WE ALL FALL DOWN

There's plenty of murder and mayhem in this latest Michael Kelly adventure, and narrator Stephen Hoye makes the most of it by pacing the action well. The nursery rhyme this book's title comes from refers to the sixteenth-century epidemic of "Black Death," which killed one third of humanity. That's close to what detective Michael Kelly is called on to combat in Harvey's newest. Someone has released a deadly pathogen on the West Side of Chicago, and while corpses are loaded onto trains for cremation, Kelly searches for the source. Somehow the answer relates to a murdered Korean merchant, a Mafia boss, and a local gang. Hoye's accents are highly believable, and his narrative voice is unusual and intriguing. Overall, there's nothing in this performance that lets the listener down. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2012]