Sujata Massey, author of the popular Rei Shimura mysteries set in Japan and Washington, D.C., now launches a marvelously plotted, richly detailed series set in India in the 1920s. The book may not reveal much that is new, but already knowing that Aristotle Onassis was Lee’s paramour before Jackie snagged him or that Gore Vidal described Mummy’s second husband, Hugh Auchincloss, as “a magnum of chloroform,” does not lessen the guilty pleasure of hearing it conveyed with such infectious enthusiasm. Mummy - of a “life well lived.” The story’s most sympathetic character is Lee, constantly competing with her sister and unable to stay the course in the many projects she mounted. Her over-the-top performance perfectly suits this story of ruthless campaigns for money and power, the two key ingredients, according to Janet - a.k.a. Narrator Ann Marie Lee’s flexible voice moves from gushing tell-all rapture over salaciousness (Jackie in sexual congress in an elevator!), histrionics (sporadic face-slapping) and curious customs (Lee Radziwill’s maid rushing in to toss a gardenia into the toilet after every use), down several keys to teary dolefulness over the many deaths. Randy Taraborrelli returns to Kennedy-Bouvier territory in high-tattle mode to plow another furrow in its rich loam of gossip, scandal and tragedy. The Irish-born Reynolds renders this gritty backchat with perfection, ranging from the “meet-my-sinuses accent” of a middle-class aspirant to the officious, singsong delivery of a country-born policeman with a voice “six-foot deep in bog.”

That is Frank Mackey, now a cop, who is warned off the case by the officer in charge, his old rival, “Scorcher” Kennedy, who “wore his swagger like it was part of his El Snazzo suit.” The discovery of Rosie’s body puts the book into whodunit territory, and family and social tensions give it heft, but French’s genius for lyrical riffs of dialogue and the cut and thrust of insult and gibe at which Dubliners are such masters achieves brilliance in the audio version. The suitcase is - or was - the property of Rosie Daly, believed to have run off to England two decades ago, leaving behind the boyfriend she was meant to elope with. The story begins with the discovery of a suitcase in a house under renovation in a working-class section of Dublin, now on the cusp of gentrification.

Of Tana French’s six superb Dublin crime novels, “Faithful Place,” newly rereleased as an audiobook, is the standout, thanks to narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds’s terrific command of accents and nimble juggling of voices.

Faithful place