BETRAYERS

Nameless is a San Francisco detective who makes his 35th foray in Pronzini’s series—since THE SNATCH in 1971. Listeners who enter the series at this point will find the limelight shared by Nameless’s partners in the agency, Tamara and Jake Runyon. Each of the operatives has his or her own case, and in both Tamara and Nameless’s cases “it’s personal.” Nick Sullivan portrays the operatives with broad strokes—Jake Runyon’s voice rumbles gruffly, and you wonder how Sullivan can switch so easily to Tamara’s African-American vernacular. The three cases run concurrently but are told in alternating chapters. Sullivan, a veteran of more than a dozen Nameless titles, keeps it straight for listeners. He also plays to the humanist side of the characters as they pursue the perps of relatively low-violence crimes. R.F.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2010]