State of Fear by Michael Crichton read by George Wilson

Sharpen your pencils, open your looseleaf, sit up, take notes. This is an impressive, intelligent, well researched white-paper-thriller about silly, soppy, environmental theories and the well-funded, well publicized, well-established bureaucracies which profit by circulating them.

‘State of Fear’ is the coinage of a ‘Mental Ecologist’ whose hysterical critique of a toxic educational system and a Schumpeterian intellectual class is dead on.

There’s a cute, sissy lawyer; two femdoms; a kindhearted millionaire; and a handful of pissy, recognizable assholes: TV newsmen, marketing executives, graduate students, spoiled, wealthy wives with pet causes…..

Not idiot friendly. Thanks for that, MC.

Posted Date: 12/20/2004 8:09 pm

19 Years of Reviews

What happens to a hard cop in a hard city in an era below good and evil.Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh

Like Grace in Warren Adler's Mourning Glory, Fleur seduces very wealthy widowers at funerals. Fashionable, flamboyant and sexually gifted, she moves in to Richard Favour's estate, charms his family, and plays out her usual scam. First, she borrows an American Express Platinum Card which draws on the widower's bank account,The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham read by Katherine Kellgren

There is something annoying, something unsettling, something demoralizing about a story in which all the women are either murder victims, embittered but useless mothers, faithful, ineffectual wives, or sexually charged students with dancers' bodies. Annoying, too, is witnessing an entire small town turn against an innocent man and his brainyThe Bone House by Brian Freeman read by Joe Barrett

Like listening to a brand new Stones album (if you're old enough to know what an album is...) If a video of you coveting your neighbor's wife captured the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 would you rally to the Flag and turn it in? Night Fall is full ofNIGHT FALL by Nelson Demille Narrated by Scott Brick

Three women who are discontent present the traditional female problems, but unhinge these problems in different ways. One woman whines about her husband not wanting to pay for yet another IVF treatment; another woman whines about her unfaithful husband; another whines about being alone. But by the end of this story, noneA Secret Wish by Barbara Freethy narrated by Amy Rubinate

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

We find the troublesome, 62 year old Detective Inspector in bed after a back operation, popping Percocets and abusing the hospitality of her ex-husband's new wife. Within a week she is thigh deep in a case of abduction, with a scene of crime and a bloody victimThe Taken by Inger Ash Wolf, read by Bernadette Dunne

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

An intimate look at the arrangements, organization and order of small town French village life, through the eyes of the jovial, wise and well fed chief of police, for "...not a single pig made it to market without some part of it being offered as part tribute part toll toBruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker read by Robert Ian MacKenzie

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

In a small town in bourgeois Massachusetts, the wife of an NSA agent is killed by a car bomb as she starts up her husband's car. It seems obvious that the bomb was directed at the husband, but Jennifer, the twin of the dead wife, is not so sure. SheDeadly Codes by JP O'Donnell

A girl detective who can speak a thousand languages, with her own personal Saint, New York City's District Attorney as her father, and an ex Viet-Cong guerrilla as a nanny -- only Robert Tanenbaum (and the City itself) could conjure up the sad, inscrutable Lucy Karp. As always when weRobert Tanenbaum Malice read by Mel Foster

What begins as a story about a girly James Dean with two wicked sisters and a drunk mother becomes a story about a CPW apartment building and its history, its doorman, its neighbors. Tina Finn is outrageous and outraged, at everyone with a bank account or a stable identity, at herTwelve Rooms With A View by Theresa Rebeck read by Marguerite Gavin

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 (!)

No mystery here. Lots of recipes, though. Maybe you could play it in the kitchen, as background noise for baking chocolate cake. Devil's Food Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke performed by Suzanne Toren