LIAR, LIAR

Private detective Cat DeLuca, owner of the Pants on Fire Detective Agency, is a Chicago-based version of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. Vanessa Hart handles this sometimes-gritty but always-funny mystery competently, but her narration lacks some of the pizzazz demanded by Larsen’s snappy dialogue. There’s not much variation in Hart’s tone during the reading, making it sound monotone at times. However, her comedic timing is spot-on, and she draws out the suspense through Cat's encounters with murder, mistaken identity, explosions, and her family. Further, Hart's manageable pace drives the story through the action scenes and the complicated romance between Cat and Chance, the man everyone else believes is dead. E.N. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2010]