Category: Original narration

DOLL by Ed McBain read by

Ed McBain’s DOLL  (Pouty D, drag the O, tongue heavy on the

L.)  is bedtime reading.

The warped, lusty, utterly female voice of this slut-goddess kicks you in
the groin, cuffs you to the radiator, and feeds you sex and ham sandwiches. You, or rather Steve Carella, who rarely gets tangled up with beautiful women who are not his wife.
“You belong to me, D-o-l-l” she says to Steve Carella. And you do. Or want to. As does Steve Carella, detective and good guy of the 87th precinct.
Because this dom, this pungent and powerful crook, and girlfriend of crook, tortures him,
addicts him to heroine and milks him for information. Incredible unequalled performance by a doll.

A Certain Justice by P.D. James read by Simon Prebble

It is rare to hear the barely conscious memories of a powerful woman reconnoitring the dimensions of a frustrated girlhood. The wooden, joyless father, the servile, fearful, nervous mother, the rules, the order, the manners, the placements, the positions, the positionings of the dinner table, extended to the smallest sensations of everyday life. The monstrous, unending oppression.

Is it an English oppression? Perhaps. There is the painful, unhappy education of a displaced intelligence, a displaced sex, a displaced class; the oblivion of a female among the ritual insensibilities of English law, the infinite isolation of a woman, divorced, middle-aged, groomed.

And there are the small contradictions of a rational woman, uncertain in the face of her irrationality, her daughter.

The Road to Ruin by Donald E. Westlake Read by William Dufris

 

‘…This grand vehicle was a color not seen in nature… metallic, shimmering kind of not-chartreuse, not-gold, not-silver, not-mauve with just a hint of not-maroon….’

Thinks Kelp, not-thinking, not-talking to himself in a kind of not-Bronx, not-Queens, not-Staten Island, in-your-front-lawn five-borough accent while looking for a car to steal in Long Term Parking at JFK. Specifically, a car with an MD plate, cause doctors know about cars you can survive.

This is a book for New Yorkers over 40 who remember Mayor Lindsay and the Bronx before Co-op city and Queens before Balkanization.

Be prepared to laugh unstoppably in the middle of supermarkets. While waiting in line for plywood, ready for the next hurricane. With a mouthful of anything beginning with the letter B.

WILLIAM DUFRIS doing 5 ex-cons planning the kidnapping-that would-go-wrong at bowling alley volume is gut-funny, rib-funny, crotch-funny. A book to be not-read, not-spoken but laughed out loud.

Remarkable.

Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews read by Bernadette Dunne

Geek gaming firm with mascots (wounded buzzard, psychopathic dog) sets up shop in small Western town but needs a Wendy to clean up and organize the Peter Pans. Enter Californian Meg Lanslow to clean up their books – and before she finds out whats going on everybody’s least favorite programmer is murdered…. Is it the shrink with a radio show who gives advice to lovesick husbands? Is it the nasty capitalist landlord? Is it one of the temps? Funny, witty and perfectly read by the singular voice of Bernadette Dunne.

Seize the Night by Dean Koontz read by Keith Szarabajka

As Marcus Aurelius would say, there are good mixtures and bad mixtures.

Consider: A man, a dog, a Ford Explorer.
An American, a surfboard, a wave. Or: an experiment, a scientist, the DOD.
Good or bad?

Koontz doesn’t say. But incredible the speed with which we move to position ourselves
behind the good, or the bad. Koontz is laughing at us, watching
the gymnastics. Scratch. Is this the good or bad mix? Give me my surfboard
and my cape. Bobbiedom or die.

Bobby? Bobby (the friend, the ancillary character, the SECOND) is without a doubt the
most rocking Californian surfer dude in a century of surfer dudes. (What a voice Szarabajka has. And isn’t it always a member of the mobile immigrant army that tells America what it is? Read Marx) Bobby is every immigrant girls dream of an American boy. Bobby is the dude in Apocalypse Now water-skiing behind the PT boat in the Mekong Delta.

Chorus:”Carpe noctum “…Carpe cervisum….” [seize the beer]

Best Quotes:

I am not forbidden to know the comfort of a woman, but I am denied
all but the most meager light. Therefore, every form of illumination is
imbued with a shimmering, erotic quality….
Among humankind, for every Moe, there are thousands of Curlys and Larrys.
The genetically engineered retro-virus was brilliantly conceived by my mom….who
somehow still had time to make terrific chocolate chip cookies.

Best Words: “bobbiedom” “urinom ania” “skegin”

Best Scene: Elevator
Message: “Absolutely NEVER accept a dinner invitation from a monkey, unless you know precisely what’s on the menu.”

THE GAME OF THIRTY by WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE ::FRANK MULLER:

Imagine Frank Muller doing   CZ Sakall, the jowly, bespectacled, hysterical Hungarian who cannot stop wiping his spectacles, shaking his head and concocting scenarios of doom … “today… its going to happen today…” etc.

The stammering, anxious NYC diamond dealer calls Jimmy McShane, well heeled ex-cop and private dick, who bodyguards him,  makes sure disaster doesn’t happen today, and strolls home. Home: to the walk-up on Christopher Street, to the  old hag sitting on her heavy ovaries,   to the next ex-girlfriend re-aligning his Chakras in the flat redecorated by his  old ex-girlfriend,  to the Zelda-esque client who asks him to find her pedophilic father’s killer. Hi, ho. Absolutely funny, absolutely cool, absolutely wonderful.