QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

Jance’s mystery revolves around the night-blooming cereus flower and features legends of the Tohono O’odham Indians. The story bounces erratically from a senior Tucson couple on an anniversary picnic to local law enforcement, an unrelated decades-old murder, and a villain on a killing spree. Greg Itzin does an admirable job keeping up, although the listener will need to keep a scorecard until the last couple hours of the performance. Itzin wisely refrains from overperforming Native American dialects, opting instead to vary his pitch and speed slightly for each character. When all the story lines come together in a neat package at the end, the listener breathes a sigh of relief. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2010]