Tangerine

The audio edition of Mangan’s debut novel, set in 1956 Morocco, expertly brings to life the strange and sinister relationship of two young women. Reader Kreinik enacts the guarded, upper-class Briton Alice Shipley, and Mallon performs as working class American Lucy Mason. Told by each in alternating chapters, the story begins in Tangier, where Alice has been living for a year with her husband, when Lucy unexpectedly arrives on her doorstep. Flashbacks explain that the two met several years before while roommates at Bennington College. Something severed their close friendship and left Alice in a fragile mental state from which she has never quite recovered. What happened back then and what brought Lucy to Tangier are the questions that drive Mangan’s taut thriller. The voice actors give subtle interpretations of the two women at the heart of the book, a fearful Alice closing herself off from the exotic city while Lucy eagerly embraces it. With Kreinik and Mallon capturing its characters as well as the arid, intriguing atmosphere of Tangier, the audiobook emerges as a murderous entertainment influenced by Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock. An Ecco hardcover. (Mar.)