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Summer sizzlers from ghouls to golf
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD If the dog days of August are getting to you, listen to a few new thrillers and you'll have chills running up and down your spine in no time.
By T. Jefferson Parker Dove, $25 6 hours ISBN 0787119350
By James Patterson TimeWarner AudioBooks, $24 6 hours ISBN 1570426449
By Kathy Reichs Simon & Schuster Audio, $24 4.5 hours ISBN 0671043706
By John Sanford Putnam Audio, $24.95 6 hours ISBN 0399145206
A total change of pace . . . Some audio presentations improve on their written antecedents; sometimes a bit of abridgment enhances rather than detracts; and musical segues, even as punctuation, add intensity. This couldn't be more true of Vikram Seth's newest novel, An Equal Music. When I read the mildly chastising reviews of the book, I wanted to tell would-be readers to listen instead to Alan Bates's affecting performance of it. The audio version of this love story is as intense and impassioned as the music its protagonists make. Michael, a violinist in a London quartet, fell in love with Julia, a pianist, when they were students in Vienna. They'd parted abruptly and not seen each other for years; then he spots her on a bus and the duet of their lives begins again. Seth captures their shared devotion to music and evokes the life and world of classical musicians, to me as fascinating as the unfolding of Michael and Julia's perilous relationship. If you find music to be the food of love, you'll find much to feed on here.
By Vikram Seth BDD Audio, $25 6 hours ISBN 0553526367
Local Girls, a new collection of closely connected short stories by Alice Hoffman, is another example of audio adding a special dimension. The stories, set in a small suburban town, follow Gretel, a young teenager at the start, and her dissolving family over more than a decade. It's like looking at intimate family snapshots that skip through the years, isolated moments that capture the essence of their lives. When Gretel narrates in the first person, Laural Merlington reads, and when she doesn't Aasne Vigesaa takes over. Their alternating voices underscore the interplay of humor and sadness, love and loss, discovery and recovery, and make the light sprinkles of Hoffman's unique brand of magical realism seem more real than magical.
By Alice Hoffman Brilliance, $23.95 4 hours ISBN 156740426X
Three golf classics are packaged together in The Dr. Bob Rotella Collection, a special gift edition that includes Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, Golf Is a Game of Confidence, and The Golf of Your Dreams, all read by Dr. Rotella himself. M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, reveals how golf has taught him some of life's most important lessons in Golf and the Spirit: Lessons for the Journey. Golfing legend Arnold Palmer talks openly about his life on and off the links in A Golfer's Life, written with and read by James Dodson, revealing his triumphs and disasters, his friendships and rivalries, his grit in the face of adversity. The Majors, John Feinstein's best-selling behind-the-scenes look at the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA, follows top stars and lesser lights through these four dramatic tournaments. Feinstein, always a pleasure to listen to, reads.
By Dr. Bob Rotella Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.95 3 hours each ISBN 0671757555
Golf and the Spirit:
A Golfer's Life
The Majors
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.
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Smoke and mirrors . . . There's a ghoulish killer at work in T. Jefferson Parker's The Blue Hour, narrated by Richard McGonagle. His victims, all beautiful young women, disappear from the upscale shopping malls of sunny Newport Beach; their purses are found on blood-soaked earth, but their bodies are gone. Tim Hess, a recently retired, time-toughened police detective, is brought back in to work the case with young, ambitious Merci Rayborn, his equal in tough if not in time. Parker's characters have more substance than many in this genre, even the weird, convicted Romanian rapist who's been chemically castrated. This creepy oddball has a vague resemblance to the composite Hess and Rayborn have come up with but, with a righteous neighborhood mob picketing his home, he has an airtight alibi -- or does he? It's a taut, fraught tale, with an offbeat romantic subtext that adds interest.
Viva vendetta . . . Ghoulish is too nice a word for the "Grave Dancer," the suave, handsome, international operator who plans to become the mega-manipulator of crime worldwide; his idea of fun and games tends toward murder with touches of torture. So far, he seems invulnerable, always ahead of the cops, but there's one NYPD detective who isn't going to give up -- and when he's joined by a determined, attractive journalist, with her own reasons for going after the "Grave Dancer," the stakes get even higher, and the potential for deadly danger doubles. The prolific, best-selling James Patterson has concocted quite a scenario in The Midnight Club, with heroes to root for, bad guys to boo, and a twisting plot that grips from the get-go. Accomplished actor Robert Forster reads, keeping the chase pace at just the right speed, and keeping listeners locked in to the action.
Digging up death . . . Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is back in bitterly cold Quebec and up to her icy earlobes in death. But death is her business, even though the multiple horrors get to her sometimes. Called in to examine the bodies of two mutilated babies found among the charred carnage of an arson-blasted chalet, Tempe doesn't yet know that she'll be drawn into the search for a strange, deadly cult and terrorized by the machinations of its mad millennialist leader. Death Du Jour, Kathy Reichs's second foray into this grim world that she knows intimately, is full of the fascinatingly accurate detail that helped make her first book a bestseller. And, for good measure, there's a romantic subtext here too, as Tempe spars with homicide detective Andrew Ryan, who seems to turn her on and turn her off at the same time. Katherine Borowitz is an exemplary reader, getting the accents -- from Quebequoise to Texas -- just right.
Certain death . . . John Sanford's tenth "Prey" novel, Certain Prey, puts Lucas Davenport right in harm's way again and right in the middle of a nasty batch of homicides. The perps -- two smart, successful, good-looking women -- are far more engaging than most murderers, a deadly duo with a touch of Thelma and Louise about them. It starts off simply: A hot-shot defense attorney wants to bump off the wealthy wife of an appealing hunk. Through a past courtroom client, she hires a professional killer. The job gets done, the hunk is all but won, then a few things begin to go awry and the only way to fix them is to put a few more holes in a few more bodies. Lucas and his crew, brought in to figure out the cause and causees of this escalating death rate, need to make the connections we listeners already know about, and need to do it before the lovely ladies' bullets connect with them. Well paced, well plotted, and well read by Eric Conger.
Bogey, birdie, putt for a par . . . If golf is your passion or pastime, there's an audio to help your game, your spirit, and your understanding of the big-name players. Here are a few recent releases for duffers, hackers, and potential pros.