A selection of audio books reviewed.
Suite Française
By Irène Némirovsky,
Read by Eleanor Bron,
Random House, five CDs, six hours, £16.99
Imagine - if you can - that your home town has been invaded by a rampaging foreign army. What would you do? Run? But where would you go? And would you take the best china with you? Such are the dilemmas faced by the group of well-heeled Parisians whose stories are told in this astonishing novel. Nemirovsky knew what she was writing about: steeped in precisely this social milieu herself, she was headed for a brilliant career as a writer when she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died of pneumonia before she could finish what she intended to be a trilogy. Recently rediscovered after languishing in a notebook for half a century, Suite Francaise is a work of glittering irony, immense pathos, and satisfying bitchiness - and there's no better woman to deliver that combination than Eleanor Bron.
The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak, read by Allen Corduner,
Random House, 11 CDs, 12 hours, unabridged, £16.99
To have Death as your narrator is a pretty smart literary wheeze - especially in the audio format, where there's an undeniable chill factor as that cultured voice whispers in your ear and tells you that, one way or another, like it or lump it, you're headed his way. This tale of a nine-year-old girl (the eponymous book thief) and her foster family in Nazi Germany in 1939 takes a while to warm up, but when it gets going, it's a cracker. Like John Boyne's mega-hit The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, it has two children at its centre, but this is a more complex story on a bigger canvas. Reader Allen Corduner is a new name on the audio scene, and he brings Zusak's motley cast to life with just the right blend of child-like innocence and knowing humour.
The Third Policeman
By Flann O'Brien, read by Jim Norton, Naxos, six CDs, 6¾ hours, unabridged, £24.99
As the recent tribute programme on RTÉ television proved, the satirist Flann O'Brien is as much of an enigma as ever - so for those who want to make serious inroads into the humour of the man Tommy Tiernan has dubbed "the father of Irish stand-up", this new recording from Naxos is a good place to start. With superb recordings of Ulysses and Dubliners under his belt, Jim Norton has turned himself into the voice of Irish classic fiction, and his dry-as-dust rendering of this bizarre book is perfectly suited to a surreal and murderous caper, set in a world where people turn into bicycles without so much as turning a hair. Or should that be "spoke"?
Black Cat Black Dog
By John Creed,
Read by Sean Barrett, Isis, eight CDs, nine hours, unabridged, £24.99
Is the North the new Moscow? Thriller writers certainly seem to be finding plenty of inspiration in the post-ceasefire situation, and this deceptively low-key spy yarn - mellifluously read by Sean Barrett - features an Antrim coastline of almost Arctic bleakness, a second World War arms dump, a botched US mission to Iraq, and more mysterious Russians than you could shake a stick at.
Maybe it's the cold, maybe it's the laid-back attitude of Creed's award-winning anti-hero Jack Valentine, maybe it's the stately pace and overwhelming sense of strangeness - anyhow, it's all quite reminiscent of Martin Cruz Smith and his Gorky Park man Arkady Renko, which means it surely can't be long before Valentine, who's already being hailed as "the spooks' spook" in thriller circles, makes the transition to superstardom, or maybe even, with luck, the big screen.
Paula Spencer
By Roddy Doyle
Read by Ger Ryan
Random House, six CDs, seven hours, unabridged, £16.99
It seems like ages since we heard from Roddy Doyle's ebullient heroine Paula Spencer. Well, here she is again, a 48-year-old widow of 10 years' standing. She's off the drink, her kids are growing up, and she's putting her life back together one step at a time, arthritis and the wilder excesses of the Celtic Tiger permitting. If you like Paula, you'll love this full-on reading by Ger Ryan, who played her in the iconic BBC series Family. If, on the other hand, you find her gritty Dublin wit a little wearing, be warned that there are seven hours of first-person narration here. I loved every minute, and look forward to the next instalment.