HOUR OF THE CAT

On the eve of WWII, PI Fintan Dunne investigates the wrongful imprisonment of a man convicted of killing a nurse. As he investigates, Dunne crosses paths with a deadly German spy. Ned Schmidtke reads this thriller with the uninflected delivery of a 1950s’ hard-boiled detective. As the writing is flat, in the mode of film noir, the narrative style works pretty well. Schmidtke's pacing, though, could use some fine-tuning; he tends to pause when the text doesn't lend itself to a break. And his American male characters sound rather alike. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 06]