DERAILED

Advertising executive Charles Schine is loving, sentimental, funny, vulnerable, and guilt-ridden. His life derails when he has an affair, which leads to his being beaten (and his girlfriend raped before his eyes), which leads to his being blackmailed, which leads to his stealing from his daughter's trust fund and his own company, which leads.... Ah, but the plot twists and the worm turns. Schine tells his own hair-raising story in admirably lean prose, devoid of the usual descriptive filler modern authors use to pad their fiction to book length. Paul Boehmer is well cast, sounding like an urban, middle-aged male. While he is expressive and easy on the ear, he occasionally "nods," giving full emotional value here, skipping it there. Further, this reviewer found himself hating Schine for his moral turpitude, his incessant whining over his own deficiencies, and, especially, his stupidity. He doesn't deserve the improbable happy ending. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 03]