Where Boston's the backdrop

THE KEEPSAKE
By Tess Gerritsen
Random House Audio, unabridged fiction, 11 CDs, nine hours, $44.95, read by Deirdre Lovejoy. The abridged version is five CDs, six hours, $29.95, read by Carolyn McCormick and Alyssa Bresnahan. Also available as an unabridged download from www.audible.com, $31.47 or an abridged download, $20.97. The unabridged version is reviewed here.

WHY WE SU--: A Feel Good Guide to
Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid
By Dr. Denis Leary
Penguin Audio, abridged fiction, five CDs, five hours, $29.95, read by the author. Also available as a download from www.audible.com, $20.97

If you're going to spend 24 hours and a small fortune on an audiobook, then it had better be worth the time and money. Thankfully, Dennis Lehane's lengthy "The Given Day" was worth the wait and the time it takes to listen to it.

Set in 1919, "The Given Day," Lehane's first new novel since 2003, tackles the Spanish influenza pandemic, the Boston Police strike, the effects of the Great Molasses Flood, anarchy and terrorism, racism, baseball, and even the events that thrust Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge into the national consciousness. It is almost exhausting just thinking about it.

The reason it is not exhausting to listen to it is that Lehane gave each of these topics a human connection. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of Danny Coughlin, the son of a Boston Police captain and as close to nobility as one can get among the working Irish in a city riddled with class consciousness, distrust, and hatred. The stories about Coughlin's lovers, friends, and family splinter into interconnected tales that balance and enhance one another.

Encircling this group are other stories, like that of Babe Ruth, who touches the life of one character who is involved with another, who is in love with a third.

Illness, poverty, terrorism, and racism affect each character, culminating in a strike by the police, who have been working for wages below the poverty level. The ensuing violence in an unguarded city is shatteringly realistic and horrifying in scope.

Narrator Michael Boatman deserves much credit for juggling so many characters and giving each a distinct voice. He smoothly expresses Lehane's realistic dialogue, sounding natural even when a harsh, inner-city edge is required.

"The Keepsake" is another novel set in Boston, but while Lehane's is an ambitious historical epic, this is more of an airport or beach audiobook.

Much of the plot involves the Crispin Museum, a small repository of dusty anthropological relics. The museum is brought into the limelight when a mummy found buried among the crates in the basement turns out to be younger than expected. In fact, she is a thoroughly modern mummy.

"The Keepsake" is the seventh entry in thrillers featuring detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles.

If you can shut your ears to the flaws and jump in, this is decent escapism, read well by narrator Deirdre Lovejoy. She has a deep voice and polished manner. Aside from her perfect diction, Lovejoy's greatest success is that she does not overplay a story that is already over the top, giving us a decent balance between the narrator and narrative.

Denis Leary, or Dr. Denis Leary as he likes to call himself since being awarded an honorary doctorate from Emerson College, wrote and narrated "Why We Su--," a comedic guide to everything wrong with Americans.

Calling this a "book" is a reach, because it is really just a screed against everything Leary finds annoying. His language is rough, and he doesn't pull any punches. Unfortunately, his spiel sometimes comes across as ignorant and grating, but that seems to depend on whether you agree with him.

The best parts of the audiobook, the laugh-out-loud until you can't hear him speak parts, involve his family.

Without his comic delivery, this book would have been a bunch of angry, run-on sentences, but because Leary is an experienced comedian his delivery punches up much of the material. He has a prickly, streetwise edge that will be very familiar to East Coast denizens, though he has learned to pronounce his r's over the years.

Rochelle O'Gorman is a syndicated audiobook critic.