OUT OF BODY

Michael Prichard affects the kind of tough-guy fatalism appropriate to a Philip Marlowe yarn. But it's out of place here. The narrator-hero of this paranormal mystery is a soul in pain, not cowardly, but not hard-boiled either. Wrongly accused of murder, this hero uses his out-of-body power to solve the dual crimes of his childhood trauma and the present homicide. To his credit, Prichard allows himself to be swept away by the passages of acute anguish and otherwise credibly puts across the story. More annoying, the volume seems to change from too loud to too soft at arbitrary moments. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 98]