EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

Movie-star handsome, suave, and successful, Alan Blackthorne is also a sadistic sociopath. In this true-crime reportage, Ann Rule peels away the layers of Alan's geneology, following him through an abusive childhood that teaches him the power of pain. As he enters adulthood, she details his tastes for cross-dressing and sadomasochistic bondage with either sex, as well as his megalomaniacal drive for success at any price. When his third ex-wife, Sheile, is found savagely murdered, even Alan's daughters suspect their father. Kate Fleming's performance turns Rule's meticulous plot into something more than a voyeuristic peek into someone else's miseries. Her warm, cultured tones are hypnotic, never prurient. Under Fleming's controlled presentation, a scene of Sheila's blood-spattered quadruplets huddled around their mother's body goes beyond the mawkish to take on a dignified pathos. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 03]