The Wedding Gift by Lisa Kevin > recordedbookreview.com

Remarkably lean and unfussy novelette about a female chef who rediscovers that experimentation is the best part of cooking…

19 Years of Reviews

Another alcoholic ex-cop running a bar? Yes! This time in Fort Myers, living every cop's retirement dream: living on a houseboat, dating a Cuban woman and solving murders on the side. It's good. From the very first paragraph Jack feels like a detective, sounds like a detective, and makes it clear thatThe Dollar-A-Year Detective by William Wells

Arkady, the permanently grim, dejected, despondent Moscow cop wants another autopsy done on the body of a prostitute and finds his old friend Willie at the morgue, having moved in. Immense and unshaven, Willie Pezenko shuffled around the morgue like a wooly mammoth in an operating gown. A cigarette hungThree Stations by Martin Cruz read by Ron McClarty

A book for a long inside day waiting for a hurricane or a war.... about a man wired by a dream not necessarily of being a cop but of being the good guy in the uniform, a hacker-ette, and a dog..... and about dainty compassionate dinner hour executions by Roy, your average, everyday,Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz read by

The last of the Rabbi Small series narrated with an annoying over-aggressive punkishness by Guidall -- to intimate, perhaps, the intellectual aggression of Rabbi Small, the clever not-to-be socialized puzzle solver and prayer leader of the Conservative Jews of Barnard's Crossing Massachusetts. The characters are at least as aliveThe Day the Rabbi Resigned by Harry Kemelman read by George Guidall

Warped, lusty, utterly female voice of this slut-goddess kicks you in the groin, cuffs you to the radiator, and feeds you sex and ham sandwiches. "You belong to me, D-o-l-l" she says to Steve Carella. And you do. Or want to. As does Steve Carella, detective and good guy ofDOLL by Ed McBain (Pouty D, drag the O, tongue heavy on the L.)

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:

A nympho wine reviewer with a boyfriend who doesn't like to fuck on boats looks for a killer in San Francisco. But there are no localized mappings, detailing the city or its' neighborhoods, except for traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Likewise, don't expect any happy wine tasting menuDeath in a Wine-Dark Sea by Lisa King

Because this is a women's book you will read about a man, probably a husband, and he will be successful and fit and when he dies he will leave his wife betrayed, in debt and uninformed.Widow's Waltz by Sally Koslow

We all have an aunt or a grandmother who likes to mourn. But in the March family there is a maiden aunt who only comes to visit when the family is in mourning - and doesn't go away until another family member dies…. Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourne

Ethically demented, seriously ambitious police detective brutalizes innocent, unthinking little boy. Heartwrenching. A must for prosecutors.The Rag and Bone Trade by Robert Cormier

For years the facile, monarch-note like introductory blurbs of audiobooks have been aimed at delayed airline passengers looking forward to a two or three hour seat in a jet on hot tarmac. As nonlocalizably uninformative as the pilot, but more or less referential. The introduction to Robin Cook's CriticalCritical by Robin Cook read by George Guidall

Bennie's office of girls has moved uptown, and become a good hair office. The Good Italian Catholic girl and the Giant California Blonde combine glib girly gall with smart search skills to reconstruct, redress and prosecute a 60 year old wrong. Mary (GIC-girl) is obsessed with an old case aboutLisa Scottoline read by Kate Burton:: Mary goes to Missoula

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

Wonderful, well developed characters modeled on silly, overchewed, Oprah-certified victim-types. The victim of an alcoholic, depressive, schadenfreude-mother, the victim of a childhood kidnapping by a pedophile, the victim of an unforgiving corrections system, the victim of overwhelming emotions, overwhelming fears, overwhelming doubts, of poor parents, poor teachers, poor morals, poorThe Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

The open-faced innocence of Anna Field's voice offers up a ripe acoustical image of a woman artist in New York: Faith Crowl. Faith is commissioned by an old and wealthy New York City socialite to paint the ballroom of her storied mansion in trompe l'oeil. Faith accepts, reluctantly, afterTrick of the Eye by Jane Stanton Hitchcock read by Anna Fields