Sukey's Favorite

Hark!
By Ed McBain
Simon & Schuster Audio, $26
5 hours abridged, cassette, ISBN 0743536754

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When it comes to police procedurals, nobody does it better than Ed McBain, and nobody gives voice to McBain's street-seasoned cops better than Ron McLarty does. Both show off their talents in Hark!, the latest 87th Precinct novel. The teasing, taunting master criminal known as the Deaf Man (though he may not be deaf) has returned, and he's dangling inscrutable clues to past and future crimes in front of Detective Steve Carella and his crew at the 87th. It takes a bit, but when Carella realizes that Adam Fen, the perp signing these missives, is an anagram for "Deaf Man," the lines he's stolen from Shakespeare begin to yield their lethal secrets. Let the gaming begin, but this game can be played by the good guys as well as the bad, and the real winners are the McBain fans listening in.

Crime time: the Poet is back

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Waiting in the wings these past six years hasn't diminished Robert Backus, aka the Poet, the brilliant FBI profiler who became what he profiled: a stealthy, savage serial killer. He's center stage again in The Narrows, Michael Connelly's intricately plotted sequel to his bestseller The Poet. Backus has just left a calling card—a desert grave with the remains of nine missing men. But that's only a sideshow; he's really after his former FBI colleagues. Retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch, Connelly's most complex and compelling character, and FBI agent Rachel Walling, who can never forget her Quantico mentor, Robert Backus, take the bait. Working together, at odds with the Bureau and often with each other, they know that they must go to the place where evil waits and face the Poet themselves. Deftly narrated by Len Cariou, this is Connelly at his best.


Back in Hiaasen heaven

The crime caper is Carl Hiaasen's beat, and it's hard to beat him at it. Set on his familiar, flamboyant Florida turf, Skinny Dip is filled with delightfully eccentric and eccentrically screwed-up characters, including Skink, ex-governor-turned-ecological-avenger of the endangered Everglades; Chaz, a real sleaze who abets the endangerment of the Everglades, then tries to kill his gorgeous wife; and Mick, the many-times-married island recluse who saves her. Once again Hiaasen shows us that crime doesn't pay—or as Karl Rolvaag (no, not Giants in the Earth Rolvaag), the pale blond Minnesotan cop who keeps two pale blond pythons as pets, describes it, a "case that wrapped itself up . . . where all the bad guys just canceled each other out and saved everybody the hassle of a trial." Narrator Barry Bostwick does a bang-up job and seems to be having as much fun reading as you'll have listening.


Did he or didn't he?

Super-rich, brilliant inventor John Snow is found dead in an alley near Mass General early on the morning he was scheduled for high-risk brain surgery: the procedure could have cured his dreaded, debilitating epilepsy, but might have cost him his memory. Did he kill himself or was he murdered? It's hard to tell, and that's what makes Keith Ablow's Murder Suicide, with well-paced narration by Kevin O'Rourke, so intriguing. To get the answer, forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger must first understand the complex Mr. Snow, then the motives of the many who might have wanted him dead—his wife, his mistress, his mistress' husband, his business partner, his estranged son, his obsessively possessive daughter, even his surgeon. It's a good one that will keep you guessing.


The thrill of Bill

With all the hoopla surrounding the book, you might not have heard that My Life, read by former President Clinton, is yours for the hearing, too. And this abridged audio version will take far less of your time to digest than the 900-page book.


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