REVIEWS
'48 by James Herbert
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
The year is 1948 in this "what-if" world in which only a handful of humans have survived a biological weapon let loose by Nazi Germany. But there is no peace among the survivors, a few of whom are immune to the "blood death," while the rest desperately seek a cure. All of this is only background for this well-crafted exercise in breathless sensationalism. The intensity and naturalness of William Dufris's colloquial first-person narration, plus the startling virtuosity of his character voices, almost add up to a one-man radio drama. Only music and sound effects are missing. An eleven-hour adrenaline rush isn't everyone's idea of fun, but this audiobook does what it does supremely well. J.N.
7 DEADLY WONDERS by Matthew Reilly
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
William Dufris immensely enjoys portraying the many larger-than-life characters and producing the sound effects in this clever action-packed thriller. A small international team from Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand is led by our hero, Australian Jack West, Jr., a young Indiana Jones. They're racing to find the pieces of the Golden Capstone, which Alexander the Great broke up and hid among the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. This dizzying adventure is very visual, and Dufris's voice projects enthusiasm and excitement. His various intonations and masterful pacing, as well as his expert accents, perfectly match the personalities portrayed. He narrates the tale smoothly while building the tension and intrigue. S.C.A
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
From Publishers Weekly
Considered the first great American novel, part of Finn’s charm is the wisdom and sobering social criticism deftly lurking amongst the seemingly innocent observations of the uneducated Huck and the even-less-educated escaped slave, Jim. William Dufris’s voice, unpretentious and disarming, like the book’s main characters, seems the perfect armature on which to hang this literary strategy. Although he does an expert job with the entire cast, Dufris’s delivery of Jim’s dialogue is his crowning achievement. Out of context, Dufris’s Jim might sound mocking and racist, due to his expert delivery of Twain’s regional vernacular. Ignorance and intelligence, however, are not mutually exclusive, and taken as a whole, Jim’s mind and heart come shining through, allowing the listener to reflect on their own assumptions. Tantor Media includes the entire text as a digital e-book on the final CD, a wise and thoughtful move in a market with swift and changing currents.
AIR BATTLE FORCE by Dale Brown
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Major General Patrick McLanahan and General Rebecca Furness join forces with computer-savvy Colonel Daren Mace to command Air Battle Force, a wing of computer-controlled B-1 bombers, called Vampires, and their backup B-52s. All kinds of computer-controlled missiles, ships, and equipment, as well as soldiers fitted out in exo-skeletons called “tin men,” join forces to control a runaway group of Taliban fighters attempting to conquer Turkmenistan. Dufris reads every word, every military part, and every action with exacting precision. He changes inflection and phrasing when switching among U.S. soldiers, Taliban and Turkmenistan fighters, and Russians. There’s little actual gore and lots of military strategizing and seat-of-your-pants flying, and Dufris’s narration never gets in the way of the action. M.B.K.
ALIENS ATE MY HOMEWORK by Bruce Coville
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Rod Albright finds himself in unusual circumstances as he aids some tiny space aliens in thwarting their common enemy, Billy Becker. Dufris transports the listener into the excitement and humor of the story. The diminutive but fierce alien, Capt. Grakker, boasts a voice full of command and determination. Dufris's outstanding imitation of Peter Lorre becomes the voice of Snout, the mental telepathy expert. The wide range of characters allows Dufris opportunity to creatively expand his vocal talents as he gives each one individuality and personality. Fast-paced, funny and totally enjoyable for older elementary-aged children, this makes great listening for families traveling together. P.A.J.
THE BLACK DOVE by Steve Hockensmith
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
If you have yet to enjoy one of Hockensmith’s HOLMES ON THE RANGE novels, run, don’t walk, to your nearest audio outlet and let the good times roll. Our two crime-fighting brothers, called Big Red and Old Red, due to the color of their hair, catch the bug after being given a copy of the Sherlock Holmes classic “The Redheaded League”. This episode finds them in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1893. Much has been said about the great abilities of narrator William Dufris, and concerning this production it must be said that he approaches the material with gung-ho, rollicking, side-slapping intensity. He just flat out seems to be having a fabulous time. D.G.
THE BLUE NOWHERE by Jeffery Deaver
2002 Audie Award Finalist
Phate is a sadistic computer hacker whose world is one big video game. He'll infiltrate your hard drive, your company, and your life. But it doesn't stop there, because killing you is how he wins the game. The FBI's only hope is a man doing time for computer crimes of his own, a man who used to be Phate's best friend and coined the phrase "Blue Nowhere" for cyberspace. Deaver's suspenseful thriller also gives a rare look into the highly interiorized world of hacking. William Dufris has a slow, unemotional delivery, which somehow seems appropriate to the material. While not enthusiastic, his cool, smooth reading allows the story to be central. Listeners will find his characters clear, distinct, and without melodrama. D.G.
COMPANY by Max Barry
2007 Audies Award Finalist
Did you ever get to work and find that the coat hook you've been using for years is being used by someone else? Has someone eaten your doughnut? In Max Barry's black humor take on business, narrator William Dufris playfully leads us into a world in which nothing (or everything) is as it seems. From the heavenly view of the boardroom to the hellish perspective of human resources, there are enough plot twists and corporate intrigues to indict several boards of directors. Always entertaining, Dufris reads this story of corporate revolt with comic timing and tongue firmly planted in cheek, making it an ideal audiobook to enjoy on one's way to work. R.W.S.
THE DAIN CURSE by Dashiell Hammett
Winner of the AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Dufris's boldly interpretive performance of this Hammett classic is breathtaking. He all but disappears into Hammett's rich cavalcade of characters. Man, woman, cynic, lunatic, naif, scoundrel, each personality is utterly realized, full-blooded and idiosyncratic. With expert pacing and emphasis, Dufris also manages to convey their shifts of emotion. His reading becomes every bit as engrossing as the written words themselves. The novel follows the investigations of an audacious, but never named, detective as he seeks to discover why everyone around a peculiar young woman keeps dying. The novel is peopled with fascinating figures brought vividly to life by a most imaginative reader. M.O.
DANCER : A Novel by Colum McCann
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Novelist Colum McCann's fictional biography of Rudolf Nureyev takes advantage of this unusual form to explore the life and times of perhaps the greatest dancer in history. The talented readers, each with care and emotion, bring multiple points of view to life. Nureyev creates his dancer's body through raw ambition and sheer strength of will. He pays the price; the list of ailments and stress-related injuries is almost too painful to hear, but with the work comes money, celebrity, and eventually acceptance. Readers of DANCER will be transported to a strange, profane, and ultimately fulfilling universe. This is one not to be missed. R.O.
THE DEVIL'S TEARDROP by Jeffery Deaver
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Bill Dufris and Deaver are a standout team. Dufris brings a rich, versatile voice to Deaver's strong plot and believable, likeable, fully developed characters in this well-crafted tale of terror. Dufris develops unique, realistic voices for the multitude of diverse characters: Parker Kincaid, hero and forensic document examiner; heroine Margaret Lukas, special agent in charge for the FBI; Len Hardy, the young detective; Gerald Kennedy, the mayor of D.C.; and other police and FBI personnel who search for "The Digger," the brain-damaged, half-human killing machine, who is threatening to blow up crowded venues in the city on New Year's Eve. Easily understood even when reading at breakneck speed, Dufris makes the listeners' hearts beat fast and paralyzes them with fear. The suspense continues to the surprising denouement. S.C.A.
THE FUTURIST by James P. Othmer
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Yates makes big bucks speaking about the future at conferences, but his bosses want less of his vision and more salesmanship to promote their interests. Feeling washed up, he accepts a murky offer to travel the world and ascertain why everyone hates America. Along the way he can't help noticing there may be some malice out there just for him. Alternately hilarious and profound, the novel demands extraordinary range from narrator William Dufris. He meets the challenge with light-speed comic timing and glorious verbal agility. Dufris brings Yates vividly to life by investing every utterance with character-defining inflections and emotion. Based on this production, any opportunities to hear the words of Othmer or the voice of Dufris will be too good to miss. D.J.
THE GLASS KEY by Dashiell Hammett
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Sophisticated urbanites move through a tangled gray area between the law and the underworld. Even when one loses track of the plot, the characters remain engaging. William Dufris is almost startling. He doesn't sound like one reader giving each character a distinctive vocal signature. He sounds like a lot of different people. The casual listener might mistake this for an ensemble recording with a cast that includes women. Dufris also handles narrative passages with unusual liveliness. J.N.
THE LAST SCOUT by Will Cook
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Listeners may think they've picked up a multi-voiced performance when they listen to this outstanding narration by William Dufris. An old woman, a young woman, a young adult male, an old "geezer," and several middle-aged men are just some of the cast of characters for whom Dufris effortlessly finds and maintains voices. Page is a young man striving to succeed on his first job as guard for a stagecoach carrying mine payrolls and gold. He takes his job seriously and strives to catch the bandits carrying out a series of robberies. This classic Western, infused with suspense, danger, and romance, is thoroughly enjoyable. S.C.A.
THE MOONLIGHTERS by Ray Hogan
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
A lady professional gambler rounds up some drifters to search for her late husband's gold in this Old West adventure. One woman and four dubious characters alone in the desert? Hm! Successful genre writing treats familiar formulae vividly and freshly. Everything in this book is a cliché, but deftly presented to hook and hold interest. Narrator Dufris seems born to this kind of material. He has the sound of the frontier in his voice, the ability to deliver sharp characterizations with subtle changes in accent, and a knack for suspense. Y.R.
THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD by Russell Hoban
(Library Journal) Jane Fenn, Coming Post West High School, NY Gr 5-8
This tale by Russell Hoban, originally published in 1967, follows a clock-work mouse attached by the hands to his little child as they look for a home, family, and a sense of belonging. By turns poignant and witty, allegorical and fantastic, the many animals and wind-up characters who populate the story are all dynamically portrayed in this audio version narrated by William Dufris. He deserves enormous credit for managing to make the audio sound like a full-cast recording. There seems to be no end to the voices, accents, and styles of speech he can muster, and as a result listening to this extended fable becomes enormously enriched. He keeps all the characters straight for the listeners, and provides them with a life and appeal that actually adds quite a bit to the printed version. This tale in print has interested young people who enjoy Wind In The Willows-type characters, but with a much more thoughtful, even philosophical storyline bolstered by situations humorous, tedious, and even frightening. The exceptional quality of the narration may bring even more listeners than readers to the story. Younger students who are exceptionally thoughtful listeners and readers would also find this appealing, and children listening with their parents on a family trip would have a great deal to discuss and think about. A worthwhile addition to collections seeking to offer thought-provoking material to children.
NIGHTMARES ON CONGRESS STREET- PART 5 by Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, et al.
2007 Audie Award Finalist
For a modern twist on Old Time Radio horror stories, prepare to be frightened by Rocky Coast Radio Theatre. These presentations of modern tales of terror have top-notch production values and excellent music. The stories cover a wide range of topics. A contemporary adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” fills listeners with trepidation. Ray Bradbury’s “The Wind” reminds listeners how great writers can create fear through inspired word choices. Remaining stories include works by Fitz-James O’Brien, H.P. Lovecraft, Alex Irvine, and Hugh B. Cave, as well as an original story written and performed by actor Michael Duffy. Every one is a contemporary gem designed to scare you. They succeed. M.R.E.
From the rhythmic "The Demon of the Gibbet" to a classic, but updated version of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart," Rocky Coast Radio Theatre provides two hours of thrilling audio entertainment. Entertainment is a foregone conclusion with William Dufris as a driving force in this anthology of eerie and haunting tales. Each piece creates a charged and intense atmosphere, with sound effects, hushed voices, brooding background music, and even silence. The gem in this collection, "Retroactive Anti-Terror," by Alex Irvine, is a science fiction story that presents a futuristic political horror. Despite scary stories from Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft, this collection may not cause nightmares. But it most definitely evokes a bit of excitement for listeners. L.E.
ON THE WRONG TRACK by Steve Hockensmith
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones AwardIt’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS in the Old West. The continuing saga of Otto "Big Red" and Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer (HOLMES ON THE RANGE) is a genuine knee-slapper. When the brothers are hired to guard the Southern Pacific Railroad from the train-robbing Give-'em-Hell Boys, Gustav, an ardent admirer of Sherlock Holmes, begins "deducifying," with Otto providing the muscle, along with sarcastic observations. William Dufris gives an engaging performance of the likable cowpokes and the unruly assortment of scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells that surround them. His attitude is pitch-perfect to the period as are his renderings of a drunken ex-lawman, a beautiful woman, a rail-riding bum with pretensions, a Chinese doctor, a Negro porter, and many more eccentrics. Dufris brings flamboyance, charm, and hilarity to Hockensmith's wild, wild Western. S.J.H.
PALE HORSE COMING by Stephen Hunter
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award, 2003 Audie Award Finalist
Earl Swagger, Hunter's tough ex-Marine, reappears here in a tale both biblical and bestial. Investigating a disappearance, Swagger and his friend, Sam Vincent, visit Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) in 1951 Mississippi and barely escape with theirlives. What they witness convinces them that the place must be erased from the Earth; Swagger rounds up some old war buddies (real-life hero Audie Murphy among them) to get the job done. The reading is fully voiced; the menace in the prison guards' drawls reinforces the cruelty of their actions. Sam, whose no-kill insistence gets them into trouble in the first place, is appropriately stuffy. William Dufris makes you see the buildings and the surrounding swamps, hear the dogs, experience the misery of the inmates. If you can take the graphic violence, somehow made more graphic in audio, this is a winner. J.M.G.
READING THE OED by Ammon Shea
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
Call Shea crazy. He reads the entire OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY in one year and extols upon the fascinating, unusual, and useless words it compiles. William Dufris is the perfect narrator for this book. The words trip easily and clearly from his lips as he brings the many mysteries of the English language to listeners, including the meanings of words we have never known, long forgotten, or always wondered about. Never boring, often funny, Shea describes his experiences reading in his local library as well as the reactions of his friends to his yearlong project. Best of all, Dufris reads every word with enthusiasm, tempting the listener to delve into a dictionary just for the fun of it. M.B.K.
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award, 1998 Audie Award Finalist
Dufris's boldly interpretive performance in this Hammett classic is breathtaking. He all but disappears into Hammett's rich cavalcade of characters. Man, woman, cynic, lunatic, naif, scoundrel, each personality is utterly realized, full-blooded and idiosyncratic. With expert pacing and emphasis, Dufris also manages to convey their shifts of emotion. His reading becomes every bit as engrossing as the written words themselves. The novel follows the investigations of an audacious, but never named, detective as he sifts through the violence and corruption of a flinty mining town. The novel is peopled with fascinating figures brought vividly to life by a most imaginative reader. M.O.
STONE QUARRY by S. J. Rozan
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
S.J. Rozan is a writer gathering a strong following for her Lydia Chin and Bill Stone mysteries. Listening to Bill Dufris's performance, the reasons are evident. Dufris teases out the nuances of the characters and yet doesn't hesitate to draw a clear and distinct portrait of Stone, who allows himself to get involved in "working" in the one place where he's always gotten away from the world, a rural community in upstate New York. A mysterious woman who keeps her identity secret and the always-in-trouble kid are handled compellingly, along with the country characters. Dufris masters the changes in pace in the story, drawing listeners in with each new twist. He's good at women's voices, giving them enough distinct tone and rhythm, then switching to Stone's hard city-edge. Great suspense, great performance. R.F.W.
AN UNFINISHED SEASON by Ward Just
Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
An Unfinished Season is a brilliant novel by Ward Just, whose writing is elegant and powerful. Set in the 1950s, the book focuses upon 19-year-old Wilson Ravan, who must confront the Cold War, the union movement, and love, all while trying to understand who his parents really are. Just, who was nominated for the National Book Award for his novel ECHO HOUSE, is a wonderful writer, and the book seems to fly by. Credit also goes to William Dufris, whose reading is both understated and highly effective. Dufris demonstrates a gift for dialogue, particularly in the scenes with Ravan and his girlfriend, Aurora Brule. But Dufris is most memorable when depicting Aurora's father, Jack, who harbors haunting memories of WWII, memories that drive the book toward its satisfying conclusion. D.J.S.