Sukey's Favorite

Point to Point Navigation
By Gore Vidal
Recorded Books, $34.99
10 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 9781428112971

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Point to Point Navigation, Gore Vidal's second memoir, doesn't start where Palimpsest, his first (published in 1995) left off. That's not the Vidalian style. He prefers to meander elegantly and eloquently back and forth in time, tossing off bons mots, epigrams, fabulous takes on the famous folk who have peopled his life and offering his opinions on much of recent history and contemporary culture. Though the dates in the subtitle are "1964 to 2006," Vidal talks about his parents and his early years, including a wonderful riff on the influence of movies on his generation and especially on him. He reads his memoir himself, making it even more appealing. I'd heard him speak many times and knew how witty he could be, but never realized what a fabulous mimic he is; you'll think you're actually hearing snips of Capote, Tennessee Williams, JFK, Nixon and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Serial savagery

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Though The Devil's Feather, excellently read here by Josephine Bailey, is Minette Walters' 11th suspense novel, I'd never read or listened to her before. That was a big mistake: Walters is too good to miss if you like a well-written, well-crafted psychologically complex thriller with characters and situations that stay with you long after the last CD stops spinning. When Reuters war correspondent Connie Burns was in Sierra Leone, she picked up on a story about a serial killer who had brutally butchered five women. In Baghdad, she crosses the path of the British mercenary she suspected and begins digging into the story again. Then Connie becomes his victim, abducted, tortured, raped and so traumatized that she cuts herself off from everyone she knows and retreats to a ramshackle house in Dorset that holds secrets of its own. Now Connie waits, knowing her tormentor will track her down, that her life and sanity depend on confronting him.


Haunted Harry

Harry Bosch cares more about the victim, murdered and voiceless, than any other crime fiction cop I can think of and that's just for starters. Harry may joke about the "way of the true detective," but he does his damnedest to follow it. In Michael Connelly's 11th Bosch-based, polished procedural, Echo Park, Harry, working in the Open Unsolved Unit, is still haunted by the 1993 murder of Marie Gesto. Suddenly, he's told that a man picked up with a bag of bloody human remains has confessed to the Gesto murder, among others. Joining the interview team, Bosch begins a roller-coaster ride through a maze of police department intrigue, big-time city politics, dirty cops and lying lawyers. On this wild ride, it takes all of Harry's rebel instincts, strong detective skills and terrier tenacity to get at the truth. Connelly is at his best, keeping the pace fast and the tension high, and narrator Len Cariou is his perfect performing partner.


Hardships, joys and sorrows

Alice Munro, one of the most acclaimed short story writers of our time, is a subtle master who never uses pyrotechnics to dazzle, but who dazzles nonetheless with her clarity and her complete control of language and mood, setting and character. And, luckily for audio aficionados, her clear, unadorned prose is a pleasure to listen to. The View from Castle Rock, faultlessly read by Kimberly Farr, is her most recent collection. Born and brought up in southwest Ontario, Munro delved deeply into her father's family history, going back to their Scottish origins in the late 17th century, and weaving some of their actual letters and a journal into the opening stories. The later section becomes more personal, as she spins her own childhood and coming-of-age into narratives that make the ordinary seem extraordinary.


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