The Affair

That inimitable Golden Voice of Dick Hill layers suspense upon suspense as he takes on the first-person cadence of Jack Reacher, sometime major in the U.S. Army, 6 foot 5, 250 pounds, powerful, deadly, nearly indestructible. Usually Reacher roams the country righting wrongs, but this book is the newer of two prequels. He's in the Army under questionable command, sent undercover to Mississippi. Hill is a master of low-key noir narration; his voices are mostly flat American, well suited to the many characters, wherever they're from. Only the main female character, a Southern sheriff and ex-Marine, strains his expertise; he delivers a sort of breathy, honeyed falsetto that strains the listener's belief. But it hardly impacts Hill's overall outstanding performance. It would take a full cast to outdo him. D.R.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine