PALE AS THE DEAD

Karen Cass brings just the right tone to this pleasant English mystery about a modern-day photographer’s model whose disappearance may, or may not, be linked the death of nineteenth-century painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti's wife. Genealogical detective Natasha Blake is determined to solve the conundrum, and Cass gives her a likable style and spirited energy that make us certain she will succeed. Cass does as well voicing the other characters, including upper-crust gentlemen, lowlife guys, and teenaged girls. And she reads the quotidian prose with an informed pacing that maintains our interest, whether the heroine is investigating a deserted graveyard or making herself a cup of tea. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 06]