A SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION

Michael Page's craggy voice and talent for accents and voices bring gusto to this story of an eighteenth-century tough-guy and "thief-taker." Benjamin Weaver is trying to clear himself of a murder conviction during a contentious Whig-Tory-Jacobite political struggle. While Page occasionally loses the differentiation between two characters in his narration, the problems with the story itself are not his fault. The period setting is marred by verbal anachronisms, the imposition of a twentieth-century paradigm (the loner investigator) remains unconvincing, and the overcomplicated story, at times abruptly abridged, never strikes fire. Introductory musical cues are pleasantly perfunctory; very frequent tracking (every 45 to 60 seconds) is useful and convenient, as long as one doesn't have to manually forward to a track midway through the disc. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 04]