoke

Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me hard boils the story from the start: London as the small bad city with its own 87th precinct: Brant, who cuts a bit off the top of every drug bust, makes himself loved by women, plays laid back surfer dude copCalibre by Ken Bruen read by Gerard Doyle

For those who do not like the Judge Knott series, Maron has penned this sweet perfectly turned out book about an heiress, an illustrator, granddaughter of a legendary children’s book publisher. Meek, sensitive, submissive as both wife and publishing executive, Amy Steadman finds herself alone, driving to theLast Days of Summer by Margaret Maron read by Kate Forbes

A bouquet of accidents pop up at the beginning of the story: a cab crash in Manhattan, a car crash in Darien, Connecticut, an overdose in Mitford...For the rest of this story, the notion of accident is under erasure. What after all is an accident? Is the housing crisis anThe Accident by Linwood Barclay read by Peter Berkrot

An unusual and captivating account of a Manhattan social scene rapt by cocaine, bondage, dying gays and too much money. Vince Cardozo as the NYPD detective lieutenant who is pretty enough and straight enough to correct wrongs and fall in love at the same time... Privileged Lives by Edward Stewart narrated by Christian Rummel

Good idea, poorly executed.Stone Cold by David Baldacci. Read by Ron McLarty

A house too old, with too many rooms and too many academics -- all the elements of a ghost story, without a ghost. Summer dissolves into eating, gardening, coupling, and conjecture: who is in the house?Someone in the House by Barbara Michaels read by Barbara Rosenblat

It is not enough to attach 5 generations of women to a tree or a patch of trees to give them character. Yes, one is very old, and one is a felon, and one was a stewardess, and one slept with a dozen different men each time she wanted toThe Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller read by Karen White

The slightly hysterical, staccato reading misses the funny lines. And Dick just doesn't sound sexy. Too bad, because this book is both funny and sexy. Indeed, the sex scenes could pass for light porn.... The CIA guy is as wholesome and loveable and American as Special K. He rents fastKiss Me While I Sleep by Linda Howard read by Dick Hill & ...