WIT'S END

This story within a story within a story demands a clever narrator. Thankfully, Bernadette Dunne has the skill to pull it off. Twenty-nine-year-old Rima Lanisell is visiting her godmother, the famous and eccentric mystery writer Addison Early. Rima is trying to discern the truth about her late father's relationship with Addison and whether he was connected to an old murder. She's plagued by the continually blurring line between Addison's reality and her writing and with how she fits in her own skin. Bernadette Dunne's narration is crisp as she moves in and out of the past, among characters, and within email and blogs. Her strongest portrayals are those of the protagonists. Addison has an elderly, shaky, yet strong-sounding voice, and Rima's thoughts and plans have a questioning, sometimes tormented, tone. S.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 08]