The P.C. Hawke Mysteries #4: Lethal Gorilla - Softcover

This fourth outing in the P.C. Hawke series follows P.C. and Mackenzie as the two teenaged amateur investigators look into the murder of a preeminent zoologist at the Bronx Wildlife Conservation Park. Jeff Woodman reads with a youthful voice that works well for P.C.'s first-person narration. Woodman helps the listener keep track of the many other characters--male and female--by giving them individual voices. He reads with just the right amount of urgency and adolescent bravado to keep the plot moving. Listeners will learn about zoos, gorillas, and crime investigation in another fine installment in this excellent series. A.F. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Grade 4-7-Fifteen-year-old P.C. Hawke is a smugly precocious high school student whose friendship with Mackenzie Riggs, daughter of the New York City coroner, provides him with access to crime sites and murder cases. When a much-hated scientist at the Bronx Zoo is murdered with an infusion of gorilla blood, P.C. and Mackenzie use their super sleuth techniques to untangle a web of deceit and identify the killers. Paul Zindel (Hyperion, 2001) stretches credulity to the limit in this contrived tale of revenge. Although narrator Jeff Woodman perfectly captures P.C.'s cynical hardboiled detective delivery (as well as the voices of characters as diverse as the officer in charge of the case, a shockingly disfigured German scientist, and Betty, a woman who works in the primate nursery), even his expert narration wears thin as listeners tire of P.C.'s arrogance and the increasingly unbelievable twists and turns of the convoluted plot. This title will appeal only to diehard fans of the other books in the P.C. Hawke Mysteries series.
Cindy Lombardo, Orrville Public Library, OH
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