Abuse of Power
By Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

Penguin Audiobooks, $16.95
3 hours ISBN 0140865071

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Little Boy Blue
By Ed Dee

Time Warner AudioBooks, $17
3 hours ISBN 1570424756

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Veritas
By William Lashner

HarperAudio, $18
3 hours ISBN 0694517895

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Cop tales

Rachel Simmons is a good cop, a widowed, single mother who wants to do her best. But she finds herself in a nest of nasties -- her male cohorts on the force don't take women, even policewomen, seriously unless it's for a little serious harassment. After Rachel witnesses police brutality at its worst and a cover-up at its best, she vows to go public, whatever consequences -- and there are consequences galore. The very title of this new Nancy Taylor Rosenberg novel, Abuse of Power, hints broadly at its content, and Lindsay Crouse's able performance helps make that content credible.

The two cops in Little Boy Blue by Ed Dee are seasoned NYPD detectives cut from classic New York-Irish cloth, and seasoned actor Len Cariou narrates with New York know-how. Investigating a multi-million dollar robbery at JFK that involved the murder of Johnny Boy Counihan, the son of a fellow policeman, detectives Ryan and Gregory find themselves nose to nose with both mainstream Mafiosi and the specialists who handle airport heists. The New York locale is colorfully and accurately evoked, and if you need a refresher course in tough-talk, more than liberally sprinkled with foul four-letterers, this is the tape for you.

My first encounter with criminal defense attorney Victor Carl was in William Lashner's wryly funny whodunit Hostile Witness. I was happy to hear from Victor again, still unabashedly pursuing the almighty dollar -- as he says, "Obscene wealth is the great American obsession and I am nothing if not patriotic."

Lashner's new novel, Veritas (HarperAudio, $18, 3 hours, 0694517895), read by Ken Howard, puts Victor in the middle of a murky mob power struggle just for starters. He's pulled into an even murkier situation when a skinny blonde, black leather-clad punker begs him to find out who killed her sister. Victor's interest picks up when he discovers that the blonde punker is a big-time heiress (in line for a big-time pickle fortune) and that the pot of gold at the end of this sordid rainbow is a hundred million dollars. What Victor doesn't realize is that this caper will have him searching for family secrets concealed in the mists of time and searching the mists of the rainforests of Belize for the one man who knows all the secrets and may have all the money. Lashner has a cynical take on the world in general and on cops, criminals and lawyers in particular, but that only amplifies his well-crafted plots, snappy dialogue and ability to keep the suspense level high. I hope Victor and his clever, genuinely moral sidekick Morris Kupustin (the only orthodox Jew in the P.I. business) will be back on the sleuth scene soon again.

Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month. Don't miss her audio book reviews on CNN's Sunday Morning.

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