GONE, BABY, GONE

This dark story of child abduction set in the Boston area would have been better served by a reading less broad than the one provided here by Robert Lawrence. Too many simple, one-note interpretations undercut the subtlety of the well-drawn, complex characters and make those that are broad to begin with almost intolerable to be heard. Fortunately, the result is not completely ruinous, as Lawrence's one well-conceived performance is of the first-person narrator, private investigator Patrick Kenzie, whose engaging combination of thoughtful intelligence and streetwise savvy is communicated well to the listener. This only makes me curious about why so many of the other characters in this complex tale involving hoodlums, murderers, violence and pedophilia sound like refugees from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. J.P.M. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/MAR 99]