JUSTICE: Crimes, Trials and Punishments

Listening to this audiobook is like having a series of long dinners with Dominick Dunne and listening while he recounts—in some detail—all the famous crime cases he has covered in his 20-year career. Even better, listeners get to choose the site, can eat (or not eat) whatever they want and don't have to dress up (or at all). Dunne is coy, sly, casually amusing, outrageously brazen and even occasionally tedious as he tells what Claus von Bulow's lover wore while she waited for her comatose rival to die in the other bedroom, what Lyle and Erik Menendez were really like and why Los Angeles society (and Dunne's own writing) never really recovered from the O.J. Simpson case. His stories are even heartbreaking, especially in his cool, crushing account of the trial of the young chef who murdered his daughter, Dominique—the horrid crime and supreme legal injustice that got Dunne into the justice game in the first place. Based on the Crown hardcover (Forecasts, June 11). (July)