DWD's Reviews

Interesting premise but it often ends up being a glorified romance novel Published by MacMillan Audio in 2009 Read by Mary Stuart Masterson Duration: 9 hours, 27 minutes Unabridged In a planned departure from her normal books featuring female attorneys, Lisa Scottoline brings us the story of a single mother reporter (Ellen) and her adopted son. At the beginning of Look Again Ellen glances at one of those "Have you seen this child?" cards that come in the mail and she notes that the child looks just like her adopted son, Will. A little digging by Ellen uncovers several clues that her son may indeed be a missing child, which leads us to the key point of tension in the book: If it turned out your child was actually someone else's child, would you tell and lose the child or would you stay quiet and leave another parent in pain? Narrator  Mary Stuart Masterson I have been a big fan of Scottoline's work since I discovered Everywhere That Mary Went when

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook The Supreme Court building The Tenth Justice is an interesting little morality play set at the Supreme Court. What do you do if you accidentally leak information about a supreme court case and someone uses that inside information to make a fortune? What do you do if they come back and threaten to expose your slip-up unless you provide more information? In my opinion, Meltzer's character does the wrong thing but that is what makes the story so interesting. Meltzer's dialogue works so well with Thomas Gibson's performance that it sounds as if they were in the room copying down the natural flow of the characters' conversations as they were spoken. Truly, they were very fun to listen to. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer.   Reviewed on October 15, 2004.

Good, simple story about a law case (in which the defendant says he didn't do it because he was being abducted and probed by aliens at the time). Read by Alexa Bauer Approximately 3 hours I'm reviewing Star Witness as an audiobook - more on that below. Lia Matera Part of my positive reaction to this book, I am sure is a negative reaction I've recently had to several books on tape that I've listened to lately. Some have tried too hard to be overly-complicated. Some have injected way too much romance, so much that you forget it was supposed to be a legal thriller with a bit of romance, not a romance with a bit of legal thriller. However, this story is a no-frills, just-the-facts-ma'am legal story - thank goodness! Now, this is not to say that it is not entertaining and the facts are not truly bizarre. Lia Matera 's book is set in California and involves a man who is arrested for vehicular manslaughter, but he claims he can't have done it sinc

I was not expecting much, but it got to me in a big way. I laughed, I cried, I told my wife she should read it. Everyone said The Last Lecture was fantastic. There were news programs about Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture. There's a billboard sponsored by the Foundation for a Better Life near my local library that extols his positive virtues ("Wrote a book on living while he was dying"). But, I refused to read the book. Why? I guess I am just stubborn. A friend of mine had the book on her table and I asked her if it was any good. Yes - she plowed through it in no time and she's really not a reader. She lent it to me and I was off. Even then, I let it sit for a couple of weeks. But, once I got into it I was absorbed into it. It is a well-written, laugh-out-loud funny, big-tears-rolling-down-your-face sad, happy, poignant and sweet book. I called my friend when I was done and told her she should have told me that I was going to cry at the end of this book. She

The hardest thing about this book is describing it to other people. I was telling my wife about Amberville . I told her I was reading a book about stuffed animals (her face softened) and I said but it's not a "nice" book. One of the animals used to be a gofer for the mafia, one's a thug enforcer, one's a backstabber and one is a pill-popping male prostitute that specializes in S&M sex-for-hire. She got a confused look on her face and asked why the author used stuffed animals? Well, he had to because these stuffed animals are all delivered by way of truck and when they die they are all hauled out of the city by truck as well and the big bad mobster dove has found out he's on a fabled list of stuffed animals that are to be hauled away and he wants four stuffed animals to reunite to find the list and save his life - or else. At that point she waved me off and changed the subject. Throw in a bit of insanity on the part of one character, some bribery,

I liked this book a lot except... ...the last 1/3 of it got bogged down in too much technical detail and repeated information that had been previously stated. That is too bad because the first 2/3 was well-written and informative. The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence  really is an interesting book - one that should burst some bubbles of the anti-gun crowd. The writers painstakingly analyze the statistics and the motivations of some of America's biggest gun control lobbies, including the Centers for Disease Control (did you know that they use bogus data to label handguns as a public health threat? They quote FBI data that literally does not exist - they cite the document but it does not have the statistics that they use as a justification to lobby against guns. The document doesn't even report that type of statistic!) Don't let my comments about the last 1/3 of the book deter you from reading the rest of it - it really was worth the time and

This is a typical Spenser book... ..which I happen to like. I think I've read them all and usually I am pleased. Bad Business was a keeper. Robert B. Parker Oh, to be sure, there's the required comments about Spenser and Susan's relationship and why they don't want to get married. There's the required comments about Spenser and Hawk's relationship and how they'd die for each other, etc. There's the required comments about Spenser's checkered career in law enforcement. It's a formula to be sure, but I like the formula. Spenser's comments and observations are pure gold and the case was interesting because it (sort of) explains what happened to Enron. I guess I'm over the fact that Spenser never ages (Parker must have been hearing comments because he includes a NY Times review that excuses this fact inside the dust cover at the beginning of the synopsis) - it doesn't bother me with James Bond, why should it bother me wi