THE LAST KIND WORDS

A mass killer claims that one of the nine victims he is believed to have murdered was actually killed by someone else. That’s the premise of this family-of-thieves tale in which a younger brother returns to Long Island to sort out some complex family issues. Narrator Mike Chamberlain keeps the pace moving with his up-tempo storytelling and empathetic characterizations, but some listeners may wonder why he reads the story with such anger. Sure, the character he plays, a black sheep in a family of blacker sheep, has a few things to be angry about—his brother killed nine people, his grandfather and uncle have Alzheimer’s, his sister is dating a petty thief, his ex-girlfriend hooked up with his best friend, and he’s got to solve the book’s big mystery. But a furious tone isn’t essential to create an angry character, and in this case the raging effort may wear down some listeners. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2012]