Ever want to chuck it all, just walk away from your current life and set up a new one someplace else?
Jay Carsey wanted to. And he did exactly that.
The 47-year-old college president drove away from his huge Georgian home in Charles County, Md., one spring morning in 1982, withdrew $28,000 from the bank, dropped letters to his wife, friends and associates in a mailbox and, very simply, disappeared.
”When it isn`t fun anymore,” he once had said to a friend, ”we ought to go tend bar and be a lot happier.”
Months later, Jonathan Coleman, a former CBS News reporter investigating Carsey`s disappearance, found him working-you guessed it-as a bartender in Texas.
Coleman`s book, ”Exit the Rainmaker,” is Carsey`s story, and the story of the hurt and perplexed people he left behind. It was released in hardback last fall; this spring, Brilliance came out with the unabridged audio version (12 hours, $22.95).
Steve Yankee narrates in a radio-broadcaster style that is well-suited to non-fiction. His voice gives the recording the quality of a documentary, which, in some ways, it is.
Part biography, part psychodrama, ”Exit the Rainmaker” is distinctive in Brilliance`s winter/spring lineup of adventure thrillers and detective stories.
They include ”Clear and Present Danger” (24 hours, $38.95), Tom Clancy`s latest Jack Ryan exploit, and ”Red Phoenix” (24 hours, $34.95) by Larry Bond, Clancy`s former collaborator. Both are read by J.C. Howe.
Howe`s narrations have immediacy and intensity, almost an insistent quality. It`s as if he were in the middle of the action, giving an eyewitness account. This effect is enhanced by another Brilliance technique: a faster recording. Operating under the theory that a person can listen to more words per minute that the average narrator is able to read, engineers speed up the recording slightly without altering the tone of the reader`s voice.
”Kiss,” the third John Lutz book featuring detective Fred Carver (six hours, $18.95), features another Brilliance trademark: having each character`s part read by different actors. Lutz`s first two Fred Carver books-”Tropical Heat” and ”Flame” (six hours each, $18.95 each)-are also available, both narrated by a full cast.
”Weatherhawk,” Herbert Crowder`s adventure about a top-secret government plane (12 hours, $22.95), narrated by Mark Bashore, and ”Shades of Fortune” by Stephen Birmingham (16 hours, $21.95), narrated by Roger Ellis, complete the new Brilliance listings.
Brilliance recordings, sold in bookstores, cost less than most other companies` unabridged titles. This is largely because the company has pioneered a recording technique that requires only half as many cassettes as would normally be needed for a book.
Each of two stereo tracks is recorded separately. For playback, each cassette should be listened to first with the balance control all the way to the left speaker for the first half, then with the balance control all the way to the right for the second. (For those who don`t have stereo cassette players, the company offers an adapter.)
But the technique-or the sound equipment in the average automobile-needs some perfecting. On two standard-issue car stereos (a Chevrolet and a Subaru), one track sometimes bled through to the other. The bleeding is minimal but it`s bothersome. On a higher-quality home stereo system, the tracks didn`t bleed.
