Sukey's Favorite

Reporting Live
By Leslie Stahl
Simon & Schuster Audio, $25
6 hours
ISBN 0671579002

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Leslie Stahl doesn't tell all in Reporting Live, and, in today's world, that's a welcome relief. Stahl is and was, to use non-PC words, a "career girl" with a capital "C"; she knew what she wanted, went for it, and got it. Along the way, she married -- and has stayed married -- and had a daughter who means the world to her. But, Stahl is first and foremost a reporter, a TV journalist who is still as caught up with getting it all, getting to the core of the issue, skewering a reluctant or manipulative interviewee, as she was when she began 25 years ago. In this memoir, Stahl covers herself -- from her first major TV job in Washington, then as CBS White House correspondent during the Carter, Reagan, and Bush years, as moderator of Face the Nation, to her present prestigious post as a 60 Minutes correspondent. Stahl has had a good ride, and her recounting of it, like her reporting, is fast, factual, and fascinating.

A top crop of cop capers . . . and more

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD


Announcing the "Listeners' Choice 1999" Audie Award

This year, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) offers audiobook fans the chance to cast a vote for your favorite audiobook. And, just by casting your ballot, you are automatically entered into a drawing for free audiobooks! Voting is easy -- cast your ballot on the APA website -- www.audiopub.org/votelist.html. Hurry, all entries must be received by April 10, 1999.

In his latest mystery of the 87th Precinct, Ed McBain is back in Isola, his convincing clone of the Big Apple, and it truly is a Big Bad City. "Bad" is the word for the case that Detectives Carella and Brown catch late one humid August night. The pretty blonde victim turns out to be a nun; she's been strangled, and the solution will take the detectives to another time and another place. One plot is never enough for McBain, who reads here in his appropriate New York-Isola accent. Carella is being tailed by a young thug who wants to waste him, and two other members of the 87th are on the trail of a polite burglar who invariably treats his burglarees to a box of cookies. The pulse and pace of the big, bad city resonate, and the tensions (racial and otherwise), simmer, always threatening to boil over.


Bosch is back

Racial tensions have boiled over and then some in Angels Flight, Michael Connelly's newest, polished police procedural starring Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD and read by Burt Reynolds, who gives a bravura performance. Bosch -- cool, controlled, but keenly concerned with right and wrong -- has been put in charge of a high-profile, high-risk investigation that makes him more than uneasy. A super-visible black lawyer who has built his career by suing the LAPD for brutality and racism has been murdered; the Deputy Police Chief, an adept user of the spin-cycle for political ends, wants a perp picked up ASAP; his performance is being scrutinized by a non-departmental Inspector; an Internal Affairs snitch is lurking; and, to top that off, Bosch's former partner -- a man he trusts -- is implicated big-time.


Perplexed policemen

Craig Holden's Four Corners of the Night is not a procedural, but it is about two policemen and two harrowing events, separate in time, but not in nature. Bank and Mack, friends for most of their lives, are working the night shift in a Midwestern city when they get a call that a teenage girl is missing, probably abducted. To Bank, who has lived through this singular anguish himself, nothing takes higher priority. There is mystery, suspense, and action here, but there's also a disquieting, edgy mood. Holden seems to be looking at larger questions, at the difference between being a good buddy and a good friend, at responsibility, at courage, at blame, and at forgiveness. The answers are not bright and clear; they hover somewhere in the gray middle of this darkly captivating story. Terence Mann's well-nuanced performance has just the right tone and tension.


Love in the time of war

Charlotte Gray, a steady, outwardly serene, young Scottish woman, comes to London to do what she can for the war effort. And, as it turns out, she can do a great deal more than she had suspected. Charlotte Gray is also the title of Sebastian Faulks's first novel since Birdsong. Set in WWII London, with its blackouts and frenetic parties, and then in the bleakness of "Free" France as it is being overrun by the Nazis, Charlotte's story is told with a restrained intensity and passion that is well reflected in Samuel West's reading. There is adventure and intrigue, there is her enduring love for an RAF pilot, there are the horrors and anguish of war; all these things change and challenge Charlotte and allow her, ultimately, to understand herself. Quietly powerful, Charlotte Gray, both as the novel and character, will stay with you long after you've finished listening.


Mambo queens

A new novel by Oscar Hijuelos can make any season splendid. The Empress of the Splendid Season, his latest, read here by Rita Moreno, an empress of audio presentation if ever there was one, is indeed no exception. Hijuelos takes us back to "Mambo Kings" country, New York City's Cuban emigre community, and takes us into the life of Lydia Espana, into the frustrations of assimilating into a new culture, into her amorous reminiscences and memories of home. The once luscious Lydia left Cuba for New York in the late '40s; now a cleaning lady to help support her husband and children, she has to deal with a son and daughter who are far more American than Cuban, with aging, with yearnings, with disappointments. Hijuelos gets into her head and heart as this audio presentation will get into yours.


Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.

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