cover image Con Ed

Con Ed

Matthew Klein, , read by Norman Dietz. . Brilliance Audio, $34.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-4233-3132-2

That voice! It sounds so... familiar, somehow. Dietz is best known as a voiceover artist, so hearing him read Klein’s comic novel of con and countercon will jog vague memories of movie trailers and commercials half-buried in the deepest recesses of memory. Dietz has fun with the world-weary cadences of longtime hustler Kip Largo, an ex-convict who’s seen every trick in the book and still gets himself snarled in what may be the biggest con of all. The only downside is that Dietz has decided to read every female character as a breathy, simpering buffoon—a questionable aesthetic choice that interrupts the flow of the reading each time a woman appears. The remainder of the novel trots along at a brisk clip, and Dietz ambles along right next to it, hardly breaking a sweat. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 8). (Mar.)