Dante's Wood

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki's basso profondo range is marvelous for conveying darkness, and there is plenty of it here. For starters, the protagonist, psychiatrist Mark Angelotti, has recently gone almost stone blind, so he must maneuver among sighted enemies as he grapples with a murder snarl that more than one blackhearted person doesn't want untangled. It doesn't help that nearly every person in this story except the developmentally delayed child falsely accused of the crime is on a scale from unpleasant to appalling. Oddly, Rudnicki has been more effective elsewhere. He fails to give the innocent boy a convincing voice, and while his pacing of this gothic plot is compelling, you still hate all the other characters. Possibly another narrator could have improved the situation. Or not. B.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

November 5, 2012
Near the start of Raimondo's engaging debut, Chicago psychiatrist Mark Angelotti receives a visit from the parents of 18-year-old Charlie Dickerson, who has the mental age of a grade schooler and has been crying in the middle of the night at his care facility, the New Horizons Center. Charlie's well-heeled parents fear that Charlie has been abused at New Horizons. The psychiatrist, who's still reeling from a diagnosis of a degenerative eye disease, doubts abuse, but he soon faces a bigger problem after Charlie confesses to the murder of the center's art teacher, Shannon Sparrow. Accused of malpractice and fearing the effect of imprisonment on Charlie, Angelotti begins to look into the backgrounds of Shannon and her co-workers. Angelotti's smart-aleck tendencies and unswerving dedication to his vulnerable clientâas well as an exciting climaxâkeep the reader turning the pages. Agent, Sharlene Martin, Martin Literary Management.