Must-listen mysteries

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

For audio fans, here's a duo of Don't Miss Mysteries for the New Year—guaranteed to take your mind off those soon-to-be-discarded resolutions.

Detective Arkady Renko, still wearing his melancholy Russian soul on his sleeve, returns in Martin Cruz Smith's Wolves Eat Dogs. We are treated to an uncommon, insider's look at the new Russia, where high rollers live in sumptuous style and ordinary folk live as they did in the bleak days of Communism. It all begins as Arkady looks out the window of a swanky Moscow high-rise at the body of Pasha Ivanov, a prime specimen of the nouveau super-riche spawned by corrupt post-Soviet capitalism. The investigation that follows takes Renko into the Zone of Exclusion, where the horrific aftermath of Chernobyl still poisons the air, the food and the ground. Smith is in top form, adding vividly rendered characters and landscapes to a compelling plot, and he's ably assisted by Ron McLarty's fine-tuned, expertly accented narration.


Scarpetta returns

Cool, controlled, in-control Kay Scarpetta is front-and-center in Trace, Patricia Cornwell's latest bestseller, read by Kate Reading, who captures the very essence of Cornwell's characters. Called back to Richmond by the bullying, inept chief medical examiner who took her job five years ago, Dr. Kay, accompanied by her tough-talking sidekick Pete Marino, tackles the unexplained death of a 14-year-old girl. At the same time, her niece Lucy, the brilliant, edgy, ultra-successful owner of a shadowy "security" company, and Kay's lover, the equally brilliant Benton, are working on a seemingly unrelated case of stalking and attempted murder. But as Scarpetta pieces this forensic jigsaw puzzle together, the same grisly, psychopathic killer begins to emerge as the perp in both scenarios. If you thought the last Cornwell/Scarpetta offering faltered a bit, this one will more than make up for it.


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