Sukey's Favorite

Ordinary Heroes
By Scott Turow
Random House Audio, $44.95
12 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 0739322591

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"All parents keep secrets from their children. My father, it seemed, kept more than most." So begins Ordinary Heroes, Scott Turow's anything-but-ordinary novel, set during the calamitous last years of WWII rather than in his usual courtroom. The secrets belong to David Dubin, a "remote, circumspect man" who spoke little of his war experiences. They surface after his death, when his son finds letters to an unknown fiancée, evidence that he'd been court-martialed and, ultimately, David's own memoir describing the harsh reality of his war, a strange entanglement with a maverick OSS officer, horrific combat, lost comrades, lost innocence, found love. It's a strong, moving novel to read, but this audio presentation packs an even more powerful wallop. Maybe that's because I'm such an audio addict—or, more likely, it's Edward Herrmann's extraordinary performance. He not only does all the accents with seamless accuracy, he gets into David's roller-coastering emotions, his optimism, his anguish, his fear and his passion.

Money talks

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Women talk to women easily; they get down to the nitty-gritty, intimate details of relationships without much ado. But, when it comes to money, it's a very different story. With the input of financial experts, sociologists, psychologists and hundreds of women who have had trouble dealing with "filthy lucre," Liz Perle explores this perplexing phenomenon in Money, a Memoir. She got to this subject the hard way—a sudden reversal of fortune left her with her four-year-old son and without home, husband or job—and she weaves in her own experiences and ambivalent feelings about money, dependence and independence, offering insight and advice about reaching a realistic reckoning with material matters. Ms. Perle reads.


"Quite a moral tale"

The Honorable Charlie Mortdecai, an unabashedly unprincipled London art dealer with extravagant cravings for money, drink and prandial pleasures, who quips à la Oscar Wilde even when in dire distress ("I can stand anything but pain") and is "possessed of the intriguing remains of rather flashy good looks," made his print debut more than 30 years ago. Now, with his "Anti-Jeeves" factotum and trusty thug ("you can't run a fine-arts business nowadays without a thug"), Jock Strapp, at the ready, he makes his audio debut in Kyril Bonfiglioli's darkly comic Don't Point That Thing at Me, read in the deliciously honeyed cadences of the British upper class by Simon Prebble. There's a plot of sorts involving a stolen Goya, a very nasty member of a British "outsider police squad" who likes hurting people, a wild ride across the Wild West in a Rolls Royce and a supremely seductive widow. An over-the-top, oddball charmer.


Corpse de ballet

Coop—that's Alexandra Cooper, assistant D.A. in New York City's Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, for those of you who are not already fans of Linda Fairstein's best-selling series starring this feisty fighter for justice—is back in Death Dance, ably read by Blair Brown. Coop's crime-solving colleagues, investigators Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman, join her here as they probe the case of Natalya Galinova, a prima ballerina who disappeared during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, only to be found crumpled, bloodied and decidedly dead at the bottom of a massive cooling unit. It's not a sex crime, but Coop, a longtime dancer herself, wants in, little knowing that it might turn deadly for her, too. There are suspects galore, including a Broadway impresario-Lothario with an ego the size of Carnegie Hall, his hostile niece, an aristocratic patron of the arts and the Met's evasive artistic director. As always, the forensic and legal detail is right-on, as is the backstage backstabbing and intrigue.


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