Now I'm listening to books on CD in the car, to make my commute less tedious. And it does! But it does take a certain kind of book to hold my interest ... and the reader matters too. The reader of this one isn't perfect - she sounds too old to be Barney, but she's perfect doing the male voices. So a good fast-paced mystery with interesting characters is about what I like to listen to in the car.

This was fun. It's nothing heavy: the plot is absurd, but it's a great read/listen. Barney, who grew up doing mechanical work in her father's garage, but now works in an insurance agency for some reason that doesn't entirely make sense (she studied engineering in college but couldn't find a job as a mechanical engineer? really?) -- flies down to Florida from Baltimore to find out what happened to her brother Bill. Along the way, she meets Sam Hooker, a NASCAR driver and sometime employer and friend of Bill - and the two of them set off to find Bill, Sam's missing boat, and eventually a Cuban immigrant named Maria who is missing. Throw in a shipwreck with missing gold and a sinister cannister - and bad guys, pseudo bad guys, and Fidel-era Cuban politics, and you'll find that its very entertaining but you don't want to dissect the plot too much.

Good times, even if it feels a little retro at this point -- cell phones are a little less capable (she never knows who is calling until she picks up, which seems odd now), and the Cuban politics are dated. But -- I do want to listen to the next installment of the series (if I can find it at the library).