Marked Man

Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up with a hangover and a strange woman's name tattooed on your chest? In THE MARKED MAN, the listener gets to follow attorney Victor Carl as he tries to piece together his missing hours. Reader Richard Rohan has just the right touch of Bogart noir to pull the story off. His cynical smirk can be heard as Carl tromps through Philadelphia strip clubs and meets with over-the-hill Jersey mobsters as he tries to find his lost hours and help a reformed gangster turn legit. Rohan's Jersey mobster is classic, and he effortlessly switches from character to character, leaving no doubt who's speaking. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 20, 2006
Bestseller Lashner's novels about the trials and tribulations of Philadelphia defense attorney Victor Carl are theoretically about crimes and criminals, but are really about the protagonist's soul-searching and deep personal involvement in the cases he takes. This solid sixth entry (after 2005's Falls the Shadow
) finds Carl's involvement entirely involuntary. After drinking rather too much one evening, Carl wakes up with a splitting hangover and the name Chantal Adair tattooed on his chest. Who is or was Chantal, and what does she have to do with the elderly lady who just called in a very large favor from Carl's father? Ogling every woman within a hundred miles and seizing any opportunity to drive someone else's flashy car or drink someone else's expensive booze, Carl works his grimy, self-deprecating charm for all it's worth as he searches for answers that are guaranteed to be unpleasant. This fun legal thriller may have more show than substance, but is no less entertaining because of it.

July 10, 2006
A sense of humor is seldom found in today's top thrillers, but bestseller Lashner possesses one in spades and reader Rohan gets the joke. The author's boozing, lecherous, rule-bending Philadelphia lawyer, Victor Carl—the kind of guy who, in his sixth outing, wakes up with a colossal hangover and an unfamiliar woman's name tattooed on his chest—would seem a throwback to the fondly recalled, politically incorrect screwball sleuths of the '30s and '40s. But Carl has more dimension than his pulp ancestors, and Rohan plays the attorney as both intelligent and lighthearted as he simultaneously searches for the mystery woman whose name, Chantal Adair, he now wears, while brokering a deal that will bring an old gangster in from the cold. Rohan is equally resourceful in delivering a well-timed punch line: when the lawyer asks a young woman at a bar to sample his drink, she does and replies, "Tastes like hummingbird vomit." Rohan's easygoing narration takes advantage of every charming and glib aspect of Carl, to whom women react, in his own words, "with an appealing lack of respect." Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 20).