NAVY Archives > recordedbookreview.com

Clean, streamlined writing by STEPHEN COONTS; as always, wonderful technical-mechanical

details of navy pilots planes and carriers; wry, politically prickly story
about NAVY officer-dom, post-war bureaucracy, and the flow of military
power-money.

19 Years of Reviews

Women are divisive. Among themselves and between their generations. Go to any academic women's conference and see for yourself. Or listen to Blair Brown's crisp, young, feminine voice reading The Senator's Wife. And listen for this divisiveness. In the pasteurized neighborly conversations of Miller's two women: the 37 year oldThe Senator's Wife by Sue Miller read by Blair Brown

A gentle voice with exacting intelligence mourns England, its living unemployed and its generation of tall, dead men: Where are the monstrous men with chests like barrels and moustaches like the wings of eagles who strode across my childhood's gaze twenty or thirty years ago? Buried, I suppose, in the FlandersThe Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell read by Richard Green

Another Wall Street soap opera about bourgeois boomie pretty boys in big trouble. Yes, we've got a situation here, as the Denver cops would say. Time to grab a big blonde with an MBA, rent a car, empty your bank account, and run. Fall in love with her on the road. Get shotThe Takeover by Stephen Frey read by Paul Hecht

Clean, streamlined writing by STEPHEN COONTS; as always, wonderful technical-mechanical details of navy pilots planes and carriers; wry, politically prickly story about NAVY officer-dom, post-war bureaucracy, and the flow of military power-money.The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts read by Michael Prichard

"Don't make any major changes in the first year" ... they say at AA. Matt Scudder has five or six weeks not to decide what he's going to do about Jan, a girl he sees Saturday night and Sunday morning ... "Some people say not to make any major changes forA Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block read by Tom Stechschulte

There is a yummy baked goods kitchen feeling, because the woman baking the cookies has an organized sense of her world, she has friends, one dead and one living ex-husband, girl-children, and flour in her pantry. But -- and there are 50 years worth of buts-- she also has aThe Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman read by Gabra Zackman

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

Imagine overhearing the comments of secretaries, girlfriends, GS-11s, GS-18s, CIA heads of station, assistants to CIA heads of station, busty, born-again Texan society matrons, outrageously charming right-wing politicians with more friends than God, superstitious immigrants and sons of immigrants, Muj(ahadeen) terrorists, Afghani torturers, Pakistani tyrants, Egyptian defenseCharlie Wilson's War by George Crile read by Christopher Lane

It is the story of a happy Captain of a sinking ship. It is the story of Chernobyl, afterwards. It is the story of provisional investigators, provisional policemen, provisional scientists who are provisionally accepted as the mad inhabitants of a zone officially uninhabited, in which no crime officially occurs. TheWolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

Remarkable introduction to a remarkable detective novel. The introduction explains that Crofts was an engineer who mapped out detailed specifications for his detective fiction much the way an engineer would draw up plans for a house or a bridge. Knowing this transforms the way we read and appreciate theThe Hog's Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts with an introduction by Martin Edwards read by Gordon Griffin

Slow, cloddish, cumbersome and overcooked dialogue stretches across this morality play about an ugly presidential election. Add the 'aching sadness' and 'fatal failures' and 'eyes shining with tears' of flat white characters, but read on. Hear the slimy campaign advise of slimy campaign managers: "Girlfriend is bad. BlackThe Race by Richard North Patterson Narrated by Michael Boatman

Constructed as a series of letters to a slightly fay, newly divorced, 45 year old antiques expert, this whodunit offers criminality inset in decorating news and auction house frippery. Mrs. Sterling Glass is keeping her ex-husband's last name because "who would give up the nameStealing with Style by Emyl Jenkins read by Linda Stephens

One reason to write books is that you can name your chapters — more than just One, Two. You can name a chapter “Visiting Nora at Nova Scotia Rest Hospital”. Out of nowhere appears a book about Jacob from Halifax who was born in the reading room of the Halifax FreeMy Darling Detective by Howard Norman

The first murder victim is a horror list of character flaws with L.A. citizenship: 1. She could not be bothered to make the car payments on the first of each month, even though her parents took care of the down payment. 2. She lives in a dump in ShermanCompulsion by Jonathan Kellerman read by Rubenstein

The Ninilta Native Association is run by Aunties - fierce old women who knit and protect native women and define the small life of the large territory called The Park. One of the Aunties belongs to Kate Shugak and functions, among other things, as a creditor. We give you time, Katya.A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow read by Bernadette Dunne