BAD BIRD

The best part of BAD BIRD is the opening minutes, when the principal character, Jackie, witnesses the crash of a small plane and recovers a briefcase tossed out by the pilot. Narrator Deanna Hurst handles these first tense moments dramatically. But like the plane, the story stalls, and Hurst can't make it recover. Was the crash an accident, or was it murder? The story meanders through a subplot extensively before addressing these questions. Hurst’s clear, distinct delivery works well for the narrative. But her male voices and her accents are poor. When she plays "The Great Khan,” a character who is insane, her reading goes way overboard, making him a caricature one can't take seriously as a threat. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2011]