Bad Intent

Book three in Edgar Award–winner Hornsby’s Maggie McGowan series, originally written in 1995, catches the independent TV journalist just after she relocates from San Francisco to Los Angeles to be with her lover, Mike Trent, an L.A. police detective whom she met while he was investigating her sister’s murder. Meanwhile, a sleazy self-ordained cleric and a self-serving district attorney begin an investigation into a 15-year-old murder conviction stemming from a case that Mike and several other homicide detectives worked on. Postel possesses an attractively deep and smoky voice that is also intelligent and alert for Maggie, the story’s narrator. She adds a brusque impatience, a sense of knowing the game, to Maggie’s deal cutting with network news producers, then switches to an empathic approach when the reporter is coaxing information from reluctant subjects. Postel also provides the men in the story with credible baritone variations. The only false note is the voice given by the narrator to some of the novel’s African-American women (a little heavy on the Ebonics). An Open Road/MysteriousPress.com e-book. (July)