NECESSARY AS BLOOD

Deborah Crombie's popular, long-running mystery series about Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his colleague and love, Sergeant Jemma James, has become increasingly domestic, which suits Jenny Sterlin's reading admirably. Sterlin, who has read almost all the Crombie books, narrates with an unhurried, considering pace, which allows the listener to track all the permutations of the plot and the way it intersects with the detectives' personal lives. In this book, murder in London's East End leads them into a case of kidnapping and female subjugation. Sterlin's voice is husky, sometimes almost raspy, a quality that informs a story with male and female protagonists. She's also terrifically good with accents as different as Cockney and Indian, and her children are believable rather than squeaky. Altogether fun. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2010]