DWD's Reviews

Originally Published in 2010. Post Hypnotic Press audio version published in 2013. Read by Daniel Mate Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes Canadian author Gail Bowen takes a break from her Joanne Kilbourn series to bring us Charlie D, a talk radio personality who works the late night shift. This is part of the Rapid Reads series by Orca Books. This is designed to be a set of exciting, short mysteries. On paper this book clocks in at 128 pages. Charlie D is working the night show on Valentine's Day. His guest is the boss's wife. The boss is an ancient man who has married the young, very elegant and very expensive prostitute he used to frequent. She is now very pregnant and being interviewed about her thoughts on love and relationships.  Meanwhile, the neighborhood around the station is now awash in threatening newsletters and posters that advocate getting rid of the local prostitutes in any way possible. These vigilantes are inspired by the right wing host on the air just be

This Thriller Does Not Have Much Sizzle Originally published in Germany in 2002. Re-published by Amazon Crossing in 2013. Translated from German to English by the author (Christoph Spielberg) and Christina Henry de Tessan Amazon.com's publishing house Amazon Crossing is designed to bring popular authors who do not write in English to an English-speaking audience. Award-winning German author Christoph Spielberg has brought his Dr. Hoffman series to this program. This series is quite popular in Germany, even spawning a series of made for TV movies. Dr. Hoffman is a wise-cracking doctor in a down and out hospital. He has just got done with a very long shift and was planning to head home after one more consultation in the Intensive Care Unit when a blind gunman with a bunch of explosive charges comes in with a seeing eye dog and takes the room hostage, along with two doctors, two nurses and several patients. While this would certainly seem to be an exciting premise for a

Originally published in 2001. Published HighBridge Audio in 2013. Read by Simon Prebble Duration: 10 hours, 32 minute s Mark Billingham's Sleepyhead  is set in London and features a serial killer with a twist. Rather than actually trying to kill his victims, the attacker is trying to paralyze them by pinching a spot in their neck for nearly two minutes in an attempt to cause a stroke in the victim's brain stem. The result, if done right, is a person who cannot do anything more than blink even though their brain is entirely functional. This is difficult and the result has been a slew of dead young women and one "successful" victim who is forced to breathe on a ventilator in a hospital. Thanks to the inspired work of a coroner, the local police know what the attacker is trying to do - but they have no idea how to stop him. The star of the investigation is Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, a troubled middle-aged cop with his own demons. Due to a past failure, Tho

Published in 2013 by Harper Audio Read by the author, Simon Winchester Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes Simon Winchester's sprawling book, The Men Who United the States , tells a history of the United States organized around five themes: Wood, Earth, Water, Fire and Metal. To be honest, I largely ignored the themes and just enjoyed listening to this magnificent, chaotic, rambling history. Starting roughly with Lewis and Clark (Winchester backtracks a lot), the story of America is told through the tales of the people that made America a more perfect union through their explorations or their inventions. The reader (or listener if you are enjoying the audiobook) is told about Lewis and Clark and the Pony Express and the invention of the telegraph, the first transcontinental rail line, the exploration of the Grand Canyon, the role of New Harmony (Indiana) in the study of American geography,  a con game involving jewels, how George Washington toured the Frontier before he b

Published in 2014 by The Experiment German science writer Stefan Klein looks into the concept of altruism vs. egocentrism and the current thinking behind why people act altruistic or egocentric. This has been a popular topic in many news reports as the idea of a "stingy gene" or a "sharing gene" is discussed.  Of course, the idea of a single stingy or sharing gene is simplistic, but Klein does spend a lot of time discussing altruistic behaviors and egocentric behaviors and why people actually act as altruistic as they do, even going so far as to donate money to people they will never meet in countries they will never go to. Why is that? Klein reports that the current thinking is that simple Darwinian competition is too simplistic to explain altruistic behavior - giving away resources or time that could be used to raise one's own offspring makes no sense in a simple Darwinian worldview. But, when you move out a little bit and look at groups of people an

Great Characters, Giant Plot Holes Published in 2003 by Sound Library (BBC Audiobooks America) Read by Nick Sullivan Unabridged Duration: 11 hours, 47 minutes Stephen J. Cannell (1941-2010) was best known as a television writer, producer and the creator of such classic shows as the A-Team, The Rockford Files and The Greatest American Hero . But, late in his career Cannell also wrote a lot of novels, mostly action-based mysteries (not all that surprising considering his history in television). Runaway Heart is, in some ways, a typical Cannell story, but it does have some distinct differences. There are three main characters. The book starts with Herman Stockmire, an overweight, idealistic Los Angeles-based attorney with a bad heart (arrhythmia) who heads up a law firm called The Institute for Planetary Justice. Despite the big name, the Institute consists of Herman and his daughter Susan. Together, they go to court for all sorts of hopeless causes. They have sued mega-co