Sukey's Favorite

Doctored Evidence
By Donna Leon
$31.95, 7.5 hours
CD, ISBN 1572704179

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In her classy, literate, atmospheric Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series, Donna Leon takes readers—and now listeners—to a Venice that tourists rarely see. That's the plus in crime fiction with an international setting; here you get canals, but you also get real life Italian style, life that's not exactly la dolce vita. Another plus in this series is Commissario Brunetti himself, a charming, compelling, believable character who works tirelessly, often at odds with his less scrupulous colleagues, to solve the crime and find the perp (or the Italian equivalent thereof). You'll find him—and Venice—in unabridged presentations of Doctored Evidence and Uniform Justice ($34.95, 8 hours, CD, ISBN 1572704187) recently released by Audio Partners. Both are read by David Colacci, who gives them the right Italian accent without ever overdoing it.

Move over, Bridget Jones

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

If you bundled the feisty, irrepressible Bridget Jones (sans weight problem) with a fearless Jane "007" Bond and starred her in "The Perils of Pauline Does the War on Terror" with al Qaeda operatives rampant, you might get a rough picture of Helen Fielding's wryly witty take on today's world. The very title of her latest ¦uvre, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, narrated with the right flounce and flair by Josephine Bailey, offers a clever clue of the fun to come. Olivia, a journalist with a yen to be a spy, or at least a foreign correspondent, gets her wish and, armed with her invaluable "Rules for Living" and a multipurpose hat pin, has a go at a terrorist cell and—no surprise—saves the day and gets the cute guy.


Park Avenue princesses

If the ultra-rich Park Avenue dames in The Right Address seemed a tad self-centered, the Park Avenue 20-somethings in Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes, read by Sonya Walger, will make them look like beneficent benefactors of the downtrodden. Terminally selfish, world-class shopoholics, these girls think self-esteem comes from an alpha-beta face peel and happiness from Chloe jeans; they're so shallow that you want to shake the Manolos right off their magnificently manicured tootsies and tell them to get real—whatever that means to airhead heiresses. But Sykes, a Vogue editor who knows this glam turf well, swirls her satire with sly humor to give this chick-lit romp a bit of an edge.


Finding the funny side

Comedian David Brenner thinks we should see everything—even life's devastating blows—through a "veil of humor." To that noble and honorable end, he gives us I Think There's Another Terrorist in My Soup, a second dose of "life according to Dave" that promises and delivers a surefire way "to survive personal and world problems with laughter." And though his irreverent take (expressed in decidedly irreverent language) on marriage, children, sports, the weather and aging may not bring peace to the Middle East or lower the federal deficit, it will give your funny bone more than a tickle.

His family's foibles and his own fuel more of David Sedaris' laugh-out-loud essays, which cover the everyday, the absurd and the outrageous as only he can. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, will only add to his status as a national humor treasure. Sedaris writes wonderfully, but it's really more fun to listen to him: his timing is perfect, his voice made for these quirky, at times poignant, always wickedly funny tales. As I've done before, I have to add this caveat: driving while under Sedaris' influence may cause accidents—you'll be laughing too hard to see the road.


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