The Program » (Abridged, 5 CDs, 5 hrs. 59 min.)

Writers often use elements of their own personalities to craft their most-enduring characters, and Stephen White has certain done so in creating fellow-clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Gregory. However, White s electrifying series of crime thrillers aren t likely to be mistaken for autobiographies anytime soon.

When New Orleans District Attorney Kirsten Lord and her nine-year-old daughter are imperiled by a chillingly believeable death threat, Lord has no other choice but to accept the Witness Portection Program's offer to hide them in Boulder, Colorado. There, they meet program beteran Carl Luppo, a solitary mob hit man who is tormented by his former life and has nothing but time for regret. Sensing that Lord and her daughter's safety has been compromised, Luppo takes on the role of sentinel, fully realizing this might be his last shot at redemption. While Lord suspects that Luppo's warnings about the program's dark side are for her own protection and that she should believe the former assasssin's instincts, the only person she can really trust is nine years old.

Publishers Weekly

Once it recovers from a wobbly beginning, this ninth thriller in the bestselling series featuring Boulder, Colo., clinical psychologist Alan Gregory sprints competently along. Peyton Francis, aka Kirsten Lord, was once a New Orleans district attorney. Now she and her nine-year-old daughter are enrolled in the witness protection program, in hiding from Peyton's husband's assassin, who was most likely hired by a Colombian drug lord Peyton put away for life. Given a new ID and moved to Boulder, Peyton is befriended by another witness protection participant, a former mob hitman who, like herself, is referred by the Feds to Dr. Gregory for counseling. Plagued by doubts about the federal marshal entrusted with her safety and tortured by second thoughts about the impending execution of a black man she may have mistakenly sent to death row in Florida, Peyton races against time to stay the Florida execution, and is forced to go into hiding from the very witness protection forces assigned to protect her. The usually sure-handed White is guilty of some artless writing at the novel's start, creating a veritable obstacle course of meandering points of view, including an obscure long-running metaphoric thread linking repressed memories to images of a pod of whales. However, once the narrative drive settles mainly into Peyton's first-person voice, the story comes handily together. Featuring an interesting cast, including a young Texas schoolmarm turned professional hit person, a sinister cabal of federal marshals with hidden agendas and an entrepreneurial assassination broker in Atlanta, the narrative drives to an edge-of-your-seat denouement. Author tour. (Apr.) Forecast: This is not White's best effort, but fans of the series will check in to catch up on Alan Gregory's adventures his wife is pregnant with their first child in this installment. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.