Two Trains Running

Stephen Hoye's lilting narration, giving emphasis and color to every word, is cloying and affected--like the vocal stylings of a lounge singer. The pointless date/time stamps that start each of the book's many sections would be skippable in reading. On audio they're maddening. The persistent listener becomes inured to Hoye; it helps that he skillfully supplies a wide range of voices for hillbillies, Mafiosi, urban and Southern blacks, women, teenagers, plus the velvety-voiced protagonist, Walker Dett. If some of Hoye's interpretations are clichéd, so is Vachss's dialogue. No narrator could rescue the long, dull sections of this flawed novel about gang wars and political machinations in the southern Midwest. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine