The Midnight Road

The main character, Flynn's, passion for film noir gives narrator Donald Corren a splendid base for his storytelling, ably pulling listeners along the twists of this mystery. After a home inspection that reveals an unsuitable environment, the child services investigator is in a car accident--and dies for 30 minutes before being brought back to life by an EMT. As Flynn tries to untangle family secrets involving an innocent child and a murderous uncle, Corren moves deftly from dark humor to car chases to romance. A unique aspect of the story is that Flynn is also haunted by the bulldog in the other car, Zero, who dies and stays dead after the accident and who provides Corren with the opportunity for a wry, wonderful characterization. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

March 28, 2011
Within the first few minutes of Piccirilli's 2007 noir novel, its hero, Flynn, an investigator for New York's Child Protective Services, rescues a young girl and her autistic uncle from her homicidally insane mother, who chases them and forces their vehicle onto a frozen Long Island Sound where it promptly sinks. The girl and her uncle are saved, and so is Flynn. He's barely back on his feet, accompanied by the ghost of a bulldog that perished in the crash, when someone starts killing people he knows and/or loves. Donald Corren's perfectly timed rendition of the car chase and watery crash manages to convey a mixture of suspense and dark humor that he maintains throughout this action-packed, more than a little bizarre literary thriller. Piccirilli's fluid imagination provides a large cast of charactersâangry, kind, disturbed, placid, young and oldâand Corren finds the proper voice for each of them, including the talking ghost dog. A Bantam paperback.