Reading: Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan read by Paul Hecht

Well crafted character flaws in this 21st century noir detective story with a cheating wife and an ex-circus dick.

19 Years of Reviews

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

"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

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

In his thuggy Italian voice, Ferrone rasps the staggeringly funny stretched-out Goombah logic of an ex con from Mulberry Street as he helps an ex-cop burgle a ritzy old-world Hotel and save Democracy. The two Italians stumble into the sub counter plot of a fanatic Cuban terrorist-doctor with a bad liver,Re-hearing: Vincent Patrick read by Richard Ferrone: Smokescreen

Big sisters play dirty. So do cops, wives, mothers. So do cities... like Memphis. As always the best mysteries revolve around the murder of a city. And this is one of the best: gritty, angry, twisted...Mississippi Noir. The giant A & W Root Beer mug shimmered over the rooftop of aA Little Death in Dixie by Lisa Turner read by Jeffrey Kafer

Adorable series that begins, improbably, with a scene from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth -- a seraglio of men sitting looking at a series of photos or paintings of women who are too beautiful to be real. But they are real. And they have a price. In this case, theCora Seton, Issued to the Bride, (books 1-4)

When a lawyer and a cop reconstruct the life of a pretty, jolly slut they recover hundreds of small, dishonourable wrongs, shameful and unpretty. Sandra Nichols loved to fuck, and she liked men, and she married them. And then she left them, and started again. Her children are a sad disarraySandra Nichols Found Dead by George Higgins::George Guidall

And it occurred to him that the most important thing about Rode was that he had no friends. Smiley was reminded of Buchner's fairy tale about the child left alone on the Earth, who finding no one to talk to went to the moon because it smiled atA Murder of Quality by John Le Carre read by Keith Lloyd

A decorator who wants to sell antiques on Long Island finds a dead body will doing an inventory for a wealthy woman. Not really about decorating and not really a mystery. Better Homes & Corpses by Kathleen Bridge read by Vanessa Daniels

Another silly and lovable murder mystery written by an out of work real estate agent? Well, let's see: Dixie Hemingway is a 32 year old ex-deputy living Sarasota, Florida, with her brother, the fireman, and his lover, Pablo, an undercover cop. She is a certified and insured andCuriosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement, performed by Julia Gibson

Let's just say that murders happened in the middle of other things: a cop, a lawyer, a fire investigator get up, they fight with their wives, they eat. Sometimes they think. The law is something they think about. How it came to be what it is, where it came from,ORIGIN & CAUSE by Shelly Reuben

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

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

Within the first minute and 34 seconds you know you are going to understand this book because Denning quotes James Dyson: "Of the world's ten largest corporations by revenue, 9 make big, heavy things, like cars." This is easy to follow, sensible stuff - and just the kind of obviousness thatThe Bull Hunter by Dan Denning

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 theFalse Memory by Dean Koontz read by Stephen Lang