Chains of Command

When you blend the work of a highly skilled author with one of the heroes of spoken-word recording, you ought to get a slam dunk. And there's no disappointment here as both deliver in spades. William Caunitz knows his subject from the inside out and takes readers on a hair-raising ride into some of the darkest places of the inner city. Low-life crooks deal drugs. On-the-take cops spawn a drug war. A young mother doubles as a contract killer. Frank Muller takes listeners deeper inside Caunitz's characters by delivering the gritty, streetwise dialogue in the voices of the people. African-American jive talk. Crime-family confrontations. Working-cop slang. All are delivered with the force of a sledgehammer. Caunitz and Muller deliver a compelling experience. T.J.M. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine


Listeners can count on this experienced narrator to catch every nuance of the author's characterizations. After the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, Russian hard-liners take control and attempt to subjugate Moldova--with the Ukraine right in the middle. A Desert Storm veteran airman and the U.S.'s first female combat pilot enter to save the day. The plot, though somewhat dated, is jam-packed with the excitement expected of Brown. Along the way, Guidall differentiates the smorgasbord of characters with his usual style. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

August 30, 1999
New York City cops fight corruption and murder while drug rings battle one another in this stellar, labyrinthine police procedural from the bestselling Caunitz (One Police Plaza). The shooting of Officer Johnny Rodriguez, a corrupt street cop in the mainly Hispanic neighborhood of Washington Heights who doubled as a spy for Internal Affairs, threatens the future career of Deputy Police Commissioner Suzanne Albrecht, to whom he reported. Albrecht wants to be New York's first female commissioner, and a scandal around her informants could quash her chances. So Suzanne transfers her old flame Lt. Matt Stuart (familiar from Caunitz's previous novels) out of his post in Intelligence, setting him up as the new head of Washington Heights' 37th Precinct, and charging him to investigate Johnny's death. The obvious suspect is local drug lord Tio Paco, but Stuart discovers a dirtier cop with a vengeful agenda, and a deadly female shooter on the Italian mob's payroll. Info from Matt's undercover sources, and some timely wiretaps, hint at a bigger story. Colombia's Cali cartel and the Russian mafiyah have jointly controlled the supply of drugs to Washington Heights' Dominican bosses and largely black street pushers. But now the Italians and the Chinese tong gangs are teaming up to try to displace the Russians and Colombians. Bodies pile up, secrets accumulate and power shifts and shifts again as Matt and his crew join forces with the Intelligence division to find major corruption in the police and intrigue among the drug dealers. The narrative lures the reader down one bloody path and onto another, dropping just enough clues to keep the big secrets till the end. Once again, Caunitz, himself an NYPD officer for 30 years, combines suspense with details about the milieu he knows: here, however, greater power is accorded to women, both within the NYPD and in the ranks of the drug dealers. All five city boroughs, along with Long Island, play roles in the novel; all the locations are crisply rendered, and the busy characters sharply drawn. The narrative pace never fails, and a perfect ending provides justice for all without a maudlin note. (Sept.) FYI: Caunitz died in 1996, leaving half of the manuscript for this novel. It was completed by his long-time friend Christopher Newman.

Precise reading, crystalline recording, and memorable characters nearly save this audiobook from poor dramatization and half-baked writing. Detective Matt Stuart, put in charge of investigating the murder of a dirty cop, stumbles onto a deadly drug turf war. Former NYPD detective Caunitz creates rich, conflicted characters and a churning plot. But his dialogue comes from a true-crime comic book and sounds all the more ridiculous in Scott Brick's reading. Brick's rendering of Brooklyn-ese makes Italians sound like Colombians and cops sound like robbers. If the writing and performance were up to the plot, this would make a fine novel. T.F. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine