THE LISTENER

Set in a Long Island psychiatric hospital after WWII, this story has all the elements of a gothic thriller: an opium-smoking psychiatrist, a mysterious patient obsessed with a war-criminal brother, unethical German scientists, and an alluring night nurse with an erotic secret. Yet something holds the production back. It’s not clear whether it’s Nayman’s overuse of sensual, and occasionally flowery, language or Jefferson Mays’s tone, which seesaws between that of “Masterpiece Theater” and that of “Dark Shadows.” It’s an enjoyable, sometimes campy, story. But this may be one of those books that’s more enjoyable to hold in your hands than to plug into your ears on a stormy night. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2010]