BEAR IS BROKEN

This debut San Francisco noir is so atmospheric you can practically hear the cable cars and fog horns on the bay. The plot: When Teddy Maxwell, a criminal defense attorney, is shot in the middle of lunch in a crowded bistro, his younger brother, Leo, just barely admitted to the bar, feels he must take over Teddy's cases plus investigate the shooting himself since cops lack sympathy for attorneys who screw up their work and free bad guys. R.C. Bray performs skillfully and serves the overcrowded plot well, except that he distinguishes among characters more with timbre than with pitch, a distinction that can be unhelpfully subtle in a story this busy. B.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2013]