THE THIRD VICTIM

Officer Rainie Conner is heading up her first homicide investigation, a school shooting in a middle school. Highly suspect are the police chief's son and other locals, most of them known by Rainie. As an FBI profiler and a homicide detective are brought in to help solve the case, the listener might well wind up caring more about the characters' private lives than the investigation. C.J. Critt reads in a deliberate manner, often a little too slowly and with little variation in tempo, and while she gives each character a unique voice, some are more convincing than others. Critt also tends to use too much inflection, making many sentences sound like questions. The performance picks up tempo as the story gets more interesting, but weak plot elements and wordy writing are combined with a sub-par performance add up to a mediocre effort. S.S.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 02]