THE STONE MONKEY

There is a lot of excitement in this audio, most of it generated by the reader--not the writer. It's almost as if Dufris knows the story is one of Deaver's more mundane offerings and is trying to compensate. Criminologist Lincoln Rhyme and his sidekick, Amelia Sachs, are back--this time to snare "The Ghost," who smuggles illegal Chinese immigrants into the U.S. On top of that, he's a merciless, stone-cold killer, dispatching his victims with a single bullet to the head. Dufris not only cranks up the excitement, he really works at the many foreign accents he is called upon to read. His performance alone makes this audio offering worthwhile. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 02]