MCNALLY'S CAPER

In a popular series of books, P.I. Archy McNally, witty and raffish, tells how he solves crimes among the rich and famous in tony Palm Beach. In this bestseller, his father, an insurance executive, assigns the debonair detective to work undercover to identify the thief who has pilfered the Forsythe family's priceless first edition of Poe. The bon mots come thick and fast as the plot thickens. While narrator Adam Henderson has an admirably expressive voice, he is a bit too fey to impersonate our hero. In his mouth the quips sound forced, the characters cartoonish. Yet he grows on the listener as the tape spools on, and at last, though he may not be the McNally that Sanders has written, he is a McNally worth listening to. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 03]