Back when people started to raise skeptical eyebrows at abridgments, a few companies started putting author endorsements on the packaging. Harper’s blurb, for instance, declares that “this abridgment has been approved by the author.” The notation is even highlighted in red on William Lashner’s “Hostile Witness” (3 hours, $17), read by Ken Howard.
I always assumed it meant that the content of the abridgment, the script that the narrator reads from, was what has been approved by the author. The condition of “Hostile Witness,” however, makes me wonder if it’s not just the fact of the abridgment that has been approved.
Nothing makes any sense in this Philadelphia-set tale that enmeshes a small-time lawyer, a crooked city council member, his mistress, a drug dealer, the mob and a fall guy.
This is classic fodder from the City of Brotherly Love, and there’s great potential here. But, alas, the abridgment skips from lust to greed to betrayal to murder without all the connecting fibers. I was lost.
Howard falls down on the job, too. He plays the whole thing straight, but if there’s any book that should be ready with an attitude, this is it.
If it’s Philadelphia mystery you want, check out two Recorded Books audios instead, both of which feature a 30ish, unmarried schoolteacher cum detective, Amanda Pepper.
Of all today’s fictional female sleuths, Pepper is probably the most perky, perhaps even a bit dotty. But it is her spunk that gets her through some hairy moments as she snoops out the culprits.
Recorded books has produced both “Caught Dead in Philadelphia” (7 1/2 hours, $13.50 rental, $40 purchase) and “Philly Stakes” (8 hours, $13.50 rental, $44 purchase), by Gillian Roberts. Both are engagingly read by Diane Warren.
Fast forward: Big movie titles continue to generate audio output. Brian Cox, who has a bit part in the movie, reads “Rob Roy” (3 hours, $16.95), for Brilliance. This is an abridgment of the novelization of the screenplay about a hero of 18th Century Scotland.
The audio for “Johnny Mnemonic” (2 hours, $16) followed an even more-contorted route. It started with the short story by William (“Neuromancer”) Gibson, then became a screenplay, then an abridged novel. Jack Noseworthy reads the thriller about high-tech 21st Century smuggling.
More and more stage presentations are making their way to audio. The latest is Claudia Shear’s hilarious one-woman saga of her romp through 64 jobs. “Blown Sideways Through Life” (2 hours, $15.99), from Bantam Doubleday Dell, is the complete text of her Off Broadway performance.
