LOOKING GOOD DEAD

David Thorpe has a field day with this exciting, gruesome, merrily unlikely tale. He makes likable the harried suburban husband and father, Tom Bryce, who picks up a compact disc abandoned on a train, plays it on his computer, and inadvertently attracts the homicidal attentions of a ring of thugs who make a fortune making snuff movies. (Really?) Thorpe makes wonderfully, gaspingly sexy the romance between Detective Roy Grace and his new girlfriend, a gorgeous pathologist working in the police morgue. And when Tom and his beloved but spendthrift and secretly alcoholic wife are kidnapped by the filmmakers, Thorpe ratchets up the pitch of their panic, and the intensity of Grace's race to find them, as if stepping on a gas pedal. A wild ride. B.G. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 07/ JAN 08]