TEMPORARY SANITY

Martha Nickerson, Cape Cod district attorney turned defense lawyer, is defending a man who shot his son's murderer on live television. Another seemingly unrelated murder occurs during the trial, and the two cases eventually come together. Bernadette Dunne would have been more successful had she decided to do a straight narration, rather than attempting to provide characters with their own voices. The male voices are particularly weak, but the females and teenagers don't come across as believable either. The one supposedly Southern accent is unrecognizable as such. Touches of melodrama are unnecessary in this barely cohesive story. There are so many gaps in the threads of legal argument that the listener is left with the feeling that this is a poor abridgment. S.S.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 03/JAN 04]