Sukey's Favorite

Possible Side Effects
By Augusten Burroughs
Audio Renaissance, $29.95
9 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 1593978928

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At some point during the years when he drank a liter of scotch a day, Augusten Burroughs realized that to live he needed to "go inside" his own head, he needed to stop drinking and write. He did it, with many, now documented, ups and downs and the results have been bestsellers. Burroughs on Burroughs has become its own subgenre of memoir-as-minefield and Possible Side Effects, his latest delving into his dysfunctional past, is so unflinchingly honest that it can make you flinch. But Burroughs' special brand of black humor can also make you laugh and look at our confusing world in new ways. He's a fabulous performer; listening to his monologue can be even better than reading it. If you've heard him before, some of the situations may be familiar—his mother's "festering mental illness"; his bizarre childhood; alcohol addiction; careening career in advertising; infatuation with dogs, TV and McDonald's. Yet he makes each episode a new trip "inside" and a journey worth taking.

Mystery masters

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Just in time for audio month, here are three winners by some of the best, most popular practitioners of the whodunit.

When Easy Rawlins is on a case, you get a lot more than an intricately plotted, well-paced hunt for the perp, you get a look at America in the 1960s, when overt racism was just beginning to be challenged. Cinnamon Kiss proves again that no one in this overcrowded mystery genre sets the setting better than Walter Mosley and no one performs Mosley's crime fiction better than Michael Boatman, who can conjure up an amazingly nuanced range of white and African-American accents, old, young, male and female. In Cinnamon Kiss, Easy's beloved daughter needs extravagantly expensive medical care. To provide that care, Easy's willing to do anything, and anything turns into a wild, wildly dangerous search for a gorgeous woman with a stash of bearer bonds. This one was released last fall, but it's just too good to pass up.


If I ever need a private detective, I'd like to call Kinsey Millhone. I've followed her alphabetic adventures for years and now we're at "S." "S" could easily stand for super-suspenseful story, but in Sue Grafton's 19th compelling foray into crime, S Is for Silence. Daisy's young, pretty mother, a flashy good-time girl with an abusive husband, disappeared without a trace 34 years ago. Daisy, now 40, still needs to know what happened and Kinsey, moved by her need, takes on this ice-cold case. As she pieces together the jigsaw puzzle of past events, the case heats up—but now it's Kinsey who just might fall into the fire. Judy Kaye has done a great job reading every Kinsey Millhone escapade since A Is for Alibi, her timing taut, her characters entirely credible.


The Two Minute Rule is a departure for Robert Crais, not part of his best-selling Elvis Cole detective series. Here, we get an odd couple tracking a devious, stop-at-nothing cop killer in a really riveting nail-biter. Max Holman, a career car thief, bank robber and all around reprobate, did an about-face during his 10 years in jail. Just released, he wants only to reconcile with his estranged son Ritchie, now an LAPD officer, and get on with his life. But Ritchie, along with three of his police buddies, has been shot. Max, alone, friendless, determined to avenge his son, turns to Katherine Pollard, the FBI agent who apprehended him. Odd choice, but Katherine, now a stay-at-home single mom, welcomes the chance to get back into the game, even if it means partnering with an ex-con, who might be conning her. Christopher Graybill's bravura narration will keep you totally absorbed.


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