Stone Cold by David Baldacci. Read by Ron McLarty

Good idea, poorly executed.

19 Years of Reviews

The tired old technique of a text within a text popped in the microwave with a 2K twist: a mothers diary to her one year old son. The kid dies. Instant tear jerker, instant Oprah Book of the Year, instant Right to Life siege technology. Use it to dummify yourSUZANNE'S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS by James Patterson::Becky Ann Baker

Utterly charming tale of British advertising executive fed up with the petty hysteria of bosses, clients and ex-wives. He quits. He drives to the south of France, meets a beautiful real estate agent, and opens a hotel. But things are not so simple...Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle read by John Franklyn-Robbins

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

A catholic tailor used his life savings to go to the Vatican. When he returned his parish gathered to find out what he had seen. "What kind of a fellow is the Pope?" they asked him. "44 Medium," he said. This is the kind of obsession Buffet is lookingWarren Buffet's Management Secrets by Mary Buffett & David Clark. Performed by Mary Buffett.

Grace, who practices psychiatry on Manhattan Island, relays a story about one of her patients to the interviewer from Vogue: At a very early point in their relationship, before they were married, her husband told her that she had ugly feet. She accepted this, and having accepted this one instance ofYou Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz read by Christina Delaine

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

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.The Second Chance Cafe by Alison Kent read by Natalie Ross

Robin Cook gives us another SMART & NUTS type physician, a dysfunctional, adulterous, snivelling subjectivity with a license to practice concierge medicine in Boston. Some seven chapters into the book we realize that it is still George Guidall reading. Good narrators, like good waiters, disappear, imperceptibly.CRISIS by Robin Cook::George Guidall

Although less terrible than usual, Brick can't do funny. And this book can be funny. The ram rod straight CIA trainer; the queer, ruthless, demented Director of Operations; the stubborn, nerdish, accidentally lucky pseudo-operative determined to avenge his murdered girlfriend..... Then of course he bumps into a woman who canThe Amateur: A Novel of Revenge by Robert Littell read by Scott Brick

This is a charming very digestable story about one sister told by another. The sister in the spotlight is a freckled lovable morning news show host, with a perpetual trousseau of people who dress her, praise her, and advertise her friendship. A black limo brings herRise and Shine by Anna Quindlen read by Carol Monda

Wry, infinitely bored, softhearted ex-cop holes up in the Upper Peninsula, runs his snow plow up and down the block, and hangs out in a Scottish pub, drinking Canadian beer. Then trouble comes knocking at his door.... "You spend your whole life up here sitting in The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton read by Nick Sullivan

When and if you have to describe beauty don't do it from the front. Do it against the public eye, and against the visual. This is a book not a movie, so listen: He felt her looking at him, her eyes amused behind those little round glasses like the hippies usedBait by Kenneth Abel read by Frank Muller

Fri Feb 20, 2004 Interesting how beauty and moral corruption are coupled in Lescroart's typical female. Especially the typical female lawyer. Messaging sexuality, too rich, too smart, too independent, too competitive:: the wet dream bitch of every lawyer wearing panties underneath his three piece suit. The black-oriental female associate working at HardyThe Second Chair by John T. Lescroart

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

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