PREY ON PATMOS

Here’s a case in which an acclaimed narrator diminishes the excitement of a murder mystery. Gravelly voiced Stefan Rudnicki adds a somber background to this installment in a well-respected police procedural series. Another narrator might have injected more passion through cadence and intonation, but Rudnicki keeps the tone low-key—so low sometimes that his voice almost disappears. The island of Patmos, the site of more than a thousand years of Christian meditation, is said to be the place where John the Apostle received the Book of Revelation. Now there’s intrigue among the monastery inhabitants and among factions of Eastern orthodoxy, all explored by Inspector Kaldis, who is working on a murder. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2011]