Snow

So melodious is his voice, so seductive his accent, and so energetic his narration that I might be willing to listen to John Lee reading the Manhattan Directory. Happily, he has far, far richer material than that in this bottomless novel by the brilliant and bold Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. In the story, a somewhat pompous and naïve expatriate Turkish poet returns to his native home, drawn by love and curiosity, and encounters all manner of characters who never conform to his expectations. The timbre of Lee's voice and his brogue might put you in mind of Sean Connery. Conveying an exotic, distinctly non-Western atmosphere, Lee displays the natural gifts of a storyteller who invests every sentence with verve and subtlety. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine


This devilish mystery is set in southeast Ireland in 1957. British narrator John Lee does a masterful job with Irish accents. He provides pitch-perfect renditions of the locals and brings to life the Protestant gentry's upper-crust speech, especially that of Detective Inspector Strafford. But Lee's most memorable and affecting portrayals are those of the local police, the innkeeper, his wife, and their endearing housemaid--all performed with authentic brogues. The plot centers on the killing of a priest who is a serial child molester. John Banville has written a nuanced whodunit with clues as complex as the pattern in a tapestry. A.D.M. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine