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A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton read by Wendy Tremont King

Jealous, child-bearing women live and love.

Better Homes & Corpses by Kathleen Bridge read by Vanessa Daniels

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.

The Second Chance Cafe by Alison Kent read by Natalie Ross

Hope Springs: A foster child lovingly raised in an old Victorian house comes back, buys the old house, and opens up a Bakery Cafe where she can sell her special brownies.

Everything to Lose by Andrew Gross read by Tavia Gilbert

“It was no longer about the money, it was that innocent people had died.” This insincere, formulaic, unremarkable thought is thought yet again by Hilary the victim in the 68th Chapter of this disappointing ‘thriller’. Another poor and pretty mother, another psychopath, another Asperbergers child. Who cares?

Tidewater Inn by Colleen Coble read by Devon O’Day

Libby, an archeological historian who works on historic preservation is informed that she has inherited a run down inn in a beach town where her father lived. “Why isn’t this place in the historical register?” she asks the Sheriff, who is helping her find her kidnapped friend. The kidnapping makes a semi romantic semi coming-into-money story into a (bad) mystery. Asking “What would Jesus do?” turns a (bad) romantic mystery into (bad) Christian fiction. Good narrator, though.

Lisa Gardner, Touch & Go

Lisa Gardner is a genius at thesis statements. My favorite is: “a family is a system” (Hide). Or maybe: “A computer is a portal, you know, an entry point into your home.” (The Neighbor)

This book’s thesis statement is: “Pain has a flavor.” And like all good thesis statements, it tells you what the book is about.

And like all of Gardner’s books, Touch & Go bubbles and boils and troubles in all the right ways. Yeppers, this is a thriller. But does it have to give such an ugly picture of the family, of fatherhood, of wealth? Must you listen to another 5 hours of human beings torturing, humiliating, or degrading other human beings. This isn’t the evening news.

If you find yourself skipping one track, then another, and another, just turn off the audio. Isn’t that better?

19 Years of Reviews

There are very few perfect beginnings to a story. Beginnings which move through images at the same rate as they move through text, rolling into a plot detectibly, sensibly, unhurriedly. A boy, for example, making the rounds on his bicycle, delivering the daily papers: ...At Colonel and Mrs Easterbrook's,A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

Matt Payne is back, attracting bullets and bad guys and the failed sons and daughters of old Philadelphian society, and WEB Griffin is in fine form in the digital age, as romantic and jolly as always. But instead of showing us into the salons and bedrooms and backbenches ofThe Traffickers by W.E.B. Griffin read by Scott Brick

I am reading, no hearing, a beautiful book where a photograph is described: This is us when we are happy is not the message that Alice Roosevelt's wedding delivers...and unlike Alice Roosevelt who continued to be an unrepentant thorn in her father's side even after Teddy's death, allThe Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins read by Bernadette Dunne (!)

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

Mary and Neil are cousins: sort of, by adoption. They were once, possibly, in love. Neil has returned to Mason, Ohio where he is related to just about everybody, for a summer. He is helping an Aunt turn an oyster of a house into a bed and breakfast. Mary is marriedThings We Once Held Dear by Ann Tatlock

In some possible Doris Day movie about a perky blonde secretary and a rich executive bachelor there is a perpetual secretarial pool typing out Nora Roberts novels in time to Sinatra or Liszt. There is no Nora Roberts. There is a pool of Nora Roberts, a herd of Nora Roberts,The Nora Roberts Pool

Michael Cantela is the youngest winner of the Investment Advisor of the Year at the elite investment firm of Saxton Silvers. He has a knack for making rich people richer, an apartment on Sutton Place, an unemployed wife, and an eight or nine figure personal portfolio. ThatMoney To Burn by James Grippando, narrated by Jonathan Davis

Quiet, patient, relentless intelligence spills over the pages of this story about a girl geek, a journalist, a news magazine devoted to the critique of corrupt Swedish institutions, and an odd assemblage of Stockholm's thugs, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and cops. None are verbose. Men and women think. Thinking happens withoutThe Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson read by Simon Vance

Another case for Molly (Moonshine) Smith, Trafalgar constable, blonde, widow and skier. When Cathy Lindsay, housewife and teacher is shot in the back while walking her dog Spot, the town can't figure it out. We are introduced to the dead woman's fat unfaithful husband, her delinquent son, her gossipy colleagues, but mostlyA Cold White Sun by Vicki Delany read by Carrington Macduffie

Women are trained to make excuses for bad behavior. Here are some for Stuart Woods' latest fictions: 1. Since James Bond, we all know that there are no married heroes of crime novels. Stone Barrington can't survive as Stone: cool, urban, sexual gourmand, in married bliss. The minute Stone married ArringtonSon of Stone: Drek II

Well crafted character flaws in this 21st century noir detective story with a cheating wife and an ex-circus dick. Reading: Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan read by Paul Hecht

Before Patricia Cornwell, before CSI, did anybody read dead bodies or examine them for traces of their killer? Yes, as it happens. Where there are bodies, there are secrets and where there are secrets, there are readers. Gaudinus the African, for example, who remembers people only by diseases, andThe Mistress of the Art of the Dead by Ariana Franklin read by Roslyn Landor

Once upon a time, when the Bronx was a happy Italian village full of children in Catholic school uniforms, public schools measured reading levels in Grades: first grade, second grade, third grade. Easy peasy. Consider your contemporary girly fiction, focused on 29 year old nitwits going shopping: second grade reading2nd Grade Reading Level Mysteries

The lines are drawn quickly - boom boom boom. Here is Israel, here is Russia, here is history. Here is crime, here is terror. Here stands Gabriel Allon: here, on the side of art. And Ivan stands here on the side of death. Like a Tarot layout. There is a bird's Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

The House of UnAmerican Activities Committee (on which sits Dick Nixon) is looking for Communists, and finds a few poor schmucks in Hollywood. Some Jews are inquisitioned, black-listed, and disappeared from the credits. Their words are found in screenplays by unknowns from Wyoming and Maine. Other JewsBeverly Hills Dead by Stuart Woods read by Tony Roberts