CONCOURSE

When Private Investigator Bill Smith is hired to investigate a murder at an old-age home in the Bronx, he asks fellow Private Investigator Lydia Chin to help out. Murders and other violence follow; we are soon enmeshed in the nefarious doings of a neighborhood gang, Bronx politicos and the agency that runs the home. It's drama that doesn't translate in this audio version. Reader Sky Vogel's young voice sounds too perky to be a 40-something, frequently beat-up private investigator. He gives the gang members identically singsong falsettos. And on occasion, there is something vaguely Asian in the whispery Lydia Chin; more often, there is not. R.E.K. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]