THE BLUE RELIGION New Stories about Cops, Criminals, and the Chase

Bestselling novelist Michael Connelly collects 20 stories about police work for the latest anthology presented by the Mystery Writers of America. Each of these stories explores not so much "how a cop works a case" as "how a case works on the cop." Alan Sklar puts his smooth edginess to work on the bulk of these works. Karen White reads six of the stories, including Laurie R. King's "The Fool" and Alafair Burke's "Winning." John Lee provides narration for the two stories set in Britain. Particularly memorable are John Buontello's "A Certain Recollection," about a retired cop suffering Alzheimer's, which Sklar reads with profound sensitivity, and the equally touching "What a Wonderful World" by Paul Guyot, about a detective obsessed with the murder of a pretty street vendor. One frustrating element is the absence of a table of contents or a track listing. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2008]