Sukey's Favorite

Purple Cane Road
By James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster Audio, $25
ISBN 0671582151

Buy or borrow this book!

Support your local independent bookseller

Find it in a WorldCat library

Compare prices at major online bookstores

On the road to murder

Purple Cane Road, set in the sultry, shimmering heat of the southern Louisiana bayou country, is James Lee Burke's absorbing, evocative addition to his best-selling Dave Robicheaux series. Abruptly confronted with information about his mother's unseemly death more than 30 years ago, Dave finds the crimes of the past mingling with the crimes of the present. Thinking about his mother, who left him as a child, opens old wounds and makes his current investigations all the more critical. It's just possible that the men who killed her are still around, worse yet, still on the police force and still brutal, corrupt, and capable of murder. And it's possible that Dave's probing of the past, and the present, has put him in their line of fire. When Burke is good -- and he's better than good here -- he's up there with the best writers of crime fiction, and when Will Patton reads in perfect Cajun cadences, the combo -- and the audio -- is outstanding.

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Lots of listening on love and more

Basil is a big, handsome, ex-pro-football player who now makes big bucks as a player's agent. Yancey, ambition oozing out of every pore, is a gorgeous, talented star-on-the-rise, who will do almost anything to be a Broadway headliner. They meet in E. Lynn Harris's animated, often X-rated, new novel, Not a Day Goes By, fall madly in love, and plan to live happily ever after. Then . . . each one discovers things about themselves and things about each other that may make dreams of marital bliss fade before they've even begun. Basil's former love life was active and varied, and he'd like some of those variations to remain his secret. Yancey has some uncomfortable secrets too, a career-crazed lifestyle, and a blinding desire for money. Can these two complex people make it together? I won't tell -- you'll just have listen to Rocky Carroll's right-voiced, well-paced reading of this unabridged audio.


The ways of our lives

He is more than twice her age and married; his children are older than she is. But Guy and Marion fell in love. Now, after seven years of meeting in secret, Guy has left his wife and announced to his family that he is marrying Marion. So begins Marrying the Mistress, Joanna Trollope's charmingly understated, keen-eyed look at the workings of Eros in our increasingly complicated contemporary world. Both Guy and Marion are very appealing and their anguish at going public with their very private love strikes a resonant chord that says much about life as it's lived at the beginning of this new century. And Lynn Redgrave's perfectly pitched, polished performance makes one wish to hear more.


More Lynn and more love

Lynn Redgrave makes an immediate audio encore (per request) as she deftly narrates Rosamunde Pilcher's big bestseller, Winter Solstice. This is classic Pilcher -- sweet, but never saccharine, romantic, but never overwrought. Here, we meet Elfrida, a wonderfully warm-hearted former actress with a slightly checkered past, who at 62, buys a small, comfy cottage in a quaint country village where all seems infinitely tranquil. But even in this setting tragedy can strike, and when it hits her closest friends, Elfrida follows her impulsive instincts and finds herself in a tender tangle with four people who need her and need love -- a man of her own age, two romantically distressed 30-somethings, and a teenager without a real home. If you know Pilcher's novels, you'll know it all comes right in the end and if you tend toward tears, keep the Kleenex handy.


Science at its best

Best of series are booming and blooming. Maybe they've been spurred on by the advent of the new millennium; maybe publishers have figured out that good audiences get better when offered the best. Whatever, I'm delighted that a fascinating "best" has finally made an audio appearance -- The Best American Science Writing 2000 edited by James Gleick, with 11 unabridged essays by some of the finest thinkers and writers in their fields. It's an extraordinary treat to be entertained and to learn at the same time. And that's what happens here as you listen to these estimable scientists and professional journalists who make the complex, creative world of cutting-edge science accessible, involving, and exciting for an interested "dummy." Selections include Natalie Angier on the importance of cavewoman couture, Atul Gawande on doctors who make mistakes, Oliver Sachs on his childhood passion for numbers and chemistry, Susan McCarthy on the evolution of evolutionary psychology, Douglas R. Hofstader on analogy as the core of cognition, and more.


Tense time

When Dr. Will Jennings starts to pray that his little girl is still alive midway through this 10-hour, nerve-racking, nail-biter, you'll be praying with him. That's because Greg Iles has packed enough tension-drenched terror and tight plot twists into his latest super-duper-thriller-diller, 24 Hours, read by the always able Dick Hill, to keep those icy fingers racing up and down your spine. It may only be 24 hours, but for the family targeted by a maniacally clever psychopath, it's an agonizing eternity. His plan is simple: kidnap the kid, threaten the father, sexually abuse the mother, get the money, and run. It's worked five times before, why not once more. The "why not" turns out to be Will and his wife Karen, two people this monster hasn't counted on.


© 2000 ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com