THE LOVERS

Jay O. Sanders has a genius for delivering conversation. His performance of Charlie Parker’s first-person narrative is done with superb timing and thoughtful inflection. But it's the nuance of emotion he teases out of the characters’ relationships with one another through which he really shines. The listener is immediately pulled in. Parker may have lost his P.I. license this time out, but that doesn't keep him from investigating his own past demons. After taking a job tending bar in Portland, Maine, he finds he needs answers to his policeman father's suicide when Charlie was only 15 and the haunting murder of two teenagers he confessed to beforehand. There's the usual frisson of the supernatural woven into this beautifully crafted story, made all the more memorable through Sanders’s considerable talent. D.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2009]