Summer travels messed up my exercise regime, but audios got me back into a routine. Here are some gripping listens that inspired my return to workouts.
Mysteries with familiar characters and authors you trust are good bets for great listening. I started with a new John Sanford Lucas Davenport adventure, Hidden Prey (Putnam Audio, $39.95, unabridged, eight cassettes, 12 1/2 hours). Davenport is drawn into an International case with a fascinating female Russian cop. When bodies turn up more often than clues, Davenport is stumped. Listeners know the unlikely killer is a teenage boy trained by his Russian grandfather, but Sanford does a great job of keeping the mystery deepening and Davenport is such a likeable sleuth. This, Richard Ferrone's twelfth Prey performance, will please fans with both his familiar voice and his reading of the Russian woman.
Kathy Reichs's newest is Monday Mourning (Simon and Schuster, $39.95, unabridged, six cassettes, 10 hours). Her heroine, Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist sleuth who works in both Charlotte, NC and Quebec. This sixth novel is set in Montreal and begins when Tempe finds three unidentified young female corpses in the basement of a pizza parlor. Bit by bit she comes to understand that these are fairly recently victims, but she doesn't match corpses to victims until she realizes these were abducted held in captivity for years. As if the mystery didn't provide enough tension, Detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe's love interest, is acting strange, and a female friend is dealing with more than she lets on. Switching from French to English accents gives Michelle Pawk no problem, neither does bringing out the story's full drama!
Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (Simon and Schuster, $49.95, unabridged, 12 cassettes, 19 hours) has an almost identical structure to Da Vinci Code, his research is impressive, the setting draws you in, and the spiritual query at the book's center is strong and different enough to keep you listening. This time Brown's hero, Robert Langdon, is summoned to a Swiss research facility by the horrifying death of one of its most important physists and is drawn into a struggle between the Catholic Church and the Illuminati, a centuries-old secret organization. Richard Poe's reading is straight-forward and he differentiates characters well without being overly theatrical. He saves the drama for the delivery of this fast-paced mystery.
Few audios are more involving than the latest installment of a series. Lian Hearn's Brilliance of the Moon (HighBridge, $36.95, unabridged, nine CDs, 10 hours) is the third tale of the Otori. In it, the hero and heroine, Takeo and Kaede, are married and seeking consolidation of their power against warring parties, cruel villains, curious prophecies and forces of nature. While the second audio was disappointing, now the drama, action, magic, imagination and plot twists have returned. Readers Kevin Gray and Aiko Nakasone have renewed energy in their presentations.
Before I listened, I'd heard much about Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, (Recorded Books, $34.99, unabridged, 16 CDs, 18.5 hours). I'm happy to say my high expectations were fulfilled! Iranian professor of Western Literature, Nafisi, is as passionate about literature and teaching as she is about helping a group of seven young Iranian women understand and interpret their thoughts and ideas about books and their own lives. Brilliantly, Nafisi links the writings of Austen, Nabokov, and Fitzgerald to the oppressed world of Tehran and gradually she teases out the story of the women's physical, emotional and intellectual suffering. Her elegant writing is enriched by the reading by Lisette Lecat who has a precision that evokes all that the author's words promise.