The Book Reporter

* !!! NEW THIS WEEK !!! *

2008-11-03T21:29:00.001-05:00

Losing The Edge,

Rose in Bloom,

And more from Agatha Christie!

AUTHOR LIST

2008-01-30T22:24:00.019-05:00

Marv Albert
I’d Love To But I Have A Game

Louisa May Alcott
Eight Cousins (or the Aunt-Hill)
Jo's Boys (And How They Turned Out)
Rose In Bloom

Therese Alderton
An Easter Bouquet

Tim Allen
I'm Not Really Here

Woody Allen
Side Effects

Dave Anderson
Hey, Wait a Minute (I Wrote a Book!)

Brian Antoni
Naked Came the Manatee

Mary Astor
A Life On Film

Donald Bain
A Deadly Judgment
A Palette For Murder
Brandy & Bullets
The Highland Fling Murders
The Maine Mutiny
Martinis and Mayhem
Murder in Moscow
Rum & Razors

Mary Balogh
Lady With A Black Umbrella
Lord Carew's Bride

Dave Barry
Dave Barry In Cyberspace
Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus
Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys
Naked Came the Manatee

Henry Beard
Latin For All Occasions

Jack Becklund
Summer With The Bears

Josephine Bell
Curtain Call For A Corpse

Robert Benchley
After 1903 -- What?

William J. Bennett
The Death of Outrage

Yogi Berra
The Yogi Book

Claudia Bishop
Murder Well-Done

George Blair
Split End

Lawrence Block
The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

D.B. Borton
Two Points For Murder

Lilian Jackson Braun
The Cat Who Blew The Whistle
The Cat Who Knew A Cardinal
The Cat Who Played Brahms
The Cat Who Said Cheese
The Cat Who Wasn’t There
The Cat Who Went Into The Closet

Ann Bridge
A Place To Stand

Terry Brooks
The Tangle Box
Witches' Brew
Wizard At Large

Jan Harold Brunvand
The Choking Doberman (And Other "New" Urban Legends)

Edna Buchanan
Naked Came the Manatee

Gayle Buck
Mutual Consent

Jimmy Buffett
Tales From Margaritaville

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Sara Crewe

John Dickson Carr
Panic In Box C

Susan Carroll
Christmas Belles
The Lady Who Hated Shakespeare
Mistress Mischief

Barbara Cartland
A Halo for the Devil
Bewitched
Only A Dream
The Outrageous Lady

James Carville
... And The Horse He Rode In On

Terri Casey
Pride and Joy

Clara Cassidy
Up In Years (And Off My Rocker)

Mary Jane Chambers
Here Am I! Send Me

Loretta Chase
The English Witch

Marion Chesney
Those Endearing Young Charms

Agatha Christie
A Holiday For Murder
At Bertram's Hotel
The Body in the Library
Crooked House
Death In The Clouds
4:50 From Paddington
Funerals Are Fatal
The Man in the Brown Suit
Murder With Mirrors
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
N Or M?
Ordeal By Innocence
The Pale Horse
Partners in Crime
Sad Cypress
The Seven Dials Mystery
Sleeping Murder
There Is A Tide
Thirteen At Dinner
Towards Zero

Charles M. Cooper
The Old Testament For Us

Thomas B. Costain
Ride With Me

Hamilton Crane
Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle

Trella Crespi
The Trouble With A Small Raise

Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park

Anne Crone
This Pleasant Lea

Clive Cussler
Deep Six

Don Davenport
Fire & Ice

Lester David
Ethel

Frank Deford
Cut 'N' Run

Nelson DeMille
Plum Island
Spencerville

Michael Dibdin
Dirty Tricks

Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Old Curiosity Shop

Dorothea Donley
The Beaux of Bayley Dell

Carole Nelson Douglas
Cat in a Crimson Haze
Cat on a Blue Monday
Catnap

Tananarive Due
Naked Came the Manatee

John Dufresne
Naked Came the Manatee

Jane Duncan
My Friends From Cairnton
My Friends George and Tom
My Friends, The Hungry Generation

Carola Dunn
Toblethorpe Manor

Gail Eastwood
The Rake's Mistake

Margaret Echard
Born in Wedlock

Morris Feinberg
Larry, The Stooge In The Middle

David Feldman
How Does Aspirin Find A Headache?

Jasper Fforde
The Eyre Affair
Lost In A Good Book

Jessica Fletcher
A Deadly Judgment
A Palette For Murder
Brandy & Bullets
The Highland Fling Murders
The Maine Mutiny
Martinis and Mayhem
Murder in Moscow
Rum & Razors

Frederick Forsyth
The Fist of God

Dick Francis
To The Hilt

Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Drowning Duck
The Case of the Lucky Legs

Kelsey Grammer
So Far

Ann Granger
A Season For Murder

John Gray
How To Get What You Want and Want What You Have
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

John Grisham
A Time To Kill
The Client
The Firm
The Partner
The Pelican Brief
Runaway Jury

Jane Haddam
Feast of Murder

James W. Hall
Naked Came the Manatee

Barbara Hazard
Thursday’s Child

Vicki Hendricks
Naked Came the Manatee

Emily Hendrickson
Lord Dancy's Delight

Mrs. Robert Henrey
Mistress of Myself

Carl Hiaasen
Naked Came the Manatee

Grace Livingston Hill
According To The Pattern

Cindy Holbrook
A Suitable Connection

Tom Holt
Flying Dutch

Carolina Hospital
Naked Came the Manatee

John Irving
The World According To Garp

Benjamin Jacobsen
Oh Sir, You've Shot Her!

John Jakes
The Americans
The Lawless
North and South

P.D. James
Unnatural Causes

Dan Jenkins
You Gotta Play Hurt

Emma Jensen
Vivid Notions

Margaret Jensen
First We Have Coffee
Lena
Violets For Mr. B

Spencer Johnson, M.D.
Who Moved My Cheese?

Alan Judd
Tango

Jeanette Kamins
A Husband Isn't Everything

Stuart M. Kaminsky
He Done Her Wrong

Garson Kanin
Tracy and Hepburn

James Kaplan
Dean and Me

Elizabeth Kata
A Patch of Blue

Harry Kemelman
One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross
Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry
That Day the Rabbi Left Town

Alexander Kent
A Tradition of Victory
Band of Brothers
In Gallant Company
Midshipman Bolitho
Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger
Sloop of War
Stand Into Danger
To Glory We Steer

April Kihlstrom
The Counterfeit Betrothal

Emily Kimbrough
Floating Island
Forever Old, Forever New
Forty Plus and Fancy Free
Our Hearts Were Young & Gay
So Near and Yet So Far
Through Charley's Door

Gordon Korman
The Chicken Doesn't Skate

William Kotzwinkle
Christmas At Fontaine's

M.D. Lake
A Gift for Murder
Flirting With Death

Harold A. Larrabee
Decision at the Chesapeake

Gaylord Larsen
Dorothy and Agatha

Elmore Leonard
Naked Came the Manatee

Paul Levine
Naked Came the Manatee

Jerry Lewis
Dean and Me

Dawn Lindsey
The Nabob's Daughter

Jeremy Lloyd
The "Are You Being Served" Stories

Norah Lofts
Silver Nutmeg

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Kavanagh

Betty MacDonald
The Plague and I

Charlotte Macleod
An Owl Too Many

John Madden
Hey, Wait a Minute (I Wrote a Book!)

Howard Manly
Lift Every Voice

Elizabeth Mansfield
Winter Wonderland

Garry Marshall
Wake Me When It's Funny

Janet Letnes Martin
Growing Up Lutheran

Kat Martin
Fanning The Flame

Michelle Martin
The Queen of Hearts

Evelyn Mayerson
Naked Came the Manatee

Tim McCarver
Baseball For Brain Surgeons and Other Fans

Sharyn McCrumb
Highland Laddie Gone
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O
Lovely In Her Bones
MacPherson’s Lament
Missing Susan
Sick of Shadows
The Windsor Knot

Carson McCullers
Member of the Wedding

Bernice McGeehan
Wunnerful, Wunnerful!

Dixie Lee McKeone
Sweet Doro

Barry Meisel
Losing The Edge

Barbara Metzger
Christmas Wishes

Gwyneth Moore
Love’s Lady Lost

Suzann (Johnson) Nelson
Growing Up Lutheran

Holly Newman
Gentleman's Trade

Joan Overfield
A Matchmaking Miss

Robert B. Parker
A Catskill Eagle
Ceremony
Double Deuce
Early Autumn
God Save The Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
The Judas Goat
Looking for Rachel Wallace
Love and Glory
Pale Kings And Princes
Paper Doll
Pastime
Promised Land
Stardust
Taming A Sea Horse
Thin Air
Valediction
The Widening Gyre

Frances Gray Patton
Good Morning, Miss Dove

Danny Peary
Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans

George Plimpton
Paper Lion

John Prebble
The Lion In The North

Ellery Queen
The Penthouse Mystery

Lawrence J. Quirk
Fasten Your Seat Belts

Gilda Radner
It's Always Something

Debbie Raleigh
The Christmas Wish

Miss Read
Emily Davis
The Fairacre Festival
Miss Clare Remembers
No Holly for Miss Quinn
Over The Gate
Return To Thrush Green
Tales From A Village School
Winter In Thrush Green

Carl Reiner
My Anecdotal Life

Scott Rice
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema
Soldier of Orange

Elliott Roosevelt
Murder In The Oval Office

Dana Fuller Ross
Illinois!

Irene Saunders
The Contentious Countess

Dick Schaap
Sport

Sidney Sheldon
The Other Side of Midnight

Ernest H. Shepard
Drawn From Memory

Louisa R. Shotwell
Adam Bookout

Gene Simmons
KISS and Make Up

Cornelia Otis Skinner
Our Hearts Were Young & Gay

Joan Smith
The Great Christmas Ball

Adela Rogers St. Johns
Some Are Born Great

Judith Stafford
Sarah's Angel

Les Standiford
Naked Came the Manatee

D.E. Stevenson
Green Money
Music in the Hills
Smouldering Fire
The Young Clementina

Mary Stewart
The Moon-Spinners

T.L. Tedrow
Missouri Homestead

Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar
The Daughter of Time

Leonard Tourney
The Bartholomew Fair Murders

Thomas Tryon
Crowned Heads

Dr. Walter Turnbull
Lift Every Voice

Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad

Robert Vaughan
Dawn of the Century
Hard Times
The Lost Generation

Lawrence Welk
Wunnerful, Wunnerful!

Robert W. Wells
Fire & Ice

Morris West
The Shoes of the Fisherman

Jan Westcott
Captain Barney

Gustav K. Wiencke
The Old Testament For Us

P.G. Wodehouse
The Code of the Woosters

Tom Wolfe
The Bonfire of the Vanities

Stuart Woods
Orchid Beach
Under The Lake

Herman Wouk
Inside, Outside
This Is My God

Lady Word enLightening The World

2008-01-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

TITLES X - Y - Z

2008-01-28T17:01:00.004-05:00

The Yogi Book
I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said
Yogi Berra
Humor
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Workman Publishing
1998

Yogi Berra, beloved catcher of the New York Yankees on their world championship teams from the late 1940s to the 1960s, plus former manager of both the Yankees and New York Mets, is perhaps best known for his inadvertent witticisms. He is famous for the sayings, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and “90% of the game is half mental” as well as myriad other miscues that have been attributed to him that he never actually said. This book is more of a joke-and-picture book, instead of a regular book, but it is still entertaining in its own way. The pictures, and text that goes along with the pictures, are interesting, amusing and nostalgic. This is a small, fun and light-hearted book by a sports icon who is universally adored and revered by fans, family, teammates and celebrities worldwide. It has a lot of fun baseball stories, plus cute family memories. My favorites of his sayings are, “The future ain’t what it used to be” and “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” At the end of the book are more “Yogi-isms” that were actually said by his wife, children or grandchildren instead, and my favorites of those are “I double-checked it six times” and “I knew exactly where it was, I just couldn’t find it.” Written in a lively, informal style, this short book leaves you wanting much more. A very fun, happy little book.

You Gotta Play Hurt
Dan Jenkins
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Simon & Schuster
1991

Jim Tom Pinch is a sportswriter with “The Sports Magazine.” The magazine sends him and other staffers to cover the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. The book is written vignette-style with short, punchy chapters. Along the way, we are introduced to the colorful characters in Jim Tom’s world, including his colleagues at the magazine, the Chief Editor, the horrible publisher, other sportswriters, athletes and managers, venue staff, his three ex-wives and his no-account son, who appears to be a professional student. Although many of the characters are unlikable, they’re all highly entertaining and the pace never lags. After the Olympics, it’s off to the Final Four and one of the funniest skewerings of college basketball and the people involved in it. Next up is The Masters, with its own amusing anecdotes. There are also occasional chapters interspersed as letters to his book publisher, about the progress of the book as it’s being written, which creates a very humorous book-within-a-book sub-plot. Somewhere between The Masters and the Indy 500, Jim Tom discovers there are two women in love with him: Long-time editor and co-worker sensible Nell Woodruff, and Jeannie Slay, a young and bouncy sportswriter with the L.A. Times. Jim Tom angles for a big promotion for Nell, and she seems to have the inside track, but then he covers the U.S. (golf) Open with Jeannie, for the most part fending off her advances. It gets more complicated when all of them converge at Wimbledon, that bastion of tradition that comes in for some ferocious ribbing. Also amusing are Jim Tom’s efforts to procure “friendly companions” (hookers) for the magazine’s big advertisers, a job that he hates, but for which the delighted magazine big-wigs reward him richly. It’s at Wimbledon that Jim Tom finds out the “coziness” between the big-wigs and the advertisers involves a lot of dubious insider trading and stock manipulation shenanigans. When everyone arrives in Paris for the Summer Olympics, Jim Tom is under pressure to finally make a choice between Nell and Jeannie. He chooses Nell and lets Jeannie down gently – she decides to accept an offer from CBS-TV Sports and give up her column. The next big hullabaloo is when the horrible publisher is fired by the magazine ownership, after he and another executive (who died) were discovered engaging in bizarre and sordid sexual practices. Everyone on the executive ladder moves up a notch and it looks like there’s a possibility of a big advancement for Nell, except for the useless and incompetent (but very well-connected) deadwood in her way. In the end, Jim Tom’s alma mater, Texas Christian University, has a rip-roaring Cotton Bowl appearance, Nell gets the big job, and everyone ends up happy. This author also wrote “Semi-Tough,” a very entertaining sports novel and even a pretty good movie. Many years of writing for Sports Illustrated have given him a real insight into the business of journalism, sports and the people involved with it. It starts out better than it ends up, sort of running out of steam midway, and it turns out more linear than well-rounded. But it is extremely well-written and entertaining throughout, and it seems almost too real to be fictional.

The Young Clementina
D.E. Stevenson
Drama
Fiction
Rating 5
Holt, Rinehart & Winston
1938

Charlotte Dean and her sister Kitty grew up at the parsonage in Hinkleton Manor and although Charlotte had an understanding with Garth Wisdon, the heir to the title, he unexpectedly married her sister. Things went horribly wrong and after they were divorced, Kitty died unexpectedly. Garth asked Charlotte to oversee the Manor and his daughter Clementina while he went on safari to get away from bad memories at home. Their relationship, rocky at first, became smooth and finally warm. They received the news that Garth had been killed abroad and Charlotte was instructed to write his memoirs from his diaries. This is how she found out what really happened with their “misunderstood understanding” and why he married her sister, which she felt wistful about, now that it was too late to mend the break between them. But it turned out he wasn’t killed and everything ended up wonderfully. A very sweet and sentimental story without being cloying. An unexpected pleasure.

TITLES U - V - W

2008-01-26T17:00:00.006-05:00

Under The Lake
Stuart Woods
Suspense
Fiction
Rating 4
Simon & Schuster
1987

A change of pace for this author, the story is a sort of Gothic horror tale set in a sleepy Southern town. John Howell is a blocked writer in a dull marriage who gets a chance to ghost-write the biography of an embarrassingly famous self-made man. He moves to a cabin in the woods so he can work without interruptions. Bizarre things begin happening at once. He gets involved with a newspaperwoman undercover in the town doing an expose on the sheriff. Everything revolves around the valley families who were flooded out with the new dam. The supernatural ending is surprising and satisfying.

Unnatural Causes
P.D. James
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Charles Scribners Sons
1967

The body of writer Maurice Seton washes ashore on the Suffolk coast, where he lived in a cottage in a small community. Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is in the area on vacation visiting with his aunt. The local Supt. Reckless investigates, dragging Dalgliesh along in his wake. Next, the deceased’s half-brother and heir turns up murdered. It turns out to be an elaborate plot by Seton’s crippled and bitter typist and Gal Friday, Sylvia Kedge, and his half-brother to get at his inheritance before he had a chance to change his will. Sylvia killed her accomplice to get all of the money for herself, and then she was killed mostly by accident during a roof-top rescue attempt in a bad storm. A bit pedantic for this genre, but meticulously written with sharp characterizations, and interesting throughout.

Up In Years (And Off My Rocker)
Clara Cassidy
Essay
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Self-Published by Clara McGrew Cassidy
1974

This is a tiny (40 pages) but delightful gem of a book, a perfect example of the saying “good things come in small packages.” The writer, in her 70s, retired from her job and puttered around the house for a few years. Then she began writing a weekly column called “Up In Years” for the local newspaper and her retirement took on a whole new character. This book is made up of short and peppy essays on a wide range of topics such as “Balanced Lives,” “A Rainy Day List,” “Put Your Timer To Work” and “Chase Away That Blue Mood.” All of the essays are clever and insightful, full of warmth, humor and good common sense. The writing is upbeat without being sappy, and offers practical advice in a kindly way that is easy to take. You feel this is a close friend or trusted advisor, someone you can turn to with questions or problems. She doesn’t sugar-coat the problems with aging, but she views them objectively and without bitterness or self-pity. A very uplifting and entertaining little treasure, and the author is to be commended for her keen observations, sprightly humor and positive outlook. Leaves you begging for more.

Valediction
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Delacorte Press
1984

Another in a series of books by this author featuring hard-boiled Private Investigator Spenser from Boston, this is a very strange story for a Spenser book and reminiscent of “Early Autumn” which was more a relationship book than crime drama. The first thing that happens in this story is that his girlfriend Susan Silverman gets her doctorate from Harvard and promptly leaves town to accept a job in San Francisco. (The book after this that continues Susan’s California adventures is “A Catskill Eagle.”) This throws Spenser into a spin that lasts the whole book. Susan sends Paul Giacomin to stay with Spenser and watch over him – everyone he knows (Hawk, Martin Quirk, Joe Broz, Vinnie Morris, Henry Cimoli, etc, etc.) asks him how he’s doing since Susan left. The manager of the dance group that Paul belongs to asks Spenser to find his girlfriend Sherry who has been kidnaped by a religious cult. Spenser goes to their headquarters and roughs them up and they produce Sherry, but she doesn’t want to leave. He has nothing else to do, so he looks a little deeper into the church’s finances and finds ties to a crooked construction company. It appears that the church is laundering money for the crooks. The church’s leader admits to the ruse and is set to testify against them. Then the construction boss is murdered and things begin to look a little different. It turns out that Sherry and the church leader were selling drugs through their various branches and using the construction company as a smokescreen. In a weird, disjointed denouement, the dance manager and church leader kill each other and Sherry shoots Spenser before she is killed. Hawk brings Spenser to the hospital with bullet wounds in the chest and requires 15 hours of surgery before he is out of the woods. A real departure for Spenser books – murky, depressing and uncharacteristically aimless. Even more depressing reading, because you already know that Susan doesn’t come back at the end.

Violets For Mr. B
Margaret Jensen
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Here’s Life Books
1988

By the author of “First We Have Coffee,” and other similar works, this book relates the early years of the author’s nursing studies and internship in area hospitals. Told in an easy conversational style, the vignettes are alternately funny, sad, poignant or surprising. The author’s strong faith and sense of family make her books more like visiting with a favorite friend.

Vivid Notions
Emma Jensen
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1996

American heiress Vivian Redmond is sent to visit relatives in England to enjoy a season in London. She finds that there is circulating at that time a series of poems of unknown origin (but presumably Byron) describing the almost indescribably perfect ideal of a woman – and it seems to describe Vivian exactly. This sets London its ear and gives Vivian no end of unwanted attention by curiosity seekers. Another distant relative who keeps after her is Noel, the noted playboy, Lord St. Helier, who is smitten with her spiritedness. She of course finds him odious in the extreme. There follows a lot of activity, outings and dances and costume balls and whatnot, plus trying to uncover the identity of the unknown poet (it turns out to be Byron’s niece or something in a totally incomprehensible sub-plot) and of course, it ends happily. Well-written in a jaunty, informal style.

Wake Me When It’s Funny
Garry Marshall
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Adams Media
1995

Writer, TV producer and movie director Garry Marshall has written a lively and funny book about his life. From humble beginnings in the Bronx, through early days writing for stand-up comics, then on to his successful TV career and hit movies, his story is consistently interesting and engaging. Loaded with anecdotes, advice and laughs, a very satisfying and extremely entertaining book.

Who Moved My Cheese?
Spencer Johnson, M.D.
Self-Help
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam’s Sons / Penguin Putnam
1998

Dr. Johnson is a famous motivational speaker and author of other books, such as “The One Minute Manager” (with Kenneth Blanchard), “The Precious Present,” “Yes or No,” plus a series of books for young people that highlight a particular virtue using a biography of a historical figure. This short book (under 100 pages) is nothing but a fleshed-out anecdote from a motivational seminar about dealing with change. It’s a very entertaining story about four characters (Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw) who travel around in a maze looking for cheese. (Here, the cheese is a metaphor for anything in your business or personal life that makes you happy.) They find a wonderful large stash of cheese and settle in to enjoy it. After a while, they become accustomed to having this cheese in this spot, and feel it should always be there and they are entitled to it. So when one day, they arrive and discover the cheese is all gone, it comes as a very unpleasant surprise. Sniff and Scurry go charging off, back into the maze to find more cheese. But Hem and Haw instead become angry, depressed and incapable of making any adjustments. They keep staying in the same place and doing the same things and just expect the cheese to return because they want it to. They have become immobilized by their fears – fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of trying something new. Finally, Haw realizes he has no other alternatives, so he goes back out into the maze looking for new cheese. It’s not easy, and he feels frightened, discouraged and inept. But after a while, he gains confidence as he draws on reserves of strength he didn’t know he had, and begins to embrace the concept of change, and it give him a sense of mastery over circumstances, and puts him in charge of his own destiny. He writes sayings on the walls (like “Old beliefs do no lead you to new cheese” and “When you move beyond your fear, you feel free”) to help anyone who follows him. The books makes a lot of valid points in an entertaining and painless way. It suffers from having the cheese story surrounded by an opening and closing section of a group of young people discussing their lives and careers, and how change affects them. This kind of literary conceit almost always falls flat, since the characters are ciphers, and the dialogue is awkward, forced and totally unbelievable. This book has a lot to recommend it, and professional people rave about it. But it’s amazing to me that they can charge $20 for a book that is basically a shaggy-dog story and not much else.

The Widening Gyre
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Delacorte Press
1983

Senatorial candidate Meade Alexander has gotten some death threats during his campaign, so he hires Boston Private Investigator Spenser to provide security. The candidate, who is a fundamentalist Christian, discovers that his enemies have a compromising videotape of his wife, who also has a drinking problem. The opposition candidate is in the pocket of local gangsters Joe Broz and Vinnie Morris from previous books. It turns out that Joe’s son Gerry is running organized orgies among college students and bored housewives, making videotapes as a kind of insurance. After Joe Broz loses two hit-men trying to kill Spenser, he makes a deal with him instead that protects the candidate’s reputation. Also showing up in this book are Paul Giacomin and Detective Martin Quirk. These books are always well-written and consistent within the entire series.

The Windsor Knot
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine / Random House
1990

Forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson is working on her doctoral thesis in Virginia, when her fiancé Cameron Dawson in Scotland is invited to the annual Garden Party with the Queen (along with thousands of others.) When Elizabeth finds out that she can’t go because they are not married, she insists on assembling a lavish wedding before the party. While she is running around pulling this all together, a local widow gets the startling news that her husband has died in California – five years after she was originally notified of his death. This begins a merry chase through other mysterious disappearances and shady circumstances. These books are always jolly and entertaining, unhindered by dense plots.

Winter in Thrush Green
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Houghton Mifflin
1962

Another in this series by this author concerning life in a small English village. Charming and idyllic without being sappy, the characters are drawn in a kindly light, warts and all notwithstanding. When retired businessman Harold Shoosmith buys a vacant cottage on the Green, the village is set on its ear, and he finds himself drawn into the myriad committees, drives and doings of a small town. It is in this book that Albert Piggott (the Sexton) and Nelly Tilling get married; also the widowed Vicar Charles Henstock and spinster Dimity Dean decide to take the plunge. Dr. and Mrs. Lovell have a baby girl, and the shady Sam Curdle (of the Curdle May Day Fair) is arrested for burglary. A large part of the book is taken up with efforts to erect a memorial to Nathaniel Patten – a Thrush Green native famous for his missionary work in Africa – on the centennial of his birth. In the end, they commission a nice bronze statue of him to be installed on the Green, and everyone seems happy with it, especially Harold Shoosmith, who particularly revered him. Typically enjoyable, as all these books are, and told in a lively, informal style. The characters are genuine and engaging, and the descriptive passages are uniformly interesting. A wonderfully entertaining and sentimental look at village life that charms like a bright and cheerful fire on a cold night.

Winter Wonderland
Elizabeth Mansfield
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Jove Books / Berkley Publishing
1993

At his very first ball, young Barnaby Traherne makes the mistake of getting out of his depth with Miranda Pardew, who is the Incomparable of the season. She neatly puts him in his place, humiliating him in front of everyone. He escapes into the military. She marries Lord Velacott, who mistreats her, makes her miserable, and then is killed, leaving her penniless. When she is thrown out of the family house by her brother-in-law, she accepts a position as governess to a family with young boys. Also staying there over the holidays is Barnaby, the boys’ uncle. The family attempts to match him up with the bland Olivia, but he has eyes only for Miranda. There is all manner of running about, ups and downs, even highwaymen and Olivia’s unsuspected boyfriend show up. But it all works out in the end. Well-written in a pleasant conversational style.

Witches’ Brew
Terry Brooks
Fantasy
Fiction
Rating 4
Del Rey / Ballantine Books
1995

This is the 5th in the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, where Ben Holiday has become Landover’s King. In the 4th book (The Tangle Box), he and his wife Willow had a daughter, Mistaya. She is kidnaped by Nightshade, the witch, who is using her and her latent magic as a weapon to destroy the King. When Mistaya was kidnaped, Questor Thews and Abernathy from the castle were inadvertently transported to Earth, back to Elizabeth in Seattle from book #3. (Abernathy is also temporarily returned to being a human instead of a dog.) Fortunately, Questor uses the right magic to return them to Landover, just in time to protect the King from Mistaya giving him Nightshade’s poison. It’s a very entertaining read, as they all are, but an unsatisfying ending, as they kill off Kallendbor of Rhyndweir and send Nightshade to Earth as a crow. (Back to Seattle, which is turning into a kind of a weird place to visit.) Well-written and interesting throughout.

Wizard At Large
Terry Brooks
Fantasy
Fiction
Rating 4
Ballantine Books / Random House
1988

This is the 3rd in the Magic Kingdom of Landover series. Court Wizard Questor Thews promises that he can reverse the spell that turned Abernathy into a dog. Unfortunately, the spell went wrong and Abernathy the dog was sent to Earth, in exchange for a bottle with an evil Wizard. When Ben Holiday and Willow set out to find Abernathy in America, the evil Wizard escapes and creates havoc in Landover. This story is a real page-turner with action and suspense galore. When the Landover contingent is hauled into court (pretending to be dressed up for Halloween) and rescued from there by the dragon Strabo in a hail of magical pyrotechnics, it is a fantasy masterpiece.

The World According To Garp
John Irving
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster
1976

This seems to be not so much a novel as a random series of anecdotes meandering back and forth in time, tied to a very slender narrative. It is well-written and very entertaining, but in a very stream-of-consciousness style. If it were less entertaining, it would be irritatingly verbose, because it takes dozens of pages for the story to go anywhere. It begins with Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, who was an independent thinker in a dull, socially prominent family in Boston. She becomes a nurse and lives alone – when she decides she would like to have a child, she uses a terminal patient in ICU to become pregnant. That man was Technical Sergeant Garp, whose fighter plan was shot down in France. When her son is born, she names him T.S. Garp. She takes a job as school nurse at the Steering School, an exclusive prep academy for boys. Because she is an employee there, her son can attend the school at no charge, so he does. He’s a fair student, and even becomes an accomplished wrestler, under the tutelage of Coach Holm. He also develops a “tendre” for the coach’s pretty daughter, Helen. When Garp graduates, his mother decides they should live as expatriates in Vienna – so they move into rented rooms and settle down to write. Jenny writes her autobiography, which is prominently mentioned throughout the story. Garp writes a short story, but it is not well received. They return to Boston to have Jenny’s book published. To everyone’s surprise, it becomes a runaway best-seller, and Jenny is lionized by the fledgling women’s movement. Garp marries Helen Holm, and they settle down with their two boys – she teaches English in school and Garp writes. His first book is popular, but his second is considered a disappointment. The middle of the novel bogs down seriously in the soap-opera-ish routine of the Garp’s married life – their infidelities, his writing problems, odd encounters with various losers, lunatics, and friends of their children. Then there is a car accident, and their younger son Walt is killed – the other three of them are so badly injured that they move into Jenny’s big house on the sea, and she cares for them during the year or so it takes them to recuperate. They have another child, a daughter named Jenny, and Garp writes another book. Written in the wake of personal tragedy, the book is raw and melodramatic – it is widely loved, and hated, for its shock value. At a political rally, there is a confrontation between feminists and right-wingers, and Jenny Fields is killed. Shortly after that, Helen’s father dies of a heart attack, so all of them move back to the campus of the Steering Academy where Garp coaches wrestling, since he has been unable to write. One day while he is out jogging, an unbalanced woman tries to rum him over with her car. After this brush with death, he becomes re-energized and re-focused on his writing for the first time in years. Then the youngest member of the prominent Steering family, whom Garp barely knew as a child, kills him in the wrestling room, in front of Helen and the entire wrestling team. She had somehow convinced herself that he, or perhaps all men, were responsible for her sister’s death in childbirth. After years under psychiatric care, she was released, even though she killed someone in front of numerous witnesses. This only reinforces the theme of the book about the futility of life. The epilogue of the book describes the unhappy lives and macabre deaths of the other characters in the story. Though never boring, the book is ultimately unsatisfying, pointless and nihilistic. Reminiscent in a lot of strange ways of “A Confederacy of Dunces” in terms of being odd, unlikable characters in a vaguely depressing story that goes nowhere and ends badly. Another possibility is that this is satire, which is always lost on me. Inconceivably, it was also made into a movie with Robin Williams.

Wunnerful, Wunnerful!
The Autobiography of Lawrence Welk
Lawrence Welk & Bernice McGeehan
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Prentice-Hall
1971

It seemed that Lawrence Welk sprang full-blown into the world with his musical variety TV show in the 1950's. But actually, he had been performing since the 1920's, in a variety of incarnations. He was born on my birthday, March 11 in 1903. Both of his parents were from Alsace-Lorraine, and emigrated to North Dakota in the late 1800's – although they spoke only German, they were very devout Catholics, rather than Protestants. They had a large family and lived on a farm, working hard to survive. Although his parents wanted all of the boys to be farmers, Lawrence inherited his father’s love of music, and wanted to be a musician. His father bought him a $400 accordion, and Lawrence re-paid him by working on the farm until he would be 21, and turning over all the money he would make playing for parties and weddings in the nearby towns. At 21, he said goodbye to the farm and set out on his own. He went to Bismarck, the nearest big city, and played for parties and weddings, but didn’t make all that much money. He also did odd jobs in stores to make extra money. After a while, he hooked up with a drummer, and they began to travel around as a duo. Pretty soon, he has a small band playing small venues all over the Midwest. To say that they have their ups and downs is a wild understatement, as they enjoy times of amazing success, and suffer through periods of deep desperation. Along the way, Lawrence and his band (or rather, series of bands) hooked up with some keen operators, and he was able to learn a lot from their expertise. But many times, it was slow going, and he was tempted to give it all up. In 1931, he married Fern Renner, who was studying to be a doctor. She was always very supportive and followed him wherever the band played, even uprooting their three children when necessary. In the 1940's, when the Big Band era was at its peak, they landed a steady job as the house band at a ritzy hotel in Chicago, and stayed there 10 years. They got even more exposure by doing radio broadcasts from the hotel. Finally, they moved on to another long-standing job at a dance hall in California, where they were covered by the local TV station. They became an “overnight” sensation on TV, and soon they had their own national TV program sponsored by Dodge. The show runs for many years on network TV, and then in syndication. This book is uniformly interesting, and is well-written with a folksy charm and positive philosophy that makes you feel good all over. He writes as a person who feels truly blessed, never dwells on negative things, and always believes the best of people. The only unfortunate thing about the book is that he spends so very much time on his early life and budding career – including minute details of the towns, the shows, what the band was wearing – that the later period is given short shrift. When they relocate to California and begin appearing on local TV, through all the years of his successful network show, until he basically retires and “supervises” the program rather than doing everything himself, all of that is crammed into the last 20 pages of the book. After the whole long and involved description of events up to then, it really seems to fall off a table. The book ends just at that point when most people became aware of Lawrence Welk, and what’s missing are the same kinds of reminiscences and anecdotes from the TV show that there were from the earlier period. But it’s still a lively and very enjoyable book.

TITLES S - T

2008-01-24T16:58:00.012-05:00

Sad Cypress
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell Publishing / Dodd, Mead & Co.
1939

We already know at the beginning of the book that Elinor Carlisle is accused of murdering Mary Gerrard, but the story begins before that when an anonymous letter warns Elinor and her fiancé Roderick that a “young girl” is a potential rival with their elderly aunt, Laura Welman, whose considerable estate is expected as an inheritance by the young couple. They visit the invalid at Hunterbury and also see Mary Gerrard, a pretty local girl who was befriended by Mrs. Welman, paying for her schooling, lessons and trips abroad. This tends to make the locals and even her family resent Mary for “putting on airs, “ which is far from the case. Suddenly Aunt Laura dies, first communicating to Elinor that she wants Mary provided for. This becomes important when they find out she had no will at all, and her entire fortune falls on Elinor as her only blood relative. (Roddy is a nephew by marriage.) Elinor settles amounts on all of the servants and Mary Gerrard, in spite of the fact that her supposed fiancé has fallen hopelessly in love with the girl. As a result, Elinor calls off their engagement and sells the estate, and although she tries to split the inheritance with Roddy, he’s too proud to accept. Aunt Laura’s death makes everyone think about wills, so Elinor has one leaving all her money to Roddy, and Mary Gerrard has one leaving hers to an aunt in New Zealand. Next is a series of letters where we learn some old gossip about Aunt Laura and Lewis Rycroft who died in the Great War, and also that cranky old Mr. Gerrard has died. This brings Elinor, Mary Gerrard and Nurse Hopkins (who had been taking care of him) to clean out his belongings, and when Mary discovers that she was born before her parents were married, Hopkins tells her that Mr. Gerrard was not really her father. Elinor makes them sandwiches and tea, and it comes as a big surprise when they find that Mary has died, apparently poisoned. The local doctor, Peter Lord (who has an unrequited love for Elinor) calls Hercule Poirot to clear Elinor, who has been arrested for murder. The morphine used ties in with a vial of morphine that went missing from Nurse Hopkins’ bag previously, and Dr. Lord hints that if they dig up Aunt Laura, they might find morphine poisoning in her autopsy also, which at the time he thought might have been the most merciful way out for the old invalid. Dr. Lord introduces Poirot to Nurse Hopkins and Mrs. Bishop (the maid) whose impressions give him a lot of food for thought. Next he speaks with Roddy Welman and Mary’s admirer Ted, plus the lawyers, and starts to get a better picture of the people involved and their motives, especially when Roddy mentions the anonymous letter that started it all. Then he interviews Elinor in prison, and returns to the scene of the crime, where things start to look not so good for Dr. Lord. He finally gets a letter from Nurse Hopkins that explains that Mary Gerrard was the illegitimate child of Laura Welman and Lewis Rycroft (whose wife was in an asylum) and when he was killed in the war, she cooked up this idea to have her maid and Mr. Gerrard pretend it was their daughter instead. At the trial, things go about as you’d expect, and look none too good for Elinor, but then the most extraordinary thing happens. They call two witnesses from New Zealand who both say that Nurse Hopkins is really Mary Riley – exactly the aunt that Mary Gerrard made out her will to, who was her “adoptive” mother’s sister. Unfortunately, she disappears before she can be apprehended, and later it turns out there are several suspicious deaths in New Zealand among people who left her money, although there wasn’t enough evidence to catch her at it. But at least Elinor is acquitted, and Peter Lord arranges for her to get away and stay some place quiet so she can get her life back together. Poirot suggests a potential romance between them, since Roddy represents the old life she needs to get away from, and the book ends there. This story was a little unusual for Hercule Poirot, since he worked with the lawyers on his discoveries behind the scenes, rather than springing his surprise witnesses and evidence in everyone’s face right in the courtroom in grandstanding fashion. The story was nice enough, and the characters genuine and mostly likable, except for Elinor, who seemed just too peculiar and vague to be real. Everything seemed to “happen” to Elinor, and you got no sense of her having actual substance, which made the whole story less engaging. The ending explanation seemed unnecessarily complicated, and yet too commonplace to be really interesting. Well-written as they always are, but I wonder if these country folks were just too dull for Hercule Poirot’s brilliance, and perhaps Miss Marple might have been a better fit with this story instead.

Sara Crewe
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Scholastic Book Service
1963

This author also wrote “The Secret Garden,” a popular and well-regarded staple of juvenile literature. This would be a classic rags-to-riches tale, except that our staunch heroine, Sara, starts out rich in the first place. She lives in India with her sea-faring father, Captain Crewe, after the untimely death of her mother. When she becomes about 8 or so, the good captain decides that she would be better served going to boarding school in London, rather than living in a hot and uncivilized place like India. So he buys her a lot of expensive but inappropriate fancy dresses, and deposits her at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies, under the sour-faced guidance of Miss Minchin and her mousy younger sister. Naturally, they are anxious to make a good impression with Captain Crewe since he is paying in advance (and they know he is quite wealthy) and they promise to treat little Sara especially well. But Sara is bereft after her father goes back to India, and she finds no comfort at Miss Minchin’s. She considers the girls dull and complacent, which they can afford to be, coming from wealthy families. She sees right through the Miss Minchins, and is not duped by their calculated fawning. They treat Sara like a prize, showing her off to prospective families in her fine clothes, as if she is some sort of great accomplishment of theirs. After only a few years, Sara gets the terrible news that her father’s investments have gone horribly wrong, and the shock of losing his fortune is too much for him to bear. Although he is still a young man, he succumbs to a fever and dies, leaving poor Sara all alone in the world and penniless. The Miss Minchins decided to keep Sara around as a serving girl, and when she’s a little older, as an unpaid French tutor for the students. Sara’s life becomes a hard one of privation, toil and callous treatment. She works long hours, running errands in all weather, with bad food, skimpy clothes and a tiny drafty room with no heat. Her only friend is Emily, her doll, and sometimes she feels as if she can’t go on ay more. On one particularly bad day, when she was cold and wet and hungry running errands, she found a coin in the gutter right in front of a bake shop, and hurried in to buy some hot buns. The baker, taking pity on her, gave her two extra, but on her way out, Sara found a street urchin even more pathetic than she, and gave her the buns instead. Another of her little kindnesses had been to the old and sickly man next door, and she often spoke to his valet in Hindi, which she remembered from India. One night when she came home tired and bedraggled, she was sent to her rom without supper for being tardy, and she felt as miserable as anyone could ever feel. But when she went into her attic room, she was amazed to find a blazing fire, a soft rug, comfortable chair, warm blankets and dishes full of delicious food. Sara doesn’t know what to think, and tells no one but Emily her doll, but prays very hard to thank her secret friend. This keeps up, so that no matter what sort of terrible day she might have, when she goes to her room, there is wonderful food and heat, new clothes, pretty furnishings and all sorts of special touches. One day in conversation with the old man next door, it is discovered that he had been her father’s banker when his investments failed, but later one of them rallied, so that he would have been even wealthier, but it was too late. The Captain was dead, and the banker didn’t know where to find his daughter, so he saved the money and kept looking for her, consumed with guilt and feeling that he had failed his friend. In bad health, he decided to make Sara’s life happier secretly, not realizing she was the treasure he had searched for so long. Once he finds out who she is, he immediately pulls her out of Miss Minchin’s clutches, settles her father’s fortune on her, and takes her in as if his very own daughter. They live happily ever after, and Sara of course is a great benefactor to the poor. This is a very sweet story, without being maudlin or saccharine, and written in a plain and uncluttered style without a lot of flourishes and frivolities. It manages to totally engage your sympathies, so Sara’s redemption is both touching and thrilling. Matter-of-fact without being ironic, and sentimental in the best sense of the word without being melodramatic, a very enjoyable story. (There is also an expanded version of the story called “A Little Princess.”)

Sarah’s Angel
Judith Stafford
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Harlequin Books
1993

Sarah Barnes finds herself alone in the world after her parents’ deaths, and her suitor leaves her for a profitable match. She accepts a position as governess to three young children of Squire Anthony Whitfield, whose beloved wife had died. Lost in his grief, the Squire spends practically no time with his children, and never notices that the new governess he hired is a rather pretty young woman, instead of the usual dowdy older matron in these positions. When he overhears the children wishing for a new mother at Christmas, he resolves to marry again for their sakes. He hastily invites three young ladies, Miss Dennison, Miss Myerson and Miss Scott plus their chaperons, to stay for a week. This throws the household into an uproar, since the Squire has no idea all that is involved in this kind of hospitality. Enter Miss Barnes, cool and collected, who volunteers to help sort out the details and keep everything running smoothly. The staff accepts her help with gratitude, and her pleasant manner and common sense help keep everything under control. Although the Squire appreciates everything she does, he seems incapable of not putting more obstacles in her way. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that the three candidates don’t interest him in the slightest, and yet, he already promised his children that they could choose the one he should marry. More and more, he finds qualities to admire in Sarah, not just her quiet beauty, but her intelligence and good humor, her kindness and devotion to the children. In fact, the children already made a wish that he would marry her instead of any of the other ladies. Afraid of her growing feelings for him, Sarah does all she can to pair him up with sweet Miss Dennison – much to the despair of Lord Abbott, who already had his sights on her. When she continues to avoid the Squire, he begins to misconstrue her feelings as an aversion to him. Then Lord Abbott and Miss Dennison announce their intentions, effectively eliminating the last potential fiancee for the Squire. So he asks Sarah to marry him, so as not to disappoint the children, and she accepts for the sake of the children – but neither of them can admit the depths of their feelings for each other, and in fact, both are trying to forget an unexpectedly passionate embrace that seemed to create more problems than it solved. So they do get married, a few days before Christmas, in the little chapel next to the house. The children are delighted of course, but they are both miserable. They are both convinced that the other finds them repulsive, and so they avoid each other at all costs. Finally, the Squire decides that even though they’re already married, his only option is to woo Sarah and hope she falls in love with him. At last he realizes that he must convince her that although he still cherishes the memory of his first wife and mother of his children, she is no longer here, and he truly loves Sarah with all his heart. It all ends prettily and with great joy on Christmas morning. Well-written in a lively and uncluttered style, and entertaining throughout. The characters are personable and realistic, and the ending is very satisfying.

Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry
Harry Kemelman
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 2
Fawcett Crest
1966

David Small is the Rabbi in Barnard’s Crossing near Boston. Isaac Hirsch is found dead in his garage, either accidentally or by suicide. His wife requests that he is buried in the Jewish cemetery, even though he did not belong to the Temple. This creates tremendous controversy in the congregation, and the Rabbi resigns. The insurance adjuster decides that there is enough grounds to hold up the payment to the widow, so the Rabbi teams with the local Police to uncover what he can about the crime. It turns out that he was murdered by his supervisor at the Lab where he was working. This is in a series of amateur sleuth stories with Rabbi Small, who has an annoying habit of explaining Jewish stereotypes by replacing them with equally fallacious Christian stereotypes.

The Seven Dials Mystery
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead & Company
1929

Gerry Wade dies at Chimneys. Jumping in to solve the crime are Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Jimmy Thesiger and the deceased’s half-sister. Bundle Brent, Bill Eversleigh and Inspector Battle were also previously in “The Secret of Chimneys.” Then Ronny Devereaux, who was snooping into Gerry’s death, is killed. There is a lot of nonsense about secret clubs, international spy rings and mysterious kingpins. The murderer turns out to be Jimmy Thesiger, which I found to be most unsporting.

The Shoes of the Fisherman
Morris West
Drama
Fiction
Rating 1
William Heinemann Ltd.
1963

After World War II, the Pope dies and is replaced with Kiril Cardinal Lakota, a Russian. There is all manner of deathless intrigue among the Italians in the Vatican, as well as an excruciating sub-plot involving an American journalist and a tourist. Even the KGB puts in an appearance. The writing it turgid and uninviting, and the story lurches from one miserable, sordid episode to another, with no resolution. Incredibly, made as a movie with Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier.

Sick of Shadows
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Ballantine
1984

Elizabeth MacPherson (who in future books of this series, is a forensic anthropologist) is invited to the wedding of her cousin Eileen Chandler, who is in line for a large inheritance. When she is murdered before the wedding, suspicion is deep, since the inheritance goes to whichever of them marries first among the siblings and cousins. It turns out that loony cousin Alban had killed his fiancee years before; when this was discovered by Eileen, he kills her and then himself. At this point in the series, Elizabeth had just been graduated from college and did not have a career goal – it was here she decides to pursue forensic anthropology. Lively and entertaining as all of them, with the author’s characteristic meandering plot, melodramatic dialogue and peculiar people.

Side Effects
Woody Allen
Humor
Fiction
Rating 2
Ballantine Books
1981

Depressing collection of unfunny short pieces. Very unlike “Without Feathers,” which was consistently buoyant and sparkling. This lurches from one horrible thing to another. Much too arch and sardonic to be funny. The only amusing tidbit was of a restaurant critic who reviews dishes based on their political messages. It was a glimpse of the old Woody Allen, but that was all. A disappointing entry from a much better writer.

Silver Nutmeg
Norah Lofts
Drama
Fiction
Rating 1
Doubleday
1947

Evert Hahn is a Dutch trader who settles on the island of Banda, in the Dutch East Indies in the 1600's. He sends a glove back to Holland as a proposal to the daughter of an old business rival. Annabet van Goen, a young girl whose good looks were ravaged by illness, sails there to be his wife. There’s a murky undertow of smuggling and native restlessness, plus a charismatic native leader called Shal Ahmi. When the natives revolt and kill all of the traders, it is left to Annabet to kill Shal Ahmi, and then she is killed by his assistant. A very depressing and demoralizing waste of time.

Sleeping Murder
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Bantam Books / Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
1976

This story was published posthumously as Miss Marple’s last case. It begins when newlyweds Gwenda and Giles Reed relocate from New Zealand to the south coast of England, and buy a charming seaside house in the sleepy town of Dillmouth. While visiting Giles’ cousin Raymond West, Gwenda hears a line in a play that throws her into an absolute uncontrollable panic. As she explains later to Raymond’s kindly Aunt Jane (of course, we know Miss Marple’s nephew from previous books) it suddenly comes flooding back to her that she had lived in that very house before as a very young child with her newly-widowered father, which is why it seemed so oddly familiar, and remembered those very words being spoken when she accidentally spotted the body of a dead woman in the hallway. She remembers nothing else about it, and her father died years ago, but Giles is keen to investigate this mystery right under their very noses. Miss Marple urges them to give up the idea as it might turn out very badly after all these years, but when they persist, she decides to stick close and hopefully prevent any disasters. When they begin their investigations, they learn that the supposed deceased would have been Helen, Gwenda’s step-mother, who reputedly married the widower after a whirlwind courtship and left just as suddenly for another man. (After that, young Gwenda was shipped off to live with relatives in New Zealand.) They turn up Helen’s brother who tells them a disturbing story of Gwenda’s father hallucinating about killing his new wife, and in fact, he admits to Dr. Kennedy that he strangled his sister, but when they return to the house, there is no sign of that happening. So Gwenda’s father the Colonel admits himself to a mental institution and later dies there. They are surprised to find out, when they go there, that he had committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. They speak to a former servant, Edith, about the events of the night in question, but even she can’t shed much light on the situation. They speak to Walter Fane who was engaged to Helen and would have married her except for a certain married man, and they also speak to the married man, Major Erskine, to no avail. Dr. Kennedy shows up with samples of his sister’s handwriting plus a letter supposedly sent from abroad after she disappeared. Miss Marple tracks down an elderly gardener who has some very curious things to say about the previous owners and makes her very concerned about the Reed’s safety. In fact, when one of the other former servants decides to come forward with her suspicions, they find out later that she was strangled on en route to Dr. Kennedy’s. The local Inspector Last who questioned them about it probably wanted to run them all in, rather than having all these rank amateurs rattling around stirring up trouble. Later when the Police dig up the garden and find Helen’s body, the housekeeper is overcome with shock, and when they give her some brandy to revive her, they find out it’s been poisoned and lucky to keep from killing her instead. After all the excitement of the morning, everyone leaves and Gwenda is alone when Dr. Kennedy comes and suddenly she realizes it must have been him all along, especially when he tries to strangle her to keep her quiet. Fortunately, Miss Marple sneaks in and catches him in the act. It turns out that he had been so possessive of his sister that he became obsessed with keeping her all to himself. When he found out that she and her husband were planning to move away (and get out from under his oppressive presence) he snapped and killed her. In fact, even before that, he was setting the stage for the Colonel thinking he was crazy by giving him strange drugs, filling his head with stories of Helen’s supposed infidelities, and giving Helen just cause to be terribly afraid of him. After the murder, he used all of his medical skills to turn Halliday into a tormented wreck, and one of the servants who saw him bury the body, he paid off and sent home to Switzerland and later killed her too. He believed the foreign servant had confided in one of the others, so when she contacted him, he killed her without even finding out if she new anything or not. It’s true that Dr. Kennedy was an obvious choice for a murderer, but the denouement is no less satisfying for that, and it does end up being nicely wrapped up by Miss Marple with unusual economy. And unlike other writers, you can almost always count on the main characters making it through to the end of the book, and feeling positive about the future. Well-written as always, with interesting and agreeable characters, and of course, you can’t top Miss Marple, with a good story well-plotted. Just a little bit wistful, being Miss Marple’s last case and published posthumously and all (and in fact, Dame Agatha does get in some whacks against some of her pet peeves, no doubt) but a very enjoyable read and not to be missed for its historical significance as the end of an era.

Sloop of War
Alexander Kent
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
McBooks Press, Inc.
1998
(1972 - Hutchinson, UK)

This is the fourth in the Richard Bolitho series of books by this author of British naval adventures in the colonial period, with this one starting in 1778, and Bolitho being made a Commander, as the fortunes of war can cause promotions to happen quickly. After bringing in the prize ships to Antigua (see previous book, “In Gallant Company”) Bolitho is surprised to find himself put in charge of the sloop “Sparrow” in the small fleet under Captain Vere Colquhoun. We meet Tyrrell, the First Lieutenant, whose family lives in America, but remained loyal to England. The little convoy is supposed to escort two supply ships to America, but halfway there, they bump into the Miranda from England with the unwelcome news that France has allied with the colonists. Colquhoun and the other ship return to Antigua, leaving Miranda and Sparrow to lead the transports to America. Along the way, Miranda walks into a trap by trying to catch an American privateer, only to be attacked by a larger French ship behind it. Miranda is just about destroyed, her captain killed, but in spite of it all, she fought hand-to-hand with the French ship in order to buy time for Sparrow to come to her rescue. Unfortunately over the years, Sparrow’s previous dilettante captain kept them out of action and they are unprepared for real combat. Using good strategy, they are able to damage and chase off the French ship and help lead the little convoy to safety. Everyone is surprised at their next orders, to carry a General Foley and his Canadian soldiers to Delaware Bay and try to locate a missing foot patrol carrying gold bullion. It turns out another English general and wealthy landowner had commandeered the soldiers to carry off his possessions to safety, but they were attacked by the French and cut to ribbons. The sailors manage to drag the survivors aboard and dash for the ocean, but they are attacked by a larger French ship in the bay. Luckily the French run aground on a sand bar, and Sparrow makes good her escape to the open sea. They end up stuck in New York awaiting supplies and repairs, while the disgruntled General tries to make trouble by bad-mouthing them . They are supposed to carry dispatches back to Antigua, and see the same French ship that attacked the Miranda, but outrun her this time. Unfortunately, they happen across a crippled ship returning cargo and passengers to England (including the odious General) and have to think fast to protect both of them when the French ship turns up again. They use the crippled ship as a lure to get the French to attack, and when the ships are held together with grappling hooks, they set them on fire and abandon ship, knowing they can be rescued by Sparrow, while the French are on their own. When they return to Antigua, the Admiralty makes Bolitho a full Captain, although still with Colquhoun’s little flotilla. In two years, they become famous for capturing prize ships for the British war effort, until they are considered a target by the enemy and need to watch out for traps on every side. In the Bahamas, Colquhoun decides to catch a prize French ship in harbor, but it turns out to be a trap instead, and even Sparrow can’t save the other sloop Fawn from being completely destroyed and losing almost all hands. At the court-martial in New York, Colquhoun tries to blame it all on Bolitho, but the facts don’t bear him out and he’s sent back to England in disgrace. At a reception later, Bolitho bumps into Susannah, General Blundell’s niece, who he thought had returned to England when the Sparrow rescued all of them from their crippled ship under the nose of the French. She invites him to dinner, although he realizes that he is hopelessly out of his depth. Sparrow is next ordered farther north and stumbles on an unexpected fleet of French warships, which she outruns so as to return to New York with reports. On the way, they accidentally bump into a brig pretending to be British, but they recognize the captain from the French ship that sank the Miranda, and what’s more, Bolitho knows him from being in cahoots with General Blundell. When he reports all this to the Admiral, he is warned to leave New York right away, since many rich and powerful scoundrels he has exposed would be after his hide. He can’t resist one more visit with Susannah, being so smitten with her, but she laughs at his infatuation and leads him straight into a trap. It is only the quick thinking of his crew who secretly followed him that saves his life, a sadder but wiser man. The Admiral sends the tiny convoy back to Bahama to scout around but they find nothing there. When they hear news of big doings in the Chesapeake, they hurry up there and send a landing party to find out what’s happening. One of the officers panics, causing the mission to misfire badly with many casualties. By the time they are warned that the entire French fleet is heading to Chesapeake, it’s too late for them to sneak out unobserved. They fight their way out past a transport of Army soldiers and a frigate, inflicting heavy damage and casualties, but also being badly damaged and losing many good men, including the sailing master and also the craven officer who botched the landing mission. Hurrying north, they bump into the English fleet and give them the news, thus setting the stage for the decisive Battle of the Chesapeake that ultimately won the war for the Americans. (Much like the Civil War, it was bad strategy on the part of the British which snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned the tide of history.) The book ends with the Sparrow returning to England with a bittersweet sense of pride in their accomplishments, overshadowed by the overall failure of the war effort. This book is good in this series and is singularly remarkable in its depiction of the Revolutionary War, so as not to alienate readers on either side of the conflict. You would think that would be impossible, but it’s a neat trick to pull off and well done. Unfortunately, because the war enters into it only tangentially, as the Sparrow is usually far away or otherwise involved, it’s not nearly as interesting as you would expect of a book from this period. But it’s well-written in a clear and easy style, and the story never lags, but moves along in a lively way from one adventure to another. The characters are all interesting and drawn with warts and all, although you don’t dare get too fond of anyone because you never know who’s not going to make it to the end of the book, which is a hallmark of this series. I found this story to be interesting enough and enjoyable, and being on hand for Bolitho’s first real command was a treat not to be missed.

Smouldering Fire
D.E. Stevenson
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Holt, Rinehart & Winston
1938

Iain MacAslan owns the manor house of Arfalloch in the highlands with its farms and rivers – but he can’t afford to keep the place up, so he lets it for the summer to an English businessman, his intention being to invite clients to stay with them for the shooting and fishing. One of their house-guests is Linda Medworth, a young lady who has recently been through a notorious and bitter divorce, along with her young son. Years earlier, Iain had fallen in love with her on first sight when he was in London – and here she is, turning up on his doorstep! They fall in love (much to the distress of neighbor Margaret Finlay who was widely expected to marry him) but then her ex-husband shows up and starts making trouble for everyone. He believes he can show their relationship in a bad light and regain custody of their son. Iain and Linda are crushed by his threats and can see no way out of the difficulties without any harm coming to the youngster. Fortunately Iain’s right hand man Donald MacNeil sees trouble brewing and eliminates the troublesome ex-husband with no one being the wiser. Scotland Yard investigates the mysterious “disappearance” but can find nothing. So Iain and Linda marry and live happily ever after, one hopes. This is a sweet and picturesque story from an author famous for them – wonderful and evocative atmosphere, details of country life, appealing characters and dialogue that rings true. Very enjoyable, although the plot fell apart a bit at the end.

So Far
Kelsey Grammer
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Dutton Signet / Penguin Books
1995

Actor Kelsey Grammar played the part of Frasier Crane on the long-running TV sitcom “Cheers.” Later, his character was spun off onto his own show, “Frasier,” which was also a hit sitcom. His personal life, however, was anything but humorous. He writes unflinchingly about his abusive, dysfunctional family, and the murders of his sister and father. He claims to have overcome the demons of alcohol and drugs, but recent news stories prove otherwise. His writing is direct and uncluttered, with a style that is interesting and conversational. Unintentionally depressing, without a lot of snappy Hollywood anecdotes to liven it up.

Soldier of Orange
Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Random House
1980

This is supposed to be a true story of a rakish young aristocrat who is suddenly transformed by events into a daring resistance hero of World War II. It’s disjointed and disorienting enough to be true – the heroes are flawed, the villains are sympathetic, there are no punchy anecdotes or perfect daring escapades. Just the usual grinding stupidity and dullness of a vast war, with unexpected violence. Not at all the light-hearted, fanciful adventure the cover would lead you to believe. Also, incredibly somehow made into a movie.

Some Are Born Great
Adela Rogers St. Johns
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Doubleday
1975

This is a collection of concise biographical sketches of American women important to the author. She reviews their lives in a snappy, informal style, treating them with kindness but not blind adulation. Includes Judy Garland, Amelia Earhart, Carrie Nation, Mother Cabrini, Bess Truman, Margaret Mitchell, Marion Davies and others. Has a tendency to be rambling and somewhat eccentric, but always entertaining.

So Near and Yet So Far
Emily Kimbrough
Travel
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Harper & Brothers
1955

Here is another in a series of books by this author, known for her travelogues. In his entry, Emily and her college chum Luz, Sophy, Darn, Kat and Ellen - now established in their careers, jet-setters and bon vivants - take the train from New York to New Orleans, where they hope to soak up the local flavor and enjoy themselves. Starting with Emily’s usual inept arrangements of accommodations, they find themselves crammed together on the train with their luggage, but fortunately the trip is not overly long for all that. As usual, Sophy travels with her shoe-bag full of alcoholic beverages which is a most welcome sight in the midst of their various misadventures. When they arrive in New Orleans, they are assured by a wide variety of people who have pulled strings on their behalf, that they can expect special attention and gracious accommodations at their hotel, which Emily has learned to her regret is always the kiss of death and this is no exception. It’s also homecoming week for Tulane University, so just getting hotel rooms and meals at all is problematic. In the morning when they go sightseeing in the French quarter, they are suitably charmed by the architecture, shops and other interesting sights. It turns out that Ellen’s architect built one of the locally famous houses and when they go to see it, the owner volunteers her chauffeur, Atkins, for their tour guide. The ladies are all highly cultured and seasoned travelers, so they are quick to enjoy not only the sights, but also all of the decorations, fashions and gourmet meals that are presented to them. They are suitably impressed with their trip to a working sugar cane grinding mill, and only the usual contretemps over Sophy’s driving and her erstwhile short-cuts. Their trip out of town to soak up the local flavor was a big hit, even if the driving by their hosts reduced them to ashen-faced wrecks. Back in New Orleans, they were invited on the mayor’s yacht for an excursion down the river and then they were descended on by friends of Emily’s from Chicago, who introduced them to even more wonderful sights and experiences, such as the arrival of the shrimp fleet, which the locals feel is not to be missed. The fleet coming in is all the rage in this area, and the ladies find it fascinating and picturesque. Their appreciation is so welcome that everyone they see either invites them in for a meal, or forces fresh shrimp on them to take away, so that they despair of ever be able to eat it all. But they all agree that it is simply the best shrimp they’ve ever had, no matter how it is served. They did some more exploring around the levees and plantations and old cemeteries, but had to pass up a helicopter ride to an oil rig in the Gulf, they said, due to Emily’s fear of flying, although she accused them of all of hiding behind her skirts. One of their favorite excursions was traveling along on the mail boat, with the man who delivers the mail to all of the far-flung cottages scattered around through the labyrinthian bayous, although it does turn into a somewhat long and uncomfortable day out. They were sorry to lose Luz, who had to return home for a family obligation, but were consoled when relatives of Kat’s invited them to visit their homes on Avery Island, a world-famous bird sanctuary, where watching the birds flock in for the night is a treasured attraction. Their efforts to see the flocks flying off at dawn are defeated by sheer sleepiness, after too much good food and socializing the day before.

Spencerville
Nelson DeMille
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Warner Books
1994

This author has written a large number of espionage books, but he has also branched out into other genres, like “Plum Island” and this book. This story concerns Keith Landry, a former CIA operative who is unceremoniously “retired” from his government position with the end of the Cold War. In the absence of more appealing options, he decides to return to the family farm in Spencerville, Ohio, and sort things out. He “accidentally” runs into his high school sweetheart, Annie, and they re-kindle the flame that two decades have not extinguished. Annie is married to Cliff Baxter, the former school bully who is now the Police Chief. He maintains a web of legal and political influence through relatives, blackmail, harassment and terrorizing the locals. He keeps Annie on a short leash – watching her movements, monitoring her calls, having her followed – but she and Keith still manage to meet and make plans to run away together. Baxter and his flunkies harass Keith around town and give him a hard time whenever they can, but with Keith’s background in unfriendly totalitarian regimes, this is penny ante stuff. Just when Keith and Annie have their plans in place to escape, Keith is suddenly recalled to Washington for an interview with the President about a possible new job and promotion. He doesn’t want it, but cannot refuse to meet with the President. His return is delayed by a hurricane in Maryland, and when he does get back and pick up Annie, they do not get the head-start that he was counting on. (He didn’t realize that Baxter had transmitting devices installed on his and Annie’s cars.) After Keith and Annie miss the last flight out of Toledo, they hide out overnight in a flea-bag motel. Baxter and a couple of his minions follow the transmitter to Toledo and happen onto the right motel in a series of unlucky coincidences. The cops grab Annie, and Baxter beats up Keith before running out ahead of the city Police. Three days later, Keith wakes up in the hospital and sneaks out, so he can rescue Annie from her husband’s clutches at his hunting cabin in the Michigan lakes. He brings along Billy Marlon, an old school pal who is also a veteran, and has his own score to settle with Baxter. The cabin is isolated and fortified, including guard dogs and booby traps. Although they kill the dogs, Billy Marlon falls in a trap and is killed by Baxter – and just when Baxter gets the drop on Keith, Annie manages to escape from her shackles and kills her husband with a fireplace poker. This is one rip-roaring cracker-jack thriller that picks you up on the first page and drags you along breathlessly for 500 pages with no let-up. Well-written in a punchy, conversational style, with characters you genuinely care about, and a real feel for small-town rural life. It even manages to have a sentimental aspect, which is rare in this type of adventure story. An excellent book.

Split End
George Blair
Humor
Fiction
Rating 3
Lancer Books
1971

The fictional George Blair is a hack writer of prurient literature. His publisher asks him to write a biography of Johnny Lee Studwell, famous pro kicker, a childhood friend. The book makes a lot out of the fact that Johnny Lee is a sodomist, which is supposed to be shocking. George writes an expurgated biography with the truth in parentheses. He meets the beautiful Teddy Bear, who has a twin brother who dresses as a girl and marries Johnny Lee. Improbable but somewhat amusing and without rancor.

Sport
Dick Schaap
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Arbor House
1975

Sports columnist Dick Schaap has led a varied career in journalism, including sports, politics, police reporting, society and entertainment. This book is a collection of some of his favorite columns from different times and places. It includes biographical sketches of athletes, entertainers, crime victims and politicians. I’m usually a big fan of Dick Schaap’s writing, which I find concise, witty and insightful – but I found this book dull, rambling and cynical.

Stand Into Danger
Alexander Kent
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
McBooks Press, Inc.
1980 (Hutchinson, UK)

Here is another very early entry in this series of historical fiction, set amid the warships of the British empire. Richard Bolitho, now a new 3rd Lieutenant in 1774, is assigned to the frigate Destiny. Somewhere between the previous book and this one, he managed to lose his best friend, Martyn Dancer, and also his sister Nancy’s delight. His brother Hugh, last on his way to an official inquiry about a botched mission, is now back at sea, and his father has lost an arm in battle and been mustered out of the Navy. Here on Destiny, Bolitho meets fellow officers Palliser and Rhodes, and the Captain Henry Vere Dumaresq. As the first order of business, they send Bolitho ashore to round of “volunteers” to serve on the ship and he returns with a few locals including the immense Stockdale. Then they get under weigh with secret orders and an unknown destination, and in terrible weather besides. After a week, they land in Portugal, where the courier bringing ashore secret dispatches is summarily murdered in the streets and his papers stolen. After that, the Captain flees the port in the dead of night. Later, the Captain confides to his officers that their mission is to re-capture a Spanish ship loaded with gold bullion that slipped away from its original captors – but this is apparently no secret, when they find themselves being followed out in the middle of the ocean. The Captain decides to attack the other ship, which turns out to be a private British ship out for treasure. The plot thickens when they land in Rio and the Captain calls on a wealthy British ex-patriate who was in cahoots with the gang that made off with the Spanish treasure ship, and who he also holds responsible for his father’s death. Even though Dumaresq threatens Edgmont, he refuses to cooperate and in fact, slips out of town under their noses. The Captain gives chase and catches up with the runaway ship just as it’s being attacked by pirates. After a pitched battle, they beat the pirates off, and using Edgmont’s information, head to the Caribbean after Piers Garrick, the mastermind behind the whole sordid business. Meanwhile, after a few chance encounters, Bolitho has become hopelessly infatuated with Edgmont’s young wife, the exquisite Aurora, and any idiot could tell that no good could come of that. On a routine mission for fresh water, Bolitho is seriously wounded in an ambush and Aurora nurses him back to health. Whey they reach St. Christopher, and the local authorities refuse the help them, the Captain leaves Bolitho in their care ostensibly to recuperate, but really to be his “inside man” as the situation develops. It turns out, as the Captain had anticipated, that Aurora and Bolitho have a tryst and she slips him the information on Garrick’s whereabouts. They sail there at once, although Bolitho can’t help feeling used and betrayed. They discover Garrick in a well-fortified hideaway, and land some men ashore secretly in the hopes of gaining control of their outlying batteries. This works better than expected, and they actually get the upper hand in a battle among the ships in the lagoon, although with a terrible cost in lives. And there we draw the curtain, without actually bring Garrick to justice, although we do find out that he killed both Edgmont and Aurora, a fact the Captain conceals from Bolitho for his own good. In the epilogue, he returns home to Falmouth to find his mother has suddenly died, his father returned from the sea a broken man, and his sister Nancy’s earlier grief pushed her to a hasty marriage with the local Squire’s son. Already there were orders for him to report to the Trojan as 2nd Lieutenant, since Rhodes was killed in battle. And there it ends, practically on the doorstep of the American Revolution. This book was so terribly melancholy and wistful, right from the beginning, as if the person writing it had suffered a great tragedy and couldn’t keep their sadness out of the story. Usually these stories are more lively, although not light-hearted, with a frank and unflinching look at life in the colonial-era Navy. Well-written as always, and interesting in a historical sense, but dogged with this sense of loss and woefulness nipping at its heels all the while. The characters are nice enough, but there seemed to be an abundance of them, more than usual, and even more so, confusion among many similar names. Still interesting and full of adventure, but not up to the standard usually set by the books in this series.

Stardust
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1990

Boston Private Investigator Spenser is asked to protect Jill Joyce, the star of a TV series where his girlfriend Susan works as a technical adviser. Jill has been getting harassing calls and other messages on the set. Then Jill’s stunt double gets killed while wearing Jill’s new coat. An old boyfriend of Jill’s points Spenser in the direction of her husband, a country bumpkin no one knows about. It also turns out that she has a daughter with a Latino drug dealer in California, and no one knows about that either. Then she disappears from the hotel security guards, and her husband turns up dead. Spenser retrieves her from the protection of the Latino drug dealer, and finds out that it was her abusive father who had been threatening her, and killed her stunt double, trying to extort money from her. Well-written as always, and consistent with this series.

Summers With The Bears
Jack Becklund
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Hyperion
1999

The author and his wife re-located from Florida to the backwoods of Minnesota, taking a sabbatical from their newspaper jobs to focus on writing. They settled in a cabin on Elbow Creek, six miles north of tiny Grand Marals, which is on the north shore of Lake Superior. His immigrant grandparents settled in Grand Marals, so it was a sort of homecoming for him, although this cabin was much more isolated. This area of Minnesota has a very small human population, and the area is teeming with wildlife – black bears, deer, moose, coyotes, raccoons, wolves, beavers, bobcats, otters, eagles and mountain lions. Having lived in cities (his wife from Rochester, New York) they moved to the cabin with a wary respect for wild animals and a fear of bears. But as anyone can tell you who lives in the woods, if you have birdfeeders, you will get bears. At first, they frightened the bears away with noise and various projectiles. But then in 1990, a small and scrawny bear walked up their driveway and into their hearts. They called her “Little Bit” and she was friendly and trusting, coming right up on their back deck for sunflower seeds. At first, they thought she was an orphan, but after reading more about bears, they realized that she was just a yearling cub out on her own, after her mother went off to start a new family. She returned regularly with more of her yearling friends, young and alone and confused by the whole world, and they would enjoy food and companionship and play in their yard. Although they worried that the bears would become too tame, and in fact, they could pet them and feed them by hand, the bears were always wary around strangers and never depended on them for food instead of foraging. When they took possession of the local newspaper, The Cook County News Herald, they included a column about the bears in their yard, which drew much comment, both positive and negative. They describe in detail about how bears begin hibernating in September and would return fitfully to their yard beginning in May. Each spring, they would anxiously await the return of “their” bears (they gave them all names based on physical characteristics or personality traits) and see who brought new cubs or other friends with them. Although they often had strange bears stop by for a meal, they were rarely frightened – since black bears are generally easy-going and engage in “posturing” rather than actual fighting. Although several bears were shot, and a couple electrocuted on nearby power lines, for the most part, their bears returned safely in the spring. Although bears in captivity can live to be 25 years old, in the wild, they rarely live longer than seven. In 1995, there were raging forest fires in the area, due to drought conditions all year. That made it difficult for bears to forage, and when bear-hunting season opened in September, they had a record number of bears killed, largely because of the appeal of bait traps. Their bears survived, but that winter was one of the coldest ever, with temperatures around -40 degrees. It was the following spring that Little Bit didn’t return, and of course, they never knew what happened to her or her cubs. Although other bears returned, they lost their enthusiasm for feeding them, and in fact, moved back to Florida. The book is interesting and engaging, although written in a somewhat awkward amateurish style. The pictures are a delight, and many of the escapades, especially involving chipmunks and flying squirrels, are hilarious. But it’s ultimately depressing, like reading a book about someone with a terminal illness, who you know is going to die in the end.

Sweet Doro
Dixie Lee McKeone
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Harlequin
1989

Young Dorothea Sailings, dowager Baroness of Lindsterhope, had been married off to the old Baron to act as a mother figure to his son and daughter. Although the family fortune was large, when the Baron died, the estate was held in trust until his son would come of age. After years of living frugally, finally Tom is about to come into his fortune, and already the fortune hunters are sniffing around him and his sister Farrie. Doro comes up with the idea to bring them to London and give them some experience with society, before they have any money to be swindled out of, so they will recognize the danger signs later. Meanwhile, Garreth, the Viscount Tolver, was pressed into service as the guardian of Charlie, the young Marquess of Ridgeley, upon the death of Garreth’s older brother and Charlie’s father. Garreth has brought Charlie and his childhood friend Amelia to London, also to learn about society. Then it turns out that Doro and Garreth were once young chums, and his plans to marry her were thwarted by her family’s preference for the Baron instead. When they meet years later in London with their young charges, Doro realizes with a start that she still has a strong yearning for him, in spite of her efforts to resist. Once in London, the reports of their impending fortune have already reached society, and even Doro finds herself the unwelcome attraction of fortune hunters. They begin the youngsters in society with a few proper invitations with respectable people. Chance throws them together even further when Amelia’s mother has to leave London suddenly, and Garreth persuades Doro to move in with all of them together, so she can act as surrogate hostess for Amelia’s parties. Doro tries her best not to be jealous when match-making matrons toss their eligible daughters across Garreth’s path at every opportunity. Somehow their little party manages to attract all the most odious people in London, so it is with some relief that Doro is able to renew an acquaintance with Baskin, a distant cousin from her childhood. This seems to put Garreth out of sorts, though Doro never suspects he might be jealous. In spite of everyone’s vigilance, Tom does in fact get roped into a scrape where he loses a large amount at a crooked gambling house. But Garreth willingly lends him the money, and Tom is sworn off gambling forever, plus he gets a better insight into people pretending to be his friends. Next, it’s the night of Amelia’s coming-out party, and suddenly the book is over, and the ending is too precipitous by half. It ends in a confused muddle of mistaken identities, faked elopements, practical jokes, marriage proposals and all manner of rushing about. Garreth finally does propose to Doro, but it’s hardly the climactic moment you would expect in a book like this. In fact, this whole story seems anachronistic, compared with more modern versions, which are so formulaic nowadays. Well-written in an old-fashioned style that never seems precious, which is a hard trick to pull off. It is sometimes a bit overly melodramatic, but not offensively so. A nice enough story, if unexciting, with characters that are genuine and likable for the most part. The ending has more loose ends than you would normally expect in a book full of young couples, but it’s still peasant throughout.

Tales From A Village School
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Houghton Mifflin
1995

This is another in a series of books written about a small English village and the residents. This is actually a collection of short stories told mostly by the school teacher about the day-to-day trials and rewards to be found in a small school. There are stories about a new student, pilfering eggs, nature walks, crafts projects, leaky roofs and the ubiquitous Christmas pageant. Written in a lively but charming and conversational style, the stories are all sweet, fun-loving and kind.

Tales From Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
1989

This is a collection of short stories from an author better known as a singer and songwriter. The first story concerns Tully Mars, a cowboy who has lived in Heartache, Wyoming his whole life, but when the cattle ranch he works for gets taken over by developers, he quits and heads for the open road. He finds himself in Heat Wave, a small island off Alabama, and from there, joins a shrimp boat going to South America, bringing along a waitress that he met along the way. All of theses stories are related either geographically or by characters, so in the next story, we’ve already met twins Aurora and Bora Alice Porter, proprietesses of the Northern Lights Café in Heat Wave. They talk Romeo Fleming, former NFL player, into coaching the high school football team, and they beat their arch-rivals in a wild and woolly contest. Then, Angel Beech and her sometimes boyfriend Hannah Hearndon both return to Heat Wave when a hurricane threatens the area, and re-discover their feelings for each other. Next up is a sort of ghost story about a haunted golf course, featuring grown-up version of players from the Heat Wave high school football team from a previous story. Then Jim Delaney and his wild Uncle Bill go off on a tear around Pascagoula. Young orphan Isabella leaves Martinique to follow her heart, and she finds herself on Snake Bite Key with Slade Patterson from other stories. Slade signs a record deal and moves to New York, while Isabella goes to Paris and opens a restaurant. Next we meet Lance Larimoore III, living as a beach bum in Margaritaville (this is a mythical tropical island full of ex-patriates) and having his ups and downs since being cut loose financially by his family. After that, the author meets his (mythical) hero Freddy, lead singer of Freddy & the Fish Sticks, on their way to Key Largo, and spends the day drinking in his advice about a career in music. The next section is called “Son of a Son of a Sailor” and has auto-biographical stories in it. First, he talks about going to Cuba with a documentary crew to interview Gregorio Fuentes, about whom Ernest Hemingway wrote “The Old Man and the Sea,” which is the author’s favorite book. Then there’s some family sailing anecdotes about getting becalmed with no food, and living by their wits until getting rescued. After that, he and his family visit a small island off Cancun, supposedly haunted by the ghost of a pirate who lived there. The last story is about the time he and two friends sailed out in a bad storm, and just barely limped into the British Virgin Islands two days later. This is a very entertaining book, from a natural-born storyteller. The writing is informal and engaging, and the stories slip effortlessly by, like a special dessert. It refers to itself as “fictional facts and factual fictions,” and it all seems genuine and honest, although more amusing than real life, perhaps only in retrospect. It never lags and never seems forced, or becomes arch, takes itself too seriously or hits an easy target for a cheap laugh. Witty, articulate and interesting throughout, a very enjoyable book, more than might have been expected.

Taming A Sea Horse
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Delacorte Press
1986

Boston Private Investigator Spenser is asked to locate April Kyle, a call girl who has left her establishment and vanished. (This is 10 years after the first book with April, “Ceremony.”) He finds through other prostitutes that April has gone off with a new pimp for better opportunities. Then one of the prostitutes gets killed and so does the pimp, so it’s obviously part of a bigger situation. It turns out to be a sort of complicated tangle involving local crooked politicians, businessmen and mobsters (this time a Mr. Milo and Jacky Wax) laundering their money through a bank where the President gets special favors, such as calls girls like April. When Spenser makes enough of a pest of himself, they realize it’s better to give April back to him and get him out of their hair.

The Tangle Box
Terry Brooks
Fantasy
Fiction
Rating 4
Ballantine Books
1994

In this 4th story of the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, King Ben Holiday and his wife Willow are having a baby. Unfortunately, the Evil Gorse escapes from the Tangle Box and in his place, he imprisons Ben, the dragon Strabo and the witch Nightshade. Willow must travel to three worlds to collect soils in order to have the baby. This leaves the Kingdom in the hands of Questor Thews, the Magician. Things go from bad to worse until the three captives escape from the Tangle Box, just in time to face down the Iron Mark and demons from Abbadon. Willow has a baby girl and all ends well.

Tango
Alan Judd
Drama
Fiction
Rating 2
Summit Books / Simon & Schuster
1990

English businessman William Wooding is transferred by his company to South America to straighten out a branch there. Instead, he becomes involved with a local girl and her acquaintances at Maria’s Tango Club, and their plot to overthrow the government. He is contacted by Arthur Box, a government intelligence operative, and they plan elaborate schemes to accomplish their goals. In the end, everything comes a cropper, and the CIA steps in to mop up. The book jacket would lead you to believe this story is a zany, madcap romp of hapless spies, naive revolutionaries and big-hearted prostitutes. In fact, it is a depressing and sordid morality tale, marred by disillusionment, betrayal and shocking violence. The characters are unlikable and the resolution unsatisfying.

That Day the Rabbi Left Town
Harry Kemelman
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Columbine / Ballantine Books (Random House)
1996

Here is another in a series of books by this author and featuring Rabbi David Small who also does amateur sleuthing on the side. After serving his congregation in Barnard’s Crossing (Massachusetts) for 25 years, the Rabbi retires to take a job teaching Judaic studies at Windermere College in Boston. Although the congregation never exactly warmed up to Rabbi Small, they try to do the right thing by him, giving him a nice send-off, including his replacement, the charismatic rabbi Selig. And although he tries to stay out of it, he finds the college environment to be a hotbed of political intrigue and maneuvering. Since this is the first year of having an actual Judaic Studies Department, not just a course, no one knows what to expect, although they ask the Rabbi to keep some office hours that he can be available to answer questions from the students or the staff. He meets some people he knows on campus, from his town, congregation or their relatives. The big man on campus is Professor Kent who was married to a direct descendant of college founder Ezra Clark and lives in the Clark House on campus, wielding a subtle but unmistakable power and influence, and resisting all efforts to make him retire. No one dares cross him, especially because of a murky provision in the college charter that may give him control over some of their property. Rabbi Small also meets with new Rabbi Selig, who seems nice enough, in a modern sort of way. He seems more interested in possessions and status than thorny spiritual issues, and his wife, who is a lawyer, is a far cry from what most congregations expect in a Rabbi’s wife. Next comes an interlude where we learn Professor Kent’s background from humble beginnings in St. Louis, to London where he re-invented himself with a new name and academic credentials. They accepted him on sight at Windermere because they were short-staffed and never checked his degrees. Then he found if he sucked up to Matilda Clark, her power protected him, and when they got married, his place at the college was secure, even after she died. When the Rabbi’s new course starts, he has nine students, all Jewish, plus a staff member who asked to sit in. They argue some about doctrine, but mostly it’s a course of Jewish philosophy. Then the Rabbi asks his wife if they couldn’t relocate to a sub-let apartment in Boston, because he feels in the way around his congregation with the new Rabbi. It causes a local furor when Rabbi Selig’s wife reports Professor Kent for peeking in her bedroom window, but even more so a few days later when he turns up dead in a snow bank. When the police investigate, they don’t have any trouble finding out that Rabbi Selig made threats about Kent after the “Peeping Tom” incident with his wife. They also discover Lorraine Bixby, who had ties to Kent and her husband Donofrio who used to hit him up for money. Interestingly there’s a $50,000 life insurance policy of Kent’s with their daughter as the beneficiary. In the and, it turns out to be Thorvald Miller, another English professor, who had apparently been befriended by Kent (he was instrumental in getting him tenure) but it turns out to be because he was blackmailing him instead. Not for money, obviously, but for companionship and always having someone at his beck and call. Miller confesses happily, claiming justifiable homicide after years of torment. Interestingly, Kent’s hold over Miller was due to falsified credentials, the same trick that Kent used and got away with. Later the Dean admits to Rabbi Small that he knew Kent was a fraud, but that the trustees couldn’t face the scandal or damage to the college’s academic reputation if they exposed him. It’s the Rabbi who figures out the crime, not only because of the blackmail, but that Miller had constructed such a careful alibi including phone calls, bus schedules and leaving his briefcase on the train as proof that he was there. (He wasn’t.) These books, though well-written, are always more travelogue than mystery and usually interesting but not in any mysterious way. The characters are nice enough but not in the least engaging, so you really don’t care what happens to any of them. Most of the story is red herrings and sometimes tedious at that. Because the Rabbi had left his congregation, at least there wasn’t the usual internecine wrangling that commonly mars these stories. Nice enough of this type but insubstantial.

There Is A Tide
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell Publishing
By arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Co.
1948

Unlike most Agatha Christie mysteries, this one has a little bit of trouble getting off the ground. It begins in South Africa during World War II when a chorus girl marries a soldier “to get away from things.” Later she’s unhappy and asks for a divorce. He’s opposed to divorce, but confides in an Army pal his plan to fake his death so she can be free without divorce. Sure enough, the word comes out that he has died in Africa from fever. His widow, Rosaleen, later marries wealthy Gordon Cloade, and when a bomb blows up his house, it kills him and the servants, although Rosaleen escapes with injuries and recovers. Unfortunately, this sudden turn of events makes her inherit his whole fortune, leaving all of his relatives, who he had been supporting for years, out in the cold. Gordon’s sister-in-law looks up Hercule Poirot and asks him to find out if Rosaleen’s first husband is really still alive, but he declines the case, and later he has reason to believe the man had been discovered still alive and then killed by interested parties. One by one, all of the Cloade brothers (or their wives) and his sister fall into financial difficulties (some desperate) and apply to Rosaleen for a loan, only to be rebuffed by her surly brother David. Next, a mysterious stranger shows up in town and tries to blackmail David with proof that her first husband is still alive, and later this “Enoch Arden” (supposed to be the alias of the presumed dead Underhay) is murdered in his room at the inn. When questioned by the Police, Rosaleen does not identify the body as her first husband. But Rowley Cloade looks up Hercule Poirot, who finds an old Army pal of Underhay’s, who positively identifies the victim as Underhay. The Police have no choice but to charge the hot-headed David with murder, since he had the most to gain and also because they got wind of the blackmail attempt, although they have no proof that he killed him. Next, the old Army buddy kills himself, although he leaves no note. The next person who winds up dead is Rosaleen, and when David is released for lack of evidence, he accuses all the Cloades of finally doing away with her while he’s in jail and can’t protect her anymore. It turns out to be very much different, as Poirot explains. First of all, one of the Mrs. Cloades hires her cousin to pose as the “dead” Robert Underhay and try to blackmail David Hunter, to protect her husband from the effects of his embezzling. Rowley spots the family resemblance and has a confrontation with the man, ends up punching him so he falls over and hits his head on the fireplace fender and dies. Rowley decides to frame David for it, so he hits him with the fireplace poker and leaves David’s lighter there as evidence. He cooks up a scheme with Underhay’s old Army buddy to say it really was Underhay (and annoys Poirot by using him as the stooge that supposedly brings them together) but the old man later gets cold feet and kills himself. Then it turns out that the dead Rosaleen isn’t even Rosaleen at all, the real Rosaleen was killed along with her husband in the bombing. Right from the start, the opportunistic David realized that he could use another female (in this case, the Irish maid, the only other person to survive the blast) in place of Rosaleen and still live off of her inheritance. But the Irish maid was also suffering from a guilty conscience, and also David knew that if Underhay or anyone who knew them back when, saw this girl, they’d know at a glance that it wasn’t really Rosaleen. So he snuck some morphia into her sleeping pills and she conveniently died while he was in jail. The whole story was very complicated and over-plotted, with many confused sub-plots and side twists that were more distracting than useful. The ending was more interesting than expected, although it was told in a muddled and anti-climactic way. The worst part is that the fitful romance between Lynn Marchmont and Rowley Cloade finally was resolved happily, in spite of the fact that he himself claimed to be responsible for at least two of the deaths, and tried to strangle Lynn when she said she was going to marry David instead. A very strange epilogue and unexpected from this author. Of course, it’s impossible for Agatha Christie to write a bad book and this one was interesting almost in spite of itself. Not what I would consider top shelf, but certainly never dull. (Never mentions the title’s connection to Shakespeare until page 202!)

Thin Air
Robert B. Parker
Crime Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam Sons, 1995
A Berkley Book
Berkley Publishing Group,
A division of Penguin Group
1996

This is another in a series of books by this author, featuring hard-boiled Boston private investigator Spenser and some his usual entourage from previous books. This story starts in an unusual way, from the victim’s viewpoint, as Lisa St. Claire has been abducted (we find out later) by an old boyfriend named Luis. It turns out that this is Lt. Belson’s second wife, and he asks Spenser about it, not to help locate her, but because Spenser had a similar situation when Susan left him (see “Valediction” and “A Catskill Eagle”) although under admittedly different circumstances. Spenser naturally tries to help find her anyway, which proves to be more difficult than expected, since Belson apparently knew nothing about her when they got married. In a stylistic departure for this series, the regular chapters are interspersed with chapters told from Lisa’s situation, where she is being held captive by Luis. Then Belson gets shot, and while he’s in ICU, Spenser figures he’d better look for Lisa in earnest. We have reason to suspect Luis is involved, when he tells Lisa not to expect her husband to rescue her. As part of his investigation, Spenser interviews people at the local radio station where Lisa worked, and at Merrimack College where she took night courses. One of her friends tips him off to Luis Deleon, Lisa’s old boyfriend, so he goes to the Proctor police to see if they have a rap sheet on the guy. The local police are not cooperative (they never are in these books) but point him in the direction of Freddie Santiago, the local kingpin, and the gangs in the San Juan Hill neighborhood. Meanwhile, in Lisa’s situation, Luis has not harmed her or threatened her, and seems content for them to play “dress up” and pretend to be living out a romantic relationship like a series of beautiful movies. When Capt. Quirk (from previous books) checks Lisa’s fingerprints, they belong to an Angela Richard, who has a record for drugs and prostitution in Los Angeles, and nothing can be found on Lisa St. Claire earlier than 1990. With his usual crime-fighting cohort, Hawk, in Burma, Spenser instead takes Susan with him to California to interview anyone who knew Lisa when she was still Angela Richard. He calls in some favors, and roughs up her ex-pimp, now a movie producer, but doesn’t find out much. Back home, he tracks down her parents (separately) but they have no information to offer. He invites Chollo, a Mexican thug from a previous case in California (see “Stardust”) to come east and help give him some credibility with Freddie Santiago, who shows them where in San Juan Hill is Luis Deleon’s territory, and agrees to find out if Lisa is in there against her will or not. Spenser realizes that it would be in Santiago’s interests to have a bunch of Yankees bust the place up, eliminate Deleon as competition, and leave Santiago looking like the good guy taking over afterward. The local priest tells Spenser that he has been asked to marry Luis and a woman named Angela Richard, in spite of the fact that there is no marriage license and also that Lisa is already married. Chollo infiltrates the compound by telling them he knows an LA mobster who wants Luis to be his liaison on the east coast, and he realizes that with all the fortifications and ammunition in the compound, and also women and children, it will be very difficult to attack without a lot of casualties. But since there hasn’t been any other progress, Spenser and Chollo realize that they have no choice but to go in after Lisa, on whatever pretext, after arranging for Santiago’s gang to act as a diversion at the time. So they pretend that Spenser is representing local gangster Joe Broz (from previous books) when he and Chollo meet with Luis on what he assumes is a business deal. When Santiago’s men start shooting at the buildings, the gang members all head for the windows and start shooting back, leaving Spenser and Chollo to go find where Lisa is being held and sneak her out. Unfortunately, they bump into Luis along the way, as everyone is evacuating the building which has started collapsing, and for Lisa’s sake, Luis makes sure that everyone gets out safely. Once outside, Spenser tries to leave with Lisa and Luis, but Freddie Santiago kills Luis instead, which was all he wanted from the operation in the first place. Late in the book, Luis and Lisa had reached a sort of rapprochement, and because of his background it was easy to start feeling sorry for him, so this outcome was somewhat demoralizing and unsatisfying, compared to how it would have been earlier in the story. The book basically ends right there on that sour note, and it’s a hard feeling to shake off. The ending is unusually disjointed, because it is told twice from two different narratives, which is a plot device that does not improve it in any way. The reunion with Lisa and Frank Belson in the hospital is cursory, and the ersatz epilogue is irrelevant. Of course, it would be impossible for this author to write a bad book, and the Spenser stories are always well-written and interesting, and although formulaic, continue to be a winning formula. This whole story was more tense and gritty than they usually are, and without the camaraderie of Hawk and their patented banter, it was much more sullen, melancholy and even creepy. It does feature Pearl the Wonder Dog, and plenty of descriptive passages about clothing and food, as they all do, but it’s not enough to redeem this from being less than top-shelf Spenser.

Thirteen At Dinner
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Berkley Book
Dodd, Mead & Company
1933

American actress Jane Wilkinson is married to eccentric Lord Edgware, but wishes him out of the way so she can marry the Duke of Merton. She asks Hercule Poirot to meet with him and convince him to step aside, or devise some clever plan to free her of him. He agrees to meet with her husband, and is surprised to discover that far from being opposed to the idea, the Lord said he notified her months ago that he would divorce her, if she would go quietly and with no financial settlement. She receives this news gleefully, although she says she never received his letter. So it comes as a great surprise later when Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard calls on Poirot to inform him that Lady Edgware took a taxi to the Lord’s house, announced herself to the butler, and killed her husband in his library. Poirot can’t help but remark that it seems a little too contrived to be likely, and for her part, the widow claims to have been at a party at the time. Meanwhile, another American actress, Carlotta Adams, famous for her impersonations of Jane Wilkinson, also turns up dead, and conveniently wearing the outfit that Lady Edgware was seen to be wearing the night her husband was killed. Of course, there’s also a ne’er-do-well nephew who inherits the title and estate, who was always asking his uncle for money, and in fact quarreled with him that morning, and has a convenient alibi for the evening. Suddenly the new butler disappears, and Japp is convinced he’s a shady character besides. The plot thickens when it turns out that a number of people were at Lord Edgware’s house at the time of his murder, even though their alibis indicated otherwise, including his daughter, nephew and yet another actor called Bryan Martin. Japp also turns up a letter to Carlotta Adams’ sister in America saying that the nephew would pay her $10,000 to play a joke on his uncle. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Merton calls on Poirot to do anything to prevent her son from marrying Jane Wilkinson. Next murdered is someone from the beginning of the book, Donald Ross, that I don’t even remember. Apparently, a chance remark about Paris raised young Ross’s suspicions, and when he telephoned Poirot later, he was cut down before he could elaborate. Also, Poirot discovers that Carlotta’s letter was tampered with, and did not actually implicate Edgware’s nephew in its original form. Finally, in true detective fiction fashion, Poirot calls everyone together and explains everything. It turns out that Lady Edgware hired Carlotta Adams NOT to impersonate her at Lord Edgware’s house, but rather, to provide her alibi at the party instead. So they met ahead of time, switched clothes, Lady Edgware killed her husband (she claimed the Duke would never marry her if her husband were still alive, even if they were divorced, because he was very old-fashioned) then they met up again later and switched clothes back. Lady Edgware gave Carlotta a poisoned drink, and figured she was in the clear. She also tampered with the letter to implicate the nephew, and made sure everyone knew that she wished her husband dead, in an effort to make herself too obvious to be a suspect. Apparently she killed Donald Ross because he realized she was not the same person he sat with at the previous party, when Carlotta was being her alibi. And Hercule Poirot was mad at her for trying to use him as a smoke-screen, and almost succeeding, and this made him highly indignant. These books are always well-written, and this one actually makes more sense than a lot of them. Sometimes there are so many red herrings and sub-plots that when the time comes to unravel everything at the end, it ends up making less sense than before it started. Unfortunately, none of the characters are interesting, or likable, with the exception of course of Poirot and his adorable assistant, Hastings, who is thick as a plank and twice as dense. But the plot was a notch above average, and it was lively and engaging throughout.

This Is My God
Herman Wouk
Reference
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Simon & Schuster
1959

This is an interesting and very readable book about Judaism. The author is an excellent novelist (“The Caine Mutiny,” “Youngblood Hawke,” “War & Remembrance,” “Winds of War,” among many others) and here he manages to keep his writing informative without being dull. He covers the history of the Jews, the Torah and Talmud, aspects of worship, festivals and symbolism, plus the law in its pure form, as well as everyday applications. More entertaining than you would expect, interesting throughout, well-written as all his books, and you even manage to learn something along the way.

This Pleasant Lea
Anne Crone
Drama
Fiction
Rating 2
Charles Scribners Sons
1951

The Storey family lives in genteel poverty in the tiny farm community of Derry Gawley, Ireland, following Mr. Storey’s untimely death. Son Frank is a little too irresponsible for farm work, while industrious Faith works as a teacher’s assistant, and poor young Milly is often held out of school in order to work around the house. When it is revealed that Frank committed an indiscretion with a neighbor lass, the family is as appalled by the moral considerations as they are by the financial consequences. Frank decides to marry the injured party instead of paying her off, in spite of her family’s lower social standing, but there’s no room (or welcome) for her at his family’s farm, so they live apart. In a sincere attempt to help the family, kind neighbor Mark Liddell offers for Faith, thinking that she and her family could move to his larger farm and houses, leaving Frank and his new wife to the Storey’s farm alone. But Faith refuses him on the grounds that she does not love him, in spite of his most earnest entreaties. Afterwards, while running an errand into town for her brother, she meets Antony Fletcher, son of the local solicitor, and they are strangely attracted to each other. Meanwhile, Alison Greenlees, daughter of the local squire, has already set her cap for Antony, a match that would meet with the approval of both families. Although the book draws a quaint and picturesque rendering of Irish country life, and the characters are all genuine and likable for the most part, though drawn with warts and all, it is one of the most dense and static books I have ever slogged through. It has pages upon pages upon pages of exposition, that while interesting and charming in its own way, entirely chokes off any possible progress in the story, until you just want to give it up as a lost cause. As much as you care for the characters and want to know what happens to them, it’s almost not worth the effort of plowing through hundreds of pages clogged with thick text, to tell what is essentially a simple slice-of-life tale. It goes without saying that Antony’s family wholeheartedly disapproves of his affection for Faith, with her family’s lack of status and all. Then Antony’s father has a nearly fatal stroke, and he must step in and carry on his father’s work. Faith decides they should separate until his family is prepared to accept her. Meanwhile, Mrs. Storey moves out of her house so Frank and his new wife can live there, and she and her daughters move into a spare building on Mark Liddell’s property. But after the baby is born, the new wife runs off with a tradesman, leaving Frank to drown his sorrows in liquor, and his mother to care for the baby Lily. One day in town, Frank bumps into his estranged wife and they come to blows – he gets arrested and eventually the farm is auctioned off to settle his debts. Almost imperceptibly, Antony begins to come around to his parent’s opinion that he could not marry into this family, and he finds Alison Greenlees’ attention to be a welcome comfort. Meanwhile, Mark Liddell buys the Storey farm at auction with the intent of restoring the family to it somehow, and Faith can’t help but feel that he has been more than their truest friend. Almost without realizing it, Antony proposes to Alison and both families are happy. Later, Faith takes the news of their marriage hard, but stoically as usual. But being very dissimilar people, Antony and Alison soon find themselves at odds, making themselves and everyone around them miserable. Poor unhappy Alison catches a chill and dies, and her father soon after, from losing her. Much later, when Antony returns to Faith and begs her to take him back, she tells him that she could never feel about him the same way as before, since her devotion to him remained uniformly true while his was inconstant. In the end, she winds up where she started and accepts Mark Liddell with more appreciation than she could have known before. This book has absolutely no artifice in it – the story is hopelessly old-fashioned and told in an old-fashioned way. It could never pretend to be a new story masquerading as a period piece, because it glories in all of the creaks and creepings of its out-moded style. It’s amazing that anyone ever wanted to read this type of ponderous prose, much less encourage them to read more of it. I can’t help thinking of Warner Baxter telling Ruby Keeler in “42nd Street” – “You’re going out there a Nobody, but you’ve got to come back a Star!” – while the narrator wonders if people really used to talk like that. The writing style is so dull and oppressive that it almost defies you to develop any interest in the story, which seems to alternate wildly between melodramatic pathos and hard-hearted cynicism. A very sweet and sentimental ending would have done much to rescue it, but the ending was of a piece from what went before, and was too abrupt and unsatisfying. It seems to be well-meaning, and written with intelligence and technical ability, but ultimately disappointing.

Those Endearing Young Charms
Marion Chesney
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1986

The social climbing Ansteys refuse the suit of the penniless Captain Tracey for their oldest daughter, Mary. Later when he becomes Earl of Devenham, of course they welcome him back with open arms and set a wedding date. But in the meantime, Mary and the local Vicar have fallen in love, although Mary determines to marry the Earl anyway to please her family. But her younger sister Emily will have none of it, so she disguises herself as Mary, and marries the Earl herself. The Earl tries to put the best face on it, since he realized he and Mary didn’t suit anyway. Emily pretends to be happy to her family, but she lives in fear of the Earl’s temper. She becomes even more miserable when he brings her to London, where everyone is gossiping about his former mistress. She finally flees in broken-hearted terror back to her family, consoling herself with her pitiful stray kitten for company. But the kitten escapes and is tormented by the local brutish youths; fortunately the Earl rescues it, and this is what finally brings them together. A bit long-winded but good of this type.

Through Charley’s Door
Emily Kimbrough
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Harper & Brothers
1952

This author of lively and amiable travelogues now tries her hand at the personal histories of people like herself who worked at Marshall Field & Company, the premier department store in Chicago for decades. Charley was the estimable doorman for the entrance at 28 Washington Street, favored by “the carriage trade,” and known and revered throughout the city. He was not only a wealth of information and knew every customer’s name, but could also be counted on to relay messages, deliver packages, and handle any other matters that might arise. A friend gives Emily an introduction to Achsah Gardner in the Advertising Bureau, and despite her usual gaffes that often leave onlookers agog in speechless bewilderment, she begins working at the store with the only qualification that she can type “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” Little by little, she learns the ropes at the store, and even meets Mr. Simpson, the President, turning their meeting into no more than the usual disaster for her. Her conversations with co-workers, and their recollections and anecdotes about the store, are fascinating and wonderful. Her first attempts at writing ad copy are uniformly met with skepticism and outright hostility, combining as they did, peculiar elements of the whimsical and arcane, very far from a Marshall Field trademark by all accounts. Next up is what should be a standard-issue tale of her misadventures with Payroll, where they neglected to pay her for a month (prompting her to consider resigning, because her father could not afford to continue supporting her as a working girl) but which had an ironic twist that made it unsettling rather than funny. After that is a truly depressing episode about how working for a living had distanced her from her former society friends, and told from a perspective of 25 years later, still seems achingly sad. Even her story about finally meeting the dreaded barracuda of the Book Section, Marcella Hahner, is more chilling than funny. Although it does include a cute aside about an up-and-coming author who would write his name in books that he lent to friends, so they would be sure to return them; of course, this tactic backfired once he became famous and everyone kept the books because they had his name in them. Coming as a big surprise to even her closest friends and staunchest supporters, Emily is given charge of the Magazine Division (Fashions of the Hour) when Achsah Gardner is promoted to another position. This leads to some interesting reminiscences about peculiarities that had occurred over the years, but were considered too indecorous to be included in any of the store publicity, and which were more peculiar than amusing. Showing a little more spark is a tale about the doughty Marcella Hahner, taking on the new Victrola Department, placed near her treasured books, and vanquishing it with no survivors. This author is not famous for killing off her characters, so it comes as an unwelcome surprise when her dear and spunky mother breathes her last. (Although it’s not really a surprise when Achsah Gardner later marries her father.) After four years at the store, she gets lured away by Ladies Home Journal, as the fashion editor of their Paris Bureau. She returns 25 years later to write this book, and of course, so much has changed so it’s very bittersweet. This was a small and niche sort of book compared to her usual wide-ranging travelogues, which are chockful of different people and events, and often wildly hilarious. It was nice enough in a quiet way, and somewhat interesting, but it never caught fire or leapt off the page at any point. Alternately suffused with awkwardness or melancholy (perhaps owing to the memory of her mother’s passing at the same time) it never hits its stride in a cohesive and engaging style that beckons you in and makes you feel welcome and happy. Of interest only to the most die-hard fans, but disappointing overall.

Thursday’s Child
Barbara Hazard
Romance
Fiction
Rating 2
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1995

Celia Anders, an orphan who lives with her scholarly uncle in London, is invited to a house party at Castle Wentworth in the country by the dowager Duchess, along with a horde of other visitors. These include the dowager’s dashing godson, William, fourth Viscount Drummond, as well as the young widow Dawkins and her sulky daughter, Charity. Celia finds the house party made up of a ragtag collection, some pleasant and well-mannered people, but also bores, social climbers and malcontents. One day she inadvertently barges in on Drummond in his bedroom and he delights in teasing her afterward. The more aloof she tries to be, the more he maneuvers to be near her, and one day on a bridle path, he kisses her. In her attempts to flee his unwanted attentions, she sprains her ankle and he carries her back to her room. Meanwhile, bratty Charity has been amusing herself by spying on everyone and spreading tales, to the distress of some and the delight of others. Apparently the dowager knows something unsavory about Celia’s past, so she forbids Drummond to trifle with her, either as a lark or in earnest. Charity branches out by slipping rat poison to the Butler, tripping a valet on the stairs and pinching the dowager’s ruby necklace to plant in one of the guest’s rooms as incriminating evidence. Drummond begins to suspect her when she attempts to spill his secret in a game of hide-and-seek played for a valuable prize. So she plays her trump card and suddenly the whole castle is agog to find out that Celia’s parents were a disreputable pair of poor and unmarried Gypsies. It’s not true of course, finally her devoted uncle tells her the story of her well-born mother eloping with the footman, but the damage has been done. Drummond is determined to marry her anyway, but both Celia and the dowager see that he’s only doing it to be chivalrous. When Drummond tires of Charity’s shenanigans, he tricks her into a trap that could only be considered hopelessly ludicrous by even the most indulgent reader. But it serves the purpose, as the dowager sends them packing instantly. After Celia rejects Drummond’s suit, the dowager concocts an imaginary wealthy American father for her, so she can be accepted into society, but Celia will have none of it. Finally Drummond proposes to her in the middle of a play that the house party has been practicing, in front of everyone from miles around. She finally agrees to marry him, although the ending is disjointed and desultory after the extremely lame denouement with Charity. Well-written with mostly likable characters, the story lacks interest or drama.. The people are so generally mild, good or bad, and the things they do are so dull as to be very unengaging. Even the illicit romance of Celia and Drummond refuses to throw off any sparks, and the ending is one enormous wet blanket thrown over any hope of romance or excitement. Nice enough of this type but disappointing overall.

To Glory We Steer
Alexander Kent
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
McBooks Press Inc.
1998
(Hutchinson, UK - 1968)

This is another in a series of British naval adventures by this author, which are fiction but based on actual events, and featuring Richard Bolitho, now a captain. This story begins in 1782 in Portsmouth, with Bolitho just returned from the West Indies on the Sparrow, and hoping to enjoy some time at home in Falmouth, but he is summoned by Admiral Langford (his first captain as a rank midshipman) and surprised to be given command of a dazzling new frigate, Phalarope, which had to be returned from the war effort due to a near mutiny, and the captain being removed for incompetence. The short-handed crew is an emotional powder-keg, and with orders to sail back to the West Indies to join Samuel Hood’s squadron, Bolitho knows he has his work cut out for him. He finds the crew surly, silent or scared, and realizes that he must be stern and vigilant, because he suspects (and we know) that the treachery goes all the way to the highest level. Fortunately this ship, like the ones before it, comes with the massive Stockdale, who has protected him since the beginning, and he’s a welcome sight now. They stop first in Falmouth to pick up more crew, and since it is Bolitho’s family home, he knows where to find their hiding places. A combination of bad weather, unhappy veterans and terrified newcomers causes unrest in the ranks, which First Lieutenant Vibart encourages for his own purposes. They are approached by a frigate identifying itself as a British ship with dispatches for them, but it turns out to be an American privateer instead, and only good strategy keeps the inexperienced crew from having the ship shot out from underneath them. They finally reach Antigua, but the Admiral in charge sends them right back out again, as if afraid his unhappy crew might contaminate the rest of the fleet, and also gives them a bunch of malcontents on top of that, to get them out of their own hair. These’s no one else in sight when Phalarope happens on a small Spanish lugger moving supplies for their French allies, and Bolitho uses this information for a daring raid on the French anchorage at Mola Island, burning two of their ships, and pitching their battery guns over the cliff. Unfortunately for Bolitho, not everyone involved in the mission was to be trusted, and they fled back to the ship, stranding him and a small group of sailors to be taken prisoner by the American privateer Andiron. The new captain turns out to be his estranged older brother Hugh, who decides to wait at anchor and hope that Phalarope walks into his trap. On board, they believe Bolitho is dead, so Vibart and Okes take over command, to the great detriment of everyone. Fortunately, Stockdale was captured with Bolitho, and manages to spring the captives, and their small party sabotages the ship so it runs aground and sinks. They just barely escape over the side, and bump right into Herrick from the Phalarope’s ill-planned mission to attack the Andiron. Later, even the nasty Admiral has to admit that Bolitho has restored the Navy’s faith in Phalarope, but a pocket of unhappy sailors threatens the security of his accomplishments. Next the fresh water casks are contaminated, making it necessary to head for a small island in hopes of finding more water. On the way, the odious purser is murdered, and the conspirators frame John Allday for the crime, although Bolitho and Herrick both have their doubts. While the reliable part of the crew is ashore getting fresh water, the misfits launch their mutiny by killing Vibart who had been left in charge, but quick thinking by John Allday and some of the loyal sailors manages to turn the tide and quell the mutiny with minimal loss of life. Bolitho gains new respect for John Allday, who risked his own life to rout the mutiny and warn of enemy ships nearby. They rescue a tiny British brig attempting to report on French troop movements, and then their small convoy takes on a scouting party of larger French ships, and win the day only through superior strategy, although with massive damage and huge amount of casualties. These run from the top all the way down, and included poor midshipman Maynard, Captain Rennie of the Marines, the sailing master Proby and even the behemoth Stockdale, who died protecting Bolitho as he had from the beginning. Of course, it’s a byword of this series not to get attached to any character, no matter how central they may seem, because any moment might be their last. The story ends right there, with the bulk of the British fleet taking on the bulk of the French fleet in what became known as the Battle of the Saintes, and signaled the end of the war. There’s a very satisfying epilogue where Herrick visits Bolitho at home in Falmouth, and finds out his father has died, and also his black-sheep older brother, although not before he returns his father’s sword that he had confiscated on the Andiron. Herrick finds that Bolitho has even hired Allday and Ferguson (and his wife) from the Phalarope to help around the house, and also to have them nearby if the time comes that he gets another ship. (It will.) The book ends there on a cozy note. This is a rather unusual entry in this series, since there are no missions to speak of except routine patrols, and practically no battles, so most of the plot is taken up with the psychology and behavior of their own ship and crew, and seems at times tense, maudlin or depressing. It’s impossible for this author to write a bad book, and you genuinely care about the characters, but the whole book seems to have a pall over it that is impossible to shake off, so that even the victories are subdued and bittersweet. Well-written as they all are, in an informal style that seems effortless and engaging. Always interesting and never lags, entertaining throughout, although not as rousing as some others in this series.

Toblethorpe Manor
Carola Dunn
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Warner Books / A Warner Communications Company
1981

Richard Carstairs of Toblethorpe Manor, and his friend Lord Anthony Graham, the future Marquis of Hendon, are out riding on the estate when they stumble upon a young woman who has been injured and is unconscious. They carry her back to the house and send for the doctor, and when she briefly regains consciousness, they find that she does not remember who she is. Richard’s impetuous sister Lucy is all agog to set out on her first season in London, but Lady Annabel, their sensible mother doesn’t see how they can leave the young stranger in distress. They begin calling her “Miss Fell,” since they discovered her on Daws Fell. After long days and nights of tender loving care, Miss Fell is finally well enough to go downstairs for meals with the family, rather than having broth in her room. Lady Annabel decides that the best course of action is to bring the mysterious stranger with them to London (as the supposed daughter of an old school friend) and hope to bump into someone who recognizes her, although Richard can’t help but despair of her gentility, out riding alone at night in the snow, and even she wonders how she could have come so far that no one knows her. Miss Fell isn’t well enough to travel with the family when they go to London, so they leave her at home in the care of an imposing spinster aunt. Miss Fell wins over the old battle-axe with her pleasant manner, although since she doesn't know the true circumstances, she has no reason to pity her. The staff is protective of her, and everyone who meets her finds her charming. She discovers that she plays piano and sings beautifully, although she doesn't know why. Meanwhile in London, Lucy meets the dashing Major Bowen back from India, as well as her cousins Jennifer and Edward, plus Harry Graham, the brother of her old friend Lord Anthony. Lady Annabel and Lucy are invited to Almack’s and she soon has no lack of suitors, besides Major Bowen, whom Lord Anthony considers a fortune hunter, and wishes that Lucy thought of himself more as a beau than an age-old family friend. Privately, Bowen and Lucy acknowledge their feelings for each other, although she fears that his humble roots will not meet with Richard's approval. Richard returns to Toblethorpe and finds Miss Fell (now called “Clara” by her friends) much improved, although still easily tired. Their plan to return to London in easy stages falters outside of Huntingdon when the carriage falls into a ditch in a snowstorm. Miss Fell has a bit of a relapse after being out in the cold while the carriage is fixed (and she panicked at the prospect of riding a horse again) and the doctor who examines her in London recommends bed rest, and also suggests a German hypnotist, Dr. Holzkopf, to help restore her memory. After Miss Fell recovers, she has her session with Dr. Holzkopf, but he is unable to hypnotize her, although in a funny aside, he inadvertently hypnotizes Lady Annabel who is sitting behind her. Meanwhile, Richard comes storming back from an unpleasant encounter, which we are led to surmise, involves him forbidding Major Bowen to address his sister, since he considers the Bowen family to be unsuitable relatives. When Lord Anthony finally asks if he may court Lucy, Richard is elated, although the same cannot be said of Lucy. When Miss Fell is well enough to socialize, she is presented to dozens of Lady Annabel's acquaintances, and is discouraged when none of them recognize her. Then she is insulted at the theater by one of Toblethorpe's neighbors, the odious Rossiter, and Richard impetuously proposes to her, so he can protect her from such outrages. Although she appreciates his kindness, she cannot accept, and be even more of a burden than she has been already. We also find out about Richard's heavy-handed treatment of Lucy and Bowen, and while she pretends to acquiesce to his demands, she still manages to skirt around the specifics and do as she pleases.
There is a sort of flashback interlude, where we learn a variety of things that happened with Lucy while she was staying at her Aunt Blanche's residence during the illnesses of Miss Fell and Lady Annabel. While she felt bad about deceiving her brother, she could not allow Major Bowen to ask Richard for her when he had so much else to worry about. She and Bowen have a quarrel when he says he must return to his estate in Northumberland on an urgent matter. (We already know that he is concerned that he hasn't heard from his cousin Rosalind, so anyone could see where this was leading.) Lord Anthony proposes to her, but she turns him down and instead tells him all her troubles, which he is amiable enough to help her with. Since Miss Fell refused his proposal, Richard has been drinking heavily, while she realizes that her feelings for him are so strong that it would be awkward for her to continue staying with the family any longer. She decides that she must leave the Carstairs and make her own living, since it appears that she will never find out who she is. She calls on a local orchestra leader to apply as a pianist, but the interview that he sends her on ends badly, with the patron taking liberties. Major Bowen insists on seeing Richard before he leaves for Northumberland, and arrives at the townhouse just about the same time Miss Fell returns from her dismal interview. They recognize each other instantly, and poor Miss Fell (actually Bowen's cousin Rosalind Stuart) faints clean away. When she is revived, she remembers her cousin Charles, but not any of the Carstairs, and in fact, gets a terrible headache when any of them are around. Bowen explains to the family that after he returned from India, he recently found out that a scheming younger uncle had taken over his estate and was trying to bully Rosalind into marrying a man he owed money to, and when he became violent at her refusal, she ran away and had her accident on the moors. The doctor says she must return to her own home until she and her memory are quite well, and forbids any of the Carstairs to see her for six months. Bowen and Rosalind return to Northumberland and find that their odious uncle has skipped and left the property in a shambles. Rosalind recovers her health, but feels oddly disoriented. After six months, they are invited to Lord Anthony’s estate for hunting, with the plan of meeting up with the Carstairs, who are also invited. Rosalind has made up her mind to enjoy a last fling before settling down with a boring local bachelor, and Anthony’s brother Harry is quick to oblige as a lark. She does not recognize the Carstairs when they arrive, and Richard finds it painfully difficult to treat her as a stranger, and be treated as one in return. The assembled company puts on an amateur theatrical for fun, and Richard and Rosalind quarrel about the irrepressible Harry Graham becoming too familiar with her. When they return to Toblethorpe for the wedding of Bowen and Lucy, they are confronted with the prospect of explaining to everyone who knew her as "Miss Fell," that they must act as if they have never met her before. At Toblethorpe, she sees Mary the maid, and suddenly remembers her time being the mysterious stranger with the Carstairs. Richard finally proposes to her, and it all ends happily. Well-written, but hopelessly long and drawn-out, and way over-plotted for a typical Regency romance. The characters are nice enough, but on the dull side, so they don’t completely engage your interest. Not romantic enough for a real romance, it is entertaining enough but falls short in many areas.

To The Hilt
Dick Francis
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Jove Books / Berkley Publishing Group (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
1996

Alexander Kinloch chooses to live alone in the wilds of Scotland, playing the part of family eccentric, and painting, which pays the bills and then some. He plans to return to London when his mother says his step-father is ill, but instead, he is attacked by thugs who toss him over a cliff, ransack his hut and steal his jeep. After hitch-hiking to London, he finds his step-father Ivan Westering, weak and fatalistic, and he give Alex his power-of-Attorney instead of his scheming daughter Patsy. He also makes Alex an interim director at the family brewery, and the enormous problems (the treasurer absconded with all the money) make Alex think this is what caused his step-father’s collapse. He also learns of two curious items of value, a racehorse named Golden Malt, and the King Alfred chalice, which goes to the winner of the King Alfred Cup, a steeplechase that the brewery sponsors every year for publicity purposes. (The winner actually gets a reproduction of the chalice.) Alex meets with the bank and Margaret Morden, an insolvency practitioner, about short- and long-term steps to save the brewery. His estranged wife Emily helps him hide Golden Malt (she’s the horse trainer) at a friend’s stable. Robert, the current Earl of Kinloch, had spirited away the chalice to keep it safe, and some people believed it had been given to Alex to hide, hence the thugs who roughed him up. Alex hires a private detective to see if Patsy and her sneaky husband Surtees had anything to do with it. Meanwhile, Patsy has been kicking up a ruckus with the lawyer and bank and Desmond Finch at the brewery about getting the Power-of-Attorney away from Alex, but Ivan sticks by his guns. The Earl has the chalice appraised by an antiquarian, who tells him that it is merely a Victorian-era reproduction, not a true 9th century treasure from King Alfred. Unlike the Honor of the Kinlochs, a golden hilt from a ceremonial sword presented to the Earl by (Bonnie) Prince Charles Edward in the 1700's, and which had already been hidden in Alex’s hut for safe-keeping. Margaret gets the creditors to agree to terms, although very hard terms, and include giving up the horse and chalice if necessary. Next, the embezzling treasurer turns up dead (two weeks already) with no apparent cause. Then Golden Malt escapes from his hiding place, and Patsy gets within a hair-breadth of catching him, before Alex snatches him out from under her nose at the last minute. Just when everything seems to be under control, Ivan suddenly drops dead, bringing Patsy into the ascendancy, and making things very inconvenient for everyone. Fortunately, Ivan had added a codicil to his will naming Alex co-executor, so in spite of Patsy’s objections, he still has a say in the proceedings. At the funeral, a neighbor mentions that Ivan had been outside in his pajamas pulling through the trash in a panic, just before he died. Alex figures out that he had gotten a call from the late treasurer’s sister, who wanted to give him some of her brother’s papers. He realizes this would be the critical “paper trail” to find the missing funds, so he hurries out to pick them up, and also realizes that he has to hide his mother, his wife and the treasurer’s sister to prevent them being used as hostages to bargain for information. Against his better judgment, Alex accepts an invitation to Patsy’s house for a friendly discussion, and even though he brings along his private detective (in disguise) to protect him, he still gets jumped by the same four thugs, this time at the direction of Oliver, the nasty lawyer. When he won’t tell them where to find the horse, the chalice, the hilt or the paper trail, they beat hum up and also burn him, until the P.I. finally brings the Police to his rescue. Alex helps the Police link the four thugs to his attack in Scotland, as well as the murder of the treasurer, neatly implicating nasty Oliver Grantchester. They even discover Alex’s stolen property in his possession, including some paintings that Alex was glad to get back. Unfortunately, even with the magic list, the bank experts can’t find the missing money, and Alex tries hard to accept the fact that he suffered and bled for nothing. Then they have the steeplechase, and Golden Malt miraculously wins, to the unbridled delirium of all. Even better, Patsy apologizes to Alex after she realizes how she had been led astray by people only pretending to have her best interests at heart. He returns to his hut to find D. Lang, the antiquarian, and a bunch of flunkies with metal detectors intent on finding the hilt. (There is some contention between the Earl and the government over who is the hilt’s rightful owner.) When he shows her a portrait he has painted of her, she is overcome and leaves without further ado. Finally, the good news comes from South America (the auditor went there in person after electronic inquiries failed) that the brewery’s millions had been rescued. The story just sort of ends there, although satisfactorily, so it doesn’t seem really precipitous. This is a crackerjack tale that rushes along head first right from the opening page, up to the unmasking of Oliver as the villain. After that, it has a slow and gentle denouement, almost an epilogue, wrapping things up neatly and settling accounts. It would have gotten a higher rating from me except for the melancholy of a Scottish lament that seems to hover over the story like a cloud. It wasn’t truly sad, but it could never shake off a sense of wistfulness. Very well-written in a mostly lively and engaging style, with characters that were simply drawn, but powerfully real. Not all were likable, but they were all genuine, and you cared what happened to them. I admit that I really believed that the treasurer had been set up as the fall guy in the scheme, but apparently he and Oliver cooked this up together, and at the last minute, the treasurer tried to double-cross him, but died trying. The story moves at quite a clip and never lags, and it’s easy to see why the author’s other books of this type are so popular and he is so prolific. Very enjoyable and highly recommended.

Towards Zero
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1944

Noted criminologist Mr. Treves makes the point that murder mysteries always begin with the murder, and then backtrack to explain how and why it happened. His opinion is that a true murder mystery begins with many diverse and unrelated events, circumstances and coincidences that all add up to murder at the end, hurtling towards zero. That’s how this book is written, in short unconnected chapters that each seem to be going their own way, but actually each is just another brick in the path leading to murder. The elements gather at Gull’s Point, where first Mr. Treves dies of an apparent heart attack, and then Lady Tressilian is murdered. It turns out to be Nevile Strange, staying there with his wife and ex-wife, whose plan was to frame his ex-wife for the crime. With a lot of determination and happy coincidences, Supt. Battle of Scotland Yard gets his man. And Nevile’s ex-wife gets hers as well, in a pleasant happy ending.

Tracy and Hepburn
Garson Kanin
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Viking Press
1971

A lively and anecdotal history of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn by their intimate friend, Garson Kanin. He is an excellent writer and turns his vignettes into living, breathing people. Although he shares many private moments with them(along with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon) there is nothing salacious about the book. It is a love letter to an idol from a grateful subject. It’s fast-paced, informal and amusing, with a few laugh-out-loud stories.

The Trouble With A Small Raise
Trella Crespi
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 2
Zebra Books / Kensington Publishing
1991

Simona Griffo works at the HH&H Advertising Agency in New York City, and one day she goes in early to work to catch her boss alone, and ask him for a raise. But she finds him dead in his office instead. Fred was someone who oozed charm, but also had a lot of enemies. The Police investigators, Garcia and Greenhouse, arrive and the owner, Mr. Harland, asks Simona to assist them in every possible way. They soon learn that Fred died of cyanide poisoning, and in fact, they discover a tampered bottle of cold pills that had been missing from the first aid cabinet, which is locked and maintained by Mattie Washington in the reception area. Once the detectives start questioning everyone, Simona finds out that Fred died on Sunday, not Monday, so even if she had come in earlier in the morning, she could not have prevented what happened. But she also realizes that she has no alibi on that weekend, so the following weekend, she joins Gregory, the illustrator, at his cottage in the country. He invites another couple from work, so it’s all very friendly but not romantic. Suddenly she remembers that when she saw Fred’s body on Monday, he wasn’t wearing his HH&H 10-year signet ring, which he always wore. When she brings this to the attention of the detectives, she is non-plussed to discover that they found Fred’s ring in her desk! They don’t much consider her a suspect, but they don’t reveal much about how the investigation is going. Everyone is surprised when they arrest Mattie Washington, who appears to have no motive, although Fred fired her nephew from HH&H, and had him arrested for drug dealing. Later, they release her. Just as everyone is getting ready to shoot the biggest ads for their biggest client, the Police arrest Bertrand, the account representative. Simona discovers that Bertrand and the client, Mr. Janick, are lovers, and also that Fred was using that information against Bertrand and to his advantage. The Police also discovered all this, because the doorman caught a young man who he assumed to be a thief, but turned out to be an employee taking an incriminating letter with the details out of Fred’s belongings. Next, Mr. Janick sues the agency over a sample bottle of their new perfume, which he entrusted to Fred, and which has since gotten lost – he also threatens to pull his business from them if the bottle isn’t found. Finally Simona and detective Greenhouse, who she has a crush on, have a romantic weekend together. She promises to him that she will solve the case by Monday, and she arranges for all the principle characters to meet in Fred’s office Monday morning. She doesn’t tell him who she suspects, which gives the murderer one more chance to shut her up, which is attempted by pushing her in front of an oncoming bus. But it doesn’t work, and on Monday morning, it turns out to be Fred’s perky secretary, Jenny (why is it always the secretary!) who pined after Fred for years, but finally snapped when Fred planned to marry another woman at the agency. She knew Fred was allergic to the new perfume, so she made sure to spill some on him, and then offer him the tainted pills. The writing is workmanlike, but the plot is all over the place with irrelevant tangents, red herrings and unresolved sub-plots. All of which wouldn’t matter it it was at all interesting (which it’s not) or if there were any likable characters (which there aren’t) to compensate for the weak story. Everyone in the book is either obnoxious or weird, or else they’re completely non-descript, or so inconsistent that you can’t get a handle on them. Apparently this Simona Griffo appears in other books, but you can’t believe that anyone would want to read any more of these horrible, boring and distasteful stories.

Two Points For Murder
D.B. Borton
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Berkley Books
1993

Cat Caliban is a 60-year-old widow and mother of three grown children, who decides to try her hand at amateur sleuthing, since as she says, mothers are naturally suspicious. This is the second in a series of mysteries by this author, so first we are introduced to some of the characters in Cat’s orbit from the first book. It all begins innocently enough when she is “retained” by a neighborhood youngster to find his missing kitten. Which she does, but she also inadvertently discovers a cryptic notebook used by a local basketball hero from the nearby high school, who was recently murdered. Before that, another member of the team had died of heart disease, which in retrospect, Cat finds to be a little too much of a coincidence. In a lot of ways, Cat is very reminiscent of Elizabeth MacPherson, another series (by Sharyn McCrumb) featuring an amateur sleuth, perhaps a little more hard-boiled, but with that same sardonic and wise-cracking skewed view of life. As with most amateur sleuths, the victim’s family is happy and grateful.for any additional help on the case, especially when the Police investigation doesn’t seem to be making any progress. But everyone else from the Police to residents to the high school to the team, uniformly resents the interloper and refuses to cooperate. Although she doesn’t seem to be making any headway, it doesn’t take long before someone takes a few pot-shots at her, outside of her own apartment building. The plot thickens when another team member disappears, ostensibly to stay with his mother out of state, but there is no proof of that. Then someone snatches Cat’s grandson out from under her nose at a basketball game, as a warning to drop her investigation, and although he is returned safely, it gives all of them pause. In the end, they have one of those “let’s get everyone together in the same room and smoke out the culprit” types of scenarios, which I think is a kind of precious conceit for an amateur sleuth, but there you have it. It turns out that the whole team was on steroids provided by a team hanger-on who stole prescription pads and forged the doctor’s signature. When Juky, the original victim (remember him?) finds out, he threatens to expose them, so the forger kills him and forces the doctor’s son (the one who disappeared) into helping him. Then the doctor realizes that the forger must have also killed his supposedly disappeared son, so he kills him, although the whole team bands together to provide the good doctor with an air-tight alibi. Anyway, that’s apparently what happened, because it’s one of those books where they keep information from you all along, so that at the end, they have to stuff a lot of things at you all at once to explain everything in a big fat hurry – and as is so often the case, it simply doesn’t hold together and make any sense, and eventually collapses under its own weight. The book is written in a lively and entertaining way, and the characters are mostly interesting, if tart. The story keeps your interest throughout and doesn’t lag, although the ending falls apart badly, and is a sorry let-down after a rambunctious ride.

TITLES P - Q - R

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The Pale Horse
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 5
Dodd, Mead
1961

Mrs. Davis calls for a priest, so Father Gorman goes to her rented rooms, just before she dies unexpectedly after a brief illness. She gives Father Gorman a list of names, which he is supposed to do something with, but unfortunately, the good Father is killed after he leaves Mrs. Davis’ flat. Inspector Lejeune and Dr. Corrigan, the Police Pathologist, begin investigating the list, which was found in the Priest’s shoe. Dr. Corrigan runs into his old school chum, Mark Easterbrook, and they fall to talking about the case – it turns out they both know different parts of the same thing. Mark knows two people on the list who recently died under non-mysterious circumstances. But Mark has been to The Pale Horse, where the mysterious women there claim they can kill someone by “remote control.” Mark and his friend Ginger Corrigan come up with a plan to pose as a potential client and the victim, to see if they can expose the whole operation. (One name on the list is “Corrigan” so both Ginger and Dr. Corrigan have a good reason to figure out what’s really going on.) Mark makes the arrangements with the go-between, Mr. Bradley, claiming to be a man looking to marry, whose estranged wife is making difficulties. (Ginger is playing the part of the wife, taking a flat in London and using a disguise.) Realizing the risk Ginger is taking, Mark explains the plan to Inspector Lejeune. At first, Ginger seems fine, but then she develops a cold that turns into pneumonia, and she just seems to go from bad to worse. The book has a bang-up ending, like boxcars piling up in a train wreck, and a lot of things happening at once. It turns out the mastermind behind the scheme is mild-mannered Pharmacist Mr. Osborne, who pretends to have seen the murderer of Father Gorman (actually, he murdered the Padre) and tries in vain to pin it on the mysterious Mr. Venables, who apparently is just a red herring. A person looking to “remove” an inconvenient obstacle visits Mr. Bradley, who quite legally, arranges a “wager” that the victim will die by a certain date, opposed to the client, who bets otherwise. The client then attends a seance at The Pale Horse, where they promise supernatural means will do in the victim. What actually happens is that an apparently reputable consumer survey company sends a surveyor to the neighborhood, including the victim, and asks questions about household products they use. Mr. Osborne then adds Thallium to a product that the victim already uses, disguises himself as a meter reader or repairman, gains access to the victim’s home and switches the regular product with the tainted one. After a few weeks, the victim starts to exhibit vague symptoms that may turn into a variety of serious complaints. Fortunately, a common thread among the victims is their hair falls out easily, which is an indication of Thallium poisoning – so they were able to save Ginger before it was too late. They discover that the late Mrs. Davis, who started all of this, was one of the surveyors, and she uncovered something, so she was eliminated. This is a rip-roaring, cracker-jack mystery with a lot of very likable characters, atmosphere and an extremely clever plot. (The only part that doesn’t hold together is that it was never established how Mr. Osborne knew Mr. Venables to pick him as the fall guy.) Also in the book is an exquisite self-parody, Mrs. Oliver, who is a somewhat ditzy and befuddled mystery writer. She is sharply drawn and a true joy. An excellent book, entertaining throughout, without a wrong note. One of this author’s best, from a master of the genre.

Pale Kings And Princes
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1987

Boston Private Investigator Spenser is hired by a newspaper to probe the death of one of their reporters who was doing a drug investigation. When he arrives in the small backwoods town, he is stone-walled by the Police and hindered by the other authorities. When he must spend more time in the town investigating, he invites Susan and Hawk along for help and company. The story gets pretty complicated among the drug dealers, the crooked cops, local rednecks and illegal immigrants, but like all these books, it’s well-written in a lively, entertaining style. And of course, Spenser and Hawk defeat the bad guys in the end.

Panic in Box C
John Dickson Carr
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Harper & Row
1966

This book begins on an ocean liner from England to New York. Amateur sleuth Dr. Fell is speaking with author Philip Knox about fellow passenger actress Margery Vane. Many years before, she and her partner Adam Cayley, started a repertory company in Richbell (standing in for Larchmont) but he died on opening night and the company disbanded. She is coming back now to try again with a new company, but things start going wrong almost at once. Of course everyone in the company is either obnoxious or obviously hiding something. Then during a dress rehearsal, someone murders Margery while she is alone locked in Box C. The second half of the book is spent examining everyone’s means, opportunities and motives to commit the crime. Although the writer is famous for dozens of “locked-room mysteries,” I found the characters uniformly unappealing and the dialogue confusing, contrived and grating. In the end, it turns out Margery was killed by Bess Harkness, her long-time companion (only the biggest cliche in the world) for ruining the career of an actor that Bess idolized. She is killed by the police while attempting a second murder. A pleasant aside to this story is the reconciliation of Philip Knox with his estranged wife, and although they are the most likable people in this tale, that still does not do them all that much credit. It also has one priceless gem discussing towns in lower Westchester County that almost makes up for the rest of this over-blown mish-mash.

Paper Doll
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 2
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1993

Loudon Tripp hires Boston Private Investigator Spenser to find the killer of his wife when the Police are stymied. There seem to be no clues in her recent life as a wealthy socialite, so Spenser probes into her past in South Carolina. It turns out the real Olivia Nelson married an African when she was in the Peace Corps and settled in Nairobi. It was an illegitimate daughter of her father’s that pretended to be Olivia Nelson, the wealthy socialite who married into Boston society. But they spent more money than they had, and her plan to blackmail her father (another tycoon who had since lost everything) was ruined when she was killed by her father’s long-time manservant. The whole thing was so utterly pathetic that Spenser decided against pursuing it further. Susan and Martin Quirk make it into this story (also Pearl the Wonder Dog) but not Hawk.

Paper Lion
George Plimpton
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Harper & Row
1964

Born to wealth and privilege, this author dabbles in many different fields, trying to be a kind of “everyman observer” and writing about his experiences from an insider’s perspective. In other books, he writes about pitching with the New York Yankees and boxing with Archie Moore. This book describes his quarterbacking stint with the Detroit Lions. He begins by recounting his various attempts, through several years, of getting a football team to allow him to participate. His first rejection was by the coach of the Western Conference in the Pro Bowl, followed quickly by the New York Giants. He appeared to be making some progress with the New York Titans, and then the Baltimore Colts, but both eventually fizzled. Finally, the owner of the Lions seemed taken with the idea, and invited him to join their training camp in July 1963. So he finds himself in Cranbrook, a boys academy in the outskirts of Detroit, where the Lions train. He meets the coaching staff and other team staff, plus the players, including Terry Barr, Joe Schmidt, Earl Morrall and Night Train Lane, who was married to singer Dinah Washington. He was in a unique position to get along with everyone, and he did. Because he was older than most players, the coaches felt comfortable socializing with him. The regular players didn’t consider him a threat to their jobs, so they were generally friendly and gracious toward him. Even the rookies felt a kinship with him, since he was newer to this than they were. The book very closely examines the real nuts-&-bolts day-to-day workings of a professional football team, and it can’t help but be interesting, like peeking behind a curtain. The players and coaches are a never-ending source of anecdotes about each other, other teams and former players, notably Bobby Layne and Alex Karras. Because everything is so new, the writing never lags, and simply bounds along on its own energy. In training camp, he spends most of his time with the offense, but he also sits in with the defense and special teams, to gain a better understanding of the team as a whole. He learns a few plays and practices them as hard as he can. But after weeks in camp, his debut in an inter-squad game is a disaster. Played at a nearby high school and a very popular local event, his plays are a series of mix-ups, fumbles and miscues, losing 30 yards in the bargain. Leaving the field, he is given a warm reception by the crowd, which he feels has been vindicated in its impression that football is too difficult for an amateur to do well. He leaves shortly after, although there is an epilogue that recounts other stories afterward, many of them sad. This book overall is interesting enough, but it has several problems. The writing is not especially lively or engaging, and it often deteriorates into the petulant whining of a spoiled boy at camp, who feels his is treated badly by his bunkmates. It also suffers from page after page of the most egregious typos I have ever seen in a reputable book, and they’re so distracting that they can’t help but mar the enjoyment of it. The book is nearly redeemed by some hilarious anecdotes and evocative descriptions of events like Rookie Night, Alex Karras playing Toastmaster, and rookies singing their school song. My favorite was when he described a disastrous production of “Macbeth” from his school days, and it was such a howl that you wished for a whole book like that. It’s entertaining enough in its own way, but it doesn’t resonate, and the ending is wistful and sloppy.

The Partner
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Island Books / Dell Publishing
A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
1997

Lawyer Patrick Lanigan apparently fakes his own death and then contrives to steal $90 million paid as a fee to his law firm. The firm hires a bounty hunter to find him, which they do, four years later in Brazil. But Patrick has an accomplice, Eva, who when she realizes that he’s been snatched, she transfers all of his funds elsewhere, and she goes into hiding. But first, she notifies the FBI in the hopes that they can rescue Patrick from the bounty hunter’s torture squad before it’s too late. They do, and bring Patrick back to face murder charges (the dead body assumed to be his) and grand larceny. Everyone wants a piece of this case, from the law firm wanting their money back, to the insurance company who paid Patrick’s “widow” Trudy $2.5 million on his “death” – and who has been living happily high on the hog with her sleazy boyfriend all this time. Meanwhile, the bounty hunters are doing their best to locate Eva, hiding in Europe, since she holds the key to the missing $90 million. Sandy McDermott, Patrick’s pal from law school, is retained as his lawyer, and his first job is to sue the FBI for torturing Patrick, complete with gruesome pictures of his wounds splashed all over the media. The next thing is the divorce from Trudy, who agrees to waive any claims to his (possible) assets when confronted with the information from Patrick’s private investigator, with detailed evidence of her infidelity, and DNA proof that her daughter is not Patrick’s child. Little by little, as the lawyers take depositions, we begin to hear details of the various crimes. How Benny Aricia blew the whistle on his company bilking the government on military contracts, and the $90 million was the settlement he was to receive and split with Patrick’s law firm. How the law firm was planning to divide the money up, leaving out Patrick, even though he was a partner. How he bugged the phones and offices at the law firm, so he knew to show up where the money was being transferred, pretending to be the senior partner, and authorized another transfer into an account of his own. How he faked his own death by rolling his car over in a ditch and setting it on fire. How the bounty hunters spent millions and countless man-hours to track him down. Suddenly the bounty hunters snatch Eva’s father, trying to bring her to them, so Sandy leans on the FBI to make them release her father. But once the FBI knows who she is, they grab her instead for questioning. Next, Sandy cuts deals with the major players because Patrick has documentation that the whistle-blower case was a fraud perpetrated by Benny Aricia and the law firm, the FBI drops their charges against him in exchange for returning the $90 million (less four years of interest) and Patrick’s evidence. Plus they release Eva and keep her protected. The insurance companies behind the bounty hunters, who don’t want to be implicated in the business of Patrick’s torture, agree to let his ex-wife keep her insurance money and set up a trust fund for her daughter. That leaves only the state murder charge, reduced to manslaughter because the body remains unidentified. (The state lacks evidence because the accident was not originally investigated as a murder.) The supposed victim is a young local ne’er-do-well named Pepper Scarboro, who Patrick says he helped assume a new identity and star afresh on the west coast. Finally Patrick tells Sandy the story about an elderly man he had befriended following an injury case, who was estranged from his family, and when he died, Patrick used his body in the crash. Sandy made a generous settlement with the family so they wouldn’t sue, and that was the last prop holding up the state’s case against Patrick. So he pleads guilty to a charge of mutilating a corpse (the state digs up the deceased’s coffin to make sure he’s not in there) and the state gives him a deal for a suspended sentence and no jail time. He walks out of court free (and wealthy) and plans to meet Eva in France. This is when he tells Sandy that he was the one who tipped off the bounty hunters, so he could finally escape from a life of running. Unfortunately, when he gets to France, he finds that Eva is already one step ahead of him and has disappeared with all of his money, and that’s where the book ends. I suppose anyone might think this was an appropriate ending, where Patrick gets his come-uppance, and also the crooks, but it’s still ultimately unsatisfying. It actually starts out as a crackerjack thriller and grabs you right on the first page, being well-written and taut, like all of this author’s books. But it reminds me a lot of “Dirty Tricks” in the sense that all of the characters are either sketchy or obnoxious, so you really don’t care what happens to them. The supposed love angle between Patrick and Eva is implausible, and in the end, the motivations lack realism. This is plain formulaic story-telling with a trick ending that is much too simplistic for all of the intricate and ponderous build-up. A shorter version of this might have had merit, but as it is, it’s a long-winded and melodramatic pot-boiler with a bad ending.

Partners in Crime
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell Publishing
1981
Dodd, Mead
1929

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford appear in several books over the years and this is early in their career. He has a desk job with the Secret Service and they also do some sub-rosa amateur sleuthing. In this book, they’ve taken over a disreputable detective agency (so the “Feds” can keep an eye on their suspicious clients) and it’s actually a series of two-minute mysteries woven together in the overall plot of what’s behind this dubious operation. Their career as private detectives starts off with a bang when Tuppence locates a missing fiancée - but it turned out that she had concocted the whole thing to drum up business, convincing the young lady to pretend to be missing so her boyfriend would hire them to find her. Next, they’re called to an estate where some jewelry is missing and the two most obvious suspects are busy making aliases for each other, which they needn’t bother since it turned out to be a visitors maid. After that, they have a visit from an unsavory customer of the original proprietor, something to do with Russian military secrets or something, but luckily they outsmart him and his smooth partner pretending to be a Scotland Yard inspector. Then they attend a costume party where a woman is killed, ostensibly by her two-timing lover, but they discover it was instead her jealous husband dressed in the same costume. Next comes a funny vignette of a young lady who has disappeared from her fiancé returning from abroad, although they suspect foul play, has gone to a fat farm before he comes back. In between cases, they practice playing famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes or Thornley Colton (who happened to be blind) from mystery fiction. While Tommy is pretending to be a blind detective, he is abducted by two unsavory gentlemen with ties to the original agency and they try to kill him on an electrified floor, using his blind man’s eyeshade, not realizing it that is a phony that Tommy can see through, so he foils their plans. Then they stumble upon a famous actress, whose husband from an ill-advised early marriage won’t agree to a divorce and when she turns up dead, no one suspects the husband since he’s the policeman who turns up conveniently at the scene. After that, their contact at Scotland Yard asks them to infiltrate a high society bunch of fast livers who keep passing counterfeit bank notes and the mastermind turns out to be the supposed yokel from Alabama instead of the more obvious suspects. Once again in between cases, they attack a sensational case from the newspaper about Captain Sessle being murdered on the golf course with a hat pin. They realize the mysterious woman in brown is not only the son of Sessle’s crooked partner, but also played the part of Sessle himself by switching clothes with the victim and finishing his round with no one close enough to see it was Sessle’s clothes only. Next they get a very confused case of attempted poisonings in a big estate with relatives angling for their inheritance, an it turns out to be the aged companion of the original mistress who had built up an immunity to the drug and was poisonings everyone between her and the family fortune. A young man asks them to help win a bet with his fiancée who claims to have an unshakable alibi being in two places at once, naturally with the help of her unknown twin sister. Then they help a poor minister’s daughter unearth her late aunt’s fortune, which has been buried in the vegetable garden. Next is another confused tale of mixed-up luggage, which leads to a drug-smuggling gang. In the last story, they finally meet the mysterious Russian agent who was behind the whole detective agency facade, and it nearly proves to be their undoing, because he sneaks Tuppence away from under their noses, using a series of seemingly unconnected hotel rooms and accomplices acting as decoys and fortunately they catch him disguised as an American woman before he has a chance to harm Tuppence. Which is a good thing, because she announces that they will have to retire from being detectives, for their new job as expectant parents. It’s a cute ending to a very entertaining book. The mysteries are all interesting, although sometimes a little too mysterious for their own good, as the explanations, hastily delivered, fail entirely to disperse the confusion. The conceit of pretending to be other fictitious detectives might work better with better-known characters than the ones they refer to, although that’s a small point. One tiresome aspect is how it’s continually drummed into the reader how very special and sophisticated is this young couple (a la Nick and Nora Charles of “The Thin Man”) but for all of this insistence, they never come across that way. But still, they’re a jolly and game couple, evenly matched, and the writing in lively and engaging as expected and it moves along effortlessly with no lags. A very pleasant trifle from the master of the genre.

Pastime
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 4
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1991

In “Early Autumn,” Boston Private Investigator Spenser rescued young Paul Giacomin from his warring parents, and became in effect his guardian. Ten years later, Paul asks him to locate his mother who has disappeared. It turns out her boyfriend was involved in some scheme with local gangster Joe Broz, also coming back from previous books, with son Gerry and right-hand man Vinnie Morris. This story also includes a lot of biographical information about Spenser, which is interesting without being intrusive. In the end, Spenser and Hawk rescue Paul’s mother, and Vinnie leaves Joe Broz after Gerry and Spenser have a few run-ins. A real winner of this series. This story introduces Pearl the Wonder Dog.

The Pelican Brief
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Doubleday
1992

Two Supreme Court justices have been murdered. Law student Darby Shaw stumbles onto the truth, so of course she has the bad guys, the CIA, the FBI and the media all chasing her. Not to mention, the famous police protection. She’s working with a journalist, Gray Grantham, and they end up together at the end. This is well-written and taut, like all of Grisham’s, but the chase genre is getting tired. Also made as a movie with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.

The Penthouse Mystery
Ellery Queen
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Pyramid Books
1941

Mystery writer Ellery Queen and his father, Police Inspector Queen, get mixed up in the murder of Gordon Cobb, a traveling ventriloquist. Upon his return to New York from a visit to China, he was murdered in his hotel room. It turns out that he was working with a pro-China underground group smuggling jewelry out of China to the U.S. to raise funds for relief efforts. However, with his murder, the location of the jewelry becomes a mystery. It turns out that his manager and some card sharps were working together to steal the jewelry and keep the money themselves. However, the scheme came a cropper and two murders later, the jewelry is still nowhere to be found. Eventually, Ellery locates the ventriloquist dummy, which has the information about finding the jewelry. These stories are typically well-written in a jaunty informal style, but they also tend to be hopelessly over-plotted and dense.

The Plague and I
Betty MacDonald
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
J.B. Lippincott Company
1948

This author also wrote the auto-biographical “The Egg and I” which was later turned into a movie with Claudette Colbert. This book takes a sharp but light-hearted look at that period in her adult life when she had tuberculosis and stayed in a sanatorium. She likens getting TB at mid-life with going downtown to do a bunch of urgent errands, and getting hit by a bus. At this time, she was divorced and living with her mother, along with her two young daughters. She worked for the government and in fact, a number of people there were infected with TB from a co-worker – a fact which the government regarded with bored indifference. She is devastated at the news of her diagnosis and doesn’t know how she will afford the cure. She feels fortunate when a relative pulls some strings and gets her into “The Pines,” a well-regarded free sanatorium with a long waiting list. After she gets there, it’s hard for her to feel quite so fortunate – the staff is brusque, almost rude, the regimen Spartan and inflexible, and the other patients seem defeated and maudlin. She discovers how difficult it can be, taking a bunch of total strangers, plucked out of the middle of their busy lives, and plunk them in a room together, all day, every day with no privacy, and expect them to stay quietly in their beds with no talking, reading, moving around or any other activities. She has a series of roommates who are a real mixed bag, and she describes them in unflinching terms. After being there three months and having a couple of minor procedures to make her lungs stronger, she has improved to the point that she is allowed more “up” time and activities. Her descriptions of physical and occupational therapy are hilarious and priceless. After another three months as an ambulant patient, finally the big day arrives and she is discharged. It turns out to be just as big an adjustment getting out of the sanatorium, as it was going in. She feels overwhelmed, overly sensitive, vulnerable and very noticeable. She seems to think that no one understands her, and apparently this is a common trait among the patients, so they spend most of their time socializing with former patients and staff from the sanatorium. Eventually, she feels independent enough to take a course to brush up her shorthand, and finally talks herself into looking for a job. Instead, she runs into an old friend of her sister’s, who it turns out is desperate to hire a secretary, and there she is. This is a sprightly, charming book, written with sparkling wit and great tenderness. It is so cleverly written that it manages to be funny without being phony, and gentle without being sentimental. The writing is lively and informal, and really makes you feel you’re right there with all of them. Highly entertaining and delightful throughout.

Plum Island
Nelson DeMille
Crime Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Warner Books
1997

NYC Homicide detective John Corey, injured on the job, is recovering at his uncle’s beach house in Southold, in Suffolk County on Long Island. Nearby Plum Island is a top-secret federal animal disease research facility. Two scientists from there, Tom and Judy Gordon, are murdered on their deck, and officials investigating immediately assume is has something to do with their work on viruses. The local police request his help as a favor, and also because he knew the victims. John Corey is written almost as a mirror-image of Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” – tough but intelligent, hard-boiled yet moral – with lots of detailed descriptions of clothes and food. But he is much more obnoxious, low-class and doesn’t have Spenser’s redeeming wit and snappy banter. The story really bogs down once it is established that the crime was not committed for viruses, but rather for buried pirate treasure. A local businessman and bon vivant, Frederic Tobin, cultivated the Gordons to retrieve the treasure from Plum Island (where it would be government property) to their own property, where they agreed to split the proceeds. Of course, there was a falling-out among thieves, and Tobin killed them. John Corey is the only person who figured this out, and while he was investigating the case, he spoke to some local people who were in turn killed by Tobin in an effort to thwart the investigation. The denouement where Corey catches Tobin during a hurricane is so contrived, like a bad “Police Woman” episode. The ending, where he retires from the force and becomes a professor, and begins a tentative relationship with Beth Penrose, another detective, is oddly depressing. Interesting but derivative, done better before and since.

Pride and Joy
Terri Casey
Reference
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Beyond Words Publishing
1998

It is the author’s contention that women without children are subject to cultural stereotypes, and perceived as unhappy, unfulfilled, selfish, unfeminine, immature, short-sighted and uncaring. It was her intention to write a book showing the wide diversity of women who have made that choice, and how their lives are anything but selfish and unfulfilled. To that end, she interviewed 25 women from all over the country, and a variety of backgrounds, socially, ethnically, economically and sexual orientation. It’s a noble effort, and the book fairly reeks of ponderous importance and social significance. Unfortunately, in spite of the diversity of the subjects, the interviews uniformly suffer from a tedious sameness that is as unexpected as it is unwelcome. An additional drawback to the book is that it is written in a horrible typeface, small and faint, that is not only annoying but hard to read. The author insists the interviews were all fascinating and energizing, but none of that comes through in this dull and lifeless book. How much it would have gained from pictures, or even illustrations, to break up the pages of text, and breathe some life into these life-stories of what should be interesting and admirable successful women. But alas, there’s nothing but bad chapter quotes besides the interviews, making it very slow going, not to mention, tedious and unilluminating. Because statistically, women without children are better educated than the norm, things quickly degenerate into a exercise in navel-gazing that is not only tiresome, but utterly defeats the book’s purpose of making these women seem interesting and sympathetic. It just continues on and on and on, like a broken record, utterly failing to strike any spark or cover any new ground. One big problem is that although the interviewees range in age from their 20's to their 80's, the bulk of them are in their 30's and 40's, by a very wide margin Of 25 interviews, only six women are older than 50, and technically speaking, women under 50 could certainly still have children, so it can’t be said that the door has shut completely on all of their stories. It would have helped to “punch up” this book, in my opinion, to include a few famous women (famous people are inescapably interesting, all by themselves) or more very old women (whose child-free status is incontrovertible, not like the 20-year-olds) and who remained childless at a time in society when it was virtually unheard of. This is typical of a “vanity press” edition, which cried out for an editor ro maximize its good points, and more importantly, address its considerable short-comings. The whole book gets blown completely out of the water in the bibliography, when in spite of the author’s assertion that this book needed to be written to shed light on this phenomenon, she manages to list 12 earlier books on the same subject, not to mention, magazine articles and web sites. Well-meaning, but ultimately self-indulgent and disappointing. Also comes with a mission statement that is uproariously bad by any standards.

Promised Land
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Dell Publishing / Bantam Doubleday Dell
1976

This is an early entry in the Spenser series by this author, of the erudite Private Investigator from Boston. Harvey Shepard comes to his new office and hires Spenser to find his runaway wife, Pam, who left him and three teenagers in Hyannis. At their house, Spenser runs into Hawk, who he had known years earlier when they were both boxing, and who now is working as an enforcer for a loan shark named King Powers. Spenser suspects that Shepard owes money to him, and if Hawk is coming around, he has more problems than just his missing wife. Besides the family, Spenser questions the Barnstable Police and locals, trying to get a bead on where Pam may have gone. He finds her at a sort of “safe house” full of feminists in a run-down neighborhood (in fact, one of them gets into a fistfight with him) and although she seems unhappy, she’s not being held against her will. She doesn’t want to go home, so Spenser leaves her there, and he won’t tell her husband where she is, so he fires him and demands his advance money back. Although no longer technically on any case, Spenser is dis-satisfied with the situation, especially since Hawk has roughed up Shepard, so he meets with Deke Slade at the Police, and they swap information. Suddenly, Pam Shepard calls him up in a panic because some of the feminists held up a bank and killed a guard, and now she’s in all sorts of trouble. Spenser hides her at his apartment while he tries to figure out how to help her. Next, her husband calls Spenser in a panic because the loan shark he borrowed the money from wants to muscle in on his real estate dealings, and he can’t square things without losing all of his investment or going to jail or both. Spenser cooks up a hare-brained scheme to trap King Powers and the feminists in an illegal weapons deal, using the bank robbery money, and figuring that he can solve two problems at once. He enlists the help of the New Bedford Police to oversee the operation, in exchange for keeping the Shepards out of it. Any idiot could tell that was never going to work, and not just people who read a lot of detective stories. Miraculously, it does actually work, the bad guys (and gals) get nabbed, the bank money is recovered, no one gets hurt, and Pam goes back to her husband. Unfortunately, King Powers is out on bail later, and brings his henchmen to the Shepards and roughs them up. When Spenser shows up, there’s the usual melee, and for a while it appears that Powers has him seriously outnumbered, if not out-strategized. But because Spenser warned Hawk out of the gun deal trap, Hawk won’t kill Spenser when Powers tells him to. The other henchmen flee, and Spenser roughs up Powers a bit so he leaves the Shepards alone. This is a really lively and engaging story in this series, and being so early of the group, it seems dewy fresh and uncluttered. His relationship with Susan is young and full of promise, and this book basically introduces Hawk as his equal and counterpart. Because of the times, the story suffers from some rather dated psycho-babble about sexism, racism, rights, stereotypes, morality, equality and self-actualization. But Parker is too good a writer to get bogged down in trivialities, and for the most part, the story charges along at a good clip and doesn’t lag. Interesting and entertaining throughout, and well-written as they all are in a punchy and informal style.

The Queen of Hearts
Michelle Martin
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine Books
1994

The elder Lord Cartwright kills himself, leaving his wife and family in financial ruin, and bequeathing the dower house on their property to Lady Samantha Adamson, the daughter of his old flame. This free-spirited young lady, now orphaned, arrives from abroad with her two young wards to live in the house, throwing the Cartwrights into a spin. This is especially true of Simon, the new Lord Cartwright, whose father’s death dropped the responsibility of the family onto his young shoulders. Since Simon has necessarily become suddenly serious and severe, he finds Samantha wild, uncivilized and downright radical. Meanwhile, she finds him arrogant and patronizing. Since she lives on their property, he feels obligated to prevent her from scandalizing polite society. He alternately thwarts and rescues her from a string of misadventures and she is alternately furious or grateful. There are many wonderful and picaresque characters and sub-plots – not too many, but just enough to keep things interesting. In the end, her ward Christina marries Simon’s younger brother, his mother elopes with one of Samantha’s oldest friends (they also find a better match for Simon’s stuffy fiancee) and of course Simon and Samantha get together after all. Well-written in a lively, engaging style, it makes you want to spend more time with these people.

The Rake’s Mistake
Gail Eastwood
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / New American Library, Div. Penguin Putnam
2002

Archer Drake, Lord Ramsdale, returns to London from being exiled to the West Indies by his family due to youthful indescretions. He becomes instantly enchanted by Lady Daphne Wetherell, a widow who is considered a notorious woman and shunned by society. While his mother and sisters attempt to make a suitable match for him, and his friend Peter Hollyfield tells scandalous tales about her, everything he hears only serves to make her all the more enticing. He discovers her step-son Robert has fallen in with a bad crowd, and he manages to lose to him at cards, giving him the opportunity to call on the Wetherells to settle his debts. Daphne is so relieved that he is not a creditor, or another odious Lord offering his “protection,” and they even discover a common interest in art. (Daphne and her late father both paint.) Since Archer is competing in a yacht race, he persuades Daphne to join him in a sail on the river for practice, and they wind up at his great-uncle’s estate for lunch, and she has such a lovely time that she can’t help being attracted to him, in spite of her best efforts. Because of their shared interest in maritime art, he shows her his collection, including his prized Dutch Master, which she spots at once as a copy. They return to her house to compare it with her late husband’s original, only to find her step-son has sold it to cover his gambling debts. She asks Archer to bring her to Lord Ainshaw’s, who bought the painting, so she can examine it there, although she recognizes the danger to his family’s standing if he socializes with her. When they go, Ainshaw is predictably rude to her, although a bigger problem is that painting turns out to be a copy also. They go to the art dealer who handled both transactions, a friend of her later father, and he seems eager to help, although Archer wonders if he might be in on it. He hires someone to investigate the background of the phony paintings transactions, and in case the crooks get any ideas, he hires a fellow just to watch over Daphne wherever she is. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help her when the gallery owner sets a trap for her and accuses her of snooping in his confidential files. But he leaps into action when a disgruntled former student of her father’s kills the gallery owner and spirits Daphne away on a fast boat bound for sea. When Archer gets word of what’s happened, he breaks up the most important race of the season by taking all the boats with him to rescue Daphne, which they do, but at the cost of Archers’ beloved Mist, which is destroyed in the effort. It turns out this disgruntled student blackmailed Daphne’s father into painting the phony pictures and then had him killed when he would do no more. When Daphne rebuffed his advances, he spread lies about her until she was shunned by society, even though none of it was true. In the end, even the dour Lady Ramsdale agrees to welcome Daphne as her son’s bride, and it all ends very happily. Well-written and interesting throughout, although way over-plotted for a Regency romance, and a bit too verbose and melodramatic to be really entertaining. But the characters are likable for the most part, and the descriptive passages are interesting and evocative. A little too tense for a real romance, and not overly romantic, but good enough of this type.

Return to Thrush Green
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Michael Joseph
1978

This is one in a series of sweet and gentle books set in the English countryside. This is rather a compendium of inter-related anecdotes about the residents, such as the doctor, church sexton, merchants and others. Among the tales told is about city dwellers who summer in the village, then move there permanently. The characters are all finely drawn but with more kindness than cunning. The stories are all charming and are woven together effortlessly into a pleasing whole. Although there are many comings and goings, and a lot of situations being changed around, everything has a happy ending, and things seem to work out for the best after all.

Ride With Me
Thomas B. Costain
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Doubleday & Company
1944

This author is famous for weaving a fictional story through actual historical events to very entertaining effect. Here in the early 1800s, we meet the Ellery family in London, owners of the newspaper The Tablet. Oldest son Francis longed for a great military career, but a childhood accident that left him with a limp dashed those hopes. His brother Carradoc has political ambitions, and is maneuvering for an advantageous marriage that will bring him the money and influence he craves. (The widowed Mrs. Ellery favors him over the others, which causes some tensions among the family.) Youngest son Humphrey is with a regiment in India, while Napoleon Bonaparte is making hay throughout the continent. Francis meets a group of French emigres from the aristocracy living in shabby gentility as exiles in London, and he falls hard for Gabrielle de Salle, although he realizes she is way out of his social circle. Then he meets Robert Wilson, notorious Soldier of Fortune, who warns him of the danger of invasion by the French. Francis makes a deal with his mother and brother to give up certain properties they want, to attract a suitable heiress, in exchange for their voting rights on the newspaper, so he can use The Tablet as a platform to educate the public about the threat. This works only too well, as merchants pull their ads, the government refuses them access to foreign news, and finally the King has him tossed in prison. It’s only the personal savings of his favorite Aunt Francie that keeps the paper afloat when everyone else deserts them. At the same time, Francis finds out that Carradoc is dallying with his beloved Gabrielle, which is an even more bitter pill to swallow. When Bonaparte invades Spain, Robert Wilson goes there with a regiment of irregulars. Francis (now calling himself Frank) tags along to avoid a summons (his mother and brother’s attempt to oust him from editorial control of the newspaper) and files dispatches with all the details, thus inventing the war correspondent. This innovation almost immediately turns around the fortunes of The Tablet, as news of the exploits from the peninsula is eagerly snapped up in London. Robert Wilson cooks up a scheme to create a mock military camp on a hill, headed by Frank and some English refugees. This has the desired effect of convincing the French General in the area that there is a larger British military presence than actual, and prevents him from attacking Wilson’s true positions. This works so well that the French Army stays bottled up until the British can send the rest of their forces and save the day in the peninsula. When Frank returns to London, he is elated to find The Tablet doing better than ever, but he is dashed to discover his beloved Gabrielle engaged to his brother Carradoc. When her brother is implicated in a spy scandal, Frank must work fast to spirit her out of the country. His brother drops her like a hot potato, fearful that the scandal will hurt his career, and settles down instead with a more suitable neighborhood heiress. Later, Frank is despondent to learn that Gabrielle has married another of the French exiles who returned to Paris, and then moved to Russia with the diplomatic corps. When Napoleon declares war on Russia instead, Frank hurries to Russia to make sure that she gets out safely. She refuses to leave, believing that she will be safer when Napoleon defeats the Russians. He doesn’t, of course, and as the dreaded Russian winter closes in, she is left behind to starve or be killed by the Russians. He rescues her in the nick of time, and they ride out the storm in an abandoned villa that was ransacked by the French Army, but provided at least rudimentary shelter and broken furniture for firewood. Under these inauspicious circumstances, they become intimate, and while Frank sees this as a significant turning point in their relationship, Gabrielle is more resistant to that idea. When they finally reach Poland, Frank is distraught to learn of Gabrielle’s plans to return to Napoleon’s court in Paris, and he sails back to England in a dejected mood. Then Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo, and the French monarchy is restored, so once again Gabrielle and her fellow Bonapartists find themselves in peril. Meanwhile, Gabrielle’s mousy cousin Margot has blossomed into a great beauty, and because she never affiliated herself with Napoleon’s cause, when the monarchy is restored, she inherited her parents’ vast estates. All Paris is at her feet, and even Frank is attracted to her, in spite of himself. Gabrielle, who had gone into hiding, re-appears when her husband and other Bonapartists are killed by the new regime, and publicly insults King Louis XVIII, bringing Frank and also Robert Wilson to her rescue from the angry mobs. When they arrange the escape of a condemned compatriot from prison, it becomes dangerous for all of them to remain in Paris. Wilson arranges for Frank and Gabrielle to leave the country secretly, which they do, and they even decide to elope as long as their luck is holding up. Unfortunately, the rest of the conspirators do not fare as well, and find themselves imprisoned by a vengeful monarchy. Fortunately they are released after a few months, and the book pretty much ends right there. It’s a good book, well-written and lively throughout, and just brimming (maybe too brimming) with interesting historical facts. The author is a good writer and has written many worthwhile books. I found this one did not hold together so well, as a combination of heroic military adventure, old-fashioned romance and history textbook. It wavered along an uneasy line between the three, sometimes with flashes of excitement, sometimes overly melodramatic, and other times dry and boring. The ending was too precipitous to be really satisfying, as these stories often are when they’re trying to do too much at once, and don’t really know where they’re going. But it was entertaining nonetheless, with characters that were genuine, and if not exactly likable, at least bearable.

Rose In Bloom
Louisa M. Alcott
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Orchard House Edition / Little, Brown & Company
1876

This is a sequel to “Eight Cousins” and begins with Rose and her Uncle Alec and Phebe returning home after some years abroad. The cousins have all grown up into young men and young ladies, instead of the gadabout youngsters they once were, and that makes it a little awkward at first. Rose returns with the same kindly disposition, but strong-minded and determined to be independent, to the amusement of her cousins, who are used to young ladies being more traditional. This irks cousin Charlie who had decided to be Rose’s match, although growing up without proper guidance has made him rather head-strong and idle. Another disappointment to the forthright Rose is discovering the duplicitousness of people who pretend to be her friends, since she has come into her parent’s fortune. The family thinks a safe match for Rose would be the steadfast Archie, although unbeknownst to all, he has developed a tendre for Phebe, who has blossomed into a fine young woman under Uncle Alec’s care. Rose begins to chafe under Charlie’s presumptuousness of their pairing, and in retaliation, presses into service as an escort her awkward cousin Mac, the bookworm, who is more earnest than accomplished, and who creates no end of social faux pas for the family to chortle over. A family crisis ensues when Archie proposes to Phebe, and although she tuns him down, the family is turned all topsy-turvy. Phebe sets off to make her name as a singer, leaving Rose without her dearest friend in the world, and poor Archie inconsolable. Then Rose finally hands Charlie his hat and he is much chastened by her rebuke. Like the first one, this book also spends pages moaning over bad literature, fast living by young men and ridiculous vanities of young ladies, as if complaining about it would have any effect on it. Next, cousin Steve proposes to Kitty, a nice girl from a good family and everyone rejoices. Although they seem a little immature and frivolous, especially compared to the earnest Rose and down-to-earth Archie, they’re both good-hearted youngsters and determined to be a credit to their families. Although Charlie tries his best to mend his profligate ways for Rose’s sake, he is not up to the task and in a tragic accident, the author manages to kill off cousin Charlie and his horse all in one stroke. Next, cousin Mac promises a dying woman to care for her infant, to the horror of his parents, but fortunately the resourceful Rose takes the baby under her wing, to the improvement of both. This selfless gesture so touches the sensitive Mac that he blurts out his previously unexpressed deep and abiding love for her. Rose is completely taken aback with surprise and wonder, and insists that he go away and study, thinking that like Archie and Phebe, time and distance will prove if the love is constant and true. (It is in the latter’s case, as they have continued to communicate during their separation.) Then Uncle Alec travels to visit Phebe and while there falls desperately ill with only Phebe to care for him at the risk of her own life. When he recovers at last, the family is ready to welcome her back with open arms. It all ends very nicely with the three happy couples planning their futures. Compared to the first book, which was sweetly sentimental and full of simple pleasures, this story brims with youthful angst, melodrama and tragedy. It leave an unpleasant aftertaste of disillusionment, dashed hopes and lowered expectations. It is still very well-written and the characters are genuine and finely drawn, although with warts and all. But the overall effect is dreary and demoralizing, in spite of the author’s best efforts to paint a pretty face on it. If there was a third book in this series, this story wouldn’t encourage anyone to want to read it.

Rum & Razors
Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Group
1995

This is another in a series of books based on the hit TV show “Murder, She Wrote” featuring mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher. In this story, Jessica finishes her latest book and then heads to St. Thomas for some vacation time away from the horrible winter weather at home in Cabot Cove, Maine. Two expatriates from her home town, Laurie and Walter Marschalk, have opened an upscale resort on the lagoon and invite her to stay. However, all is not perfect in paradise – the large resort behind theirs lost their water access when they opened, so there was always bad blood there. The other resort accused them of bribing local officials and killing a local land-owner in order to buy the property, and they vowed to put them out of business. Then Walter’s body is discovered in the lagoon with his throat slit. It’s very easy for Jessica to discover that Walter was almost universally despised, and so there is no lack of suspects, including the ubiquitous disgruntled former employee. The police arrest the former employee, but Jessica is convinced that he is innocent. She also discovers that Walter had many girlfriends, and in a particularly grisly case of horribly bad timing, a process server delivers divorce papers after he’s dead. Laurie admits to Jessica that she was aware of Walter’s infidelity, but even Jessica is surprised when Laurie and the owner of the competing resort announce a merger, not 48 hours after Walter’s death. Then Jessica stumbles on Laurie and ex-Senator Bobby Jensen in a clinch – he was reportedly the official who accepted bribes to facilitate their purchase of the property. Jessica is able to help Jacob, the arrested employee, remember that his phone call to Dr. Silber should provide an alibi for him – so it comes as a big shock the next day when the police tell her that Jacob killed himself in his cell. Then Dr. Silber suddenly retires and moves to America. Jessica begins to comprehend that larger forces are at work here. She happens upon a gathering of Laurie, her business partner Chris Webb and two other people, Jennifer and Fred, who claimed to have written Walter’s travel books. She follows them to a dock where they meet Mark, the owner of the other resort, and some of them leave on a boat, even though there is a bad storm. Jessica hires a boat to follow them and so is able to rescue Jacob when they throw him overboard. Later, all of the bad guys drown when their boat capsizes. It turns out that Fred killed Walter in a fight over payment for his ghost-writing, and Mark and Senator Jensen pulled the strings to implicate Jacob, fake his suicide and then attempt to silence him permanently. Although these books are always entertaining and well-written, this one seems much more muddled and haphazard than usual. It has moments that are nothing but “filler” and other moments where the dialogue or motivations are completely incomprehensible. The characters are uniformly unlikable and the story gets hopelessly bogged down in its own labyrinths. It would be impossible for a book in this series to be really bad, but this one is certainly not up to their usual standards. Somewhat disappointing, especially the ending, which is inexplicable.

The Runaway Jury
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1996

Another in a series of legal thrillers from this author, who is a former lawyer turned writer. His first book, “The Firm,” was one of the best books I’ve ever read. Since then, they’ve tended to be formulaic, melodramatic and implausible. This one has one of my favorite titles of all time. The story concerns a trial in Biloxi, Mississippi, of the widow of an ex-smoker who sued the tobacco company. Both sides regard this trial as a watershed – either discouraging further lawsuits against the industry, or opening the floodgates for such litigation, depending on the verdict. Consequently, both sides have spent millions of dollars on research, experts, jury analysts – and myriad other illegal, immoral and unsavory activities. Rankin Fitch is the orchestrator of the defense team, and he has all the money and ruthlessness to do whatever it takes to protect the industry. Nicholas Easter and his girlfriend Marlee (assumed names for both) arrange for Nicholas to get on the jury and then swing a deal with Fitch to influence the jury into returning the verdict desired. Fitch finds out too late that Marlee is really Gabrielle Brant and both of her parents died young of lung cancer. Their plan all along was to take the tobacco money and then double-cross Fitch and find for the plaintiff with large punitive damages. Their real intention was to use the $10,000,000 payoff making a killing in the stock market, short-selling tobacco stocks as the shares tumble after the verdict. They do this and then return the $10,000,000 to Fitch’s secret back account. So in the end, Marlee and Nicholas retire in luxury to Europe – but they were never more than ciphers throughout the book, and so you really can’t care what happens to them. Because they were supposed to be shadowy figures all along, they never became fleshed-out characters like Fitch, so their victory is hollow and irrelevant. Very well-written in a punchy and engaging style – it charges along breathlessly from the first page to the last. Grisham has a lot going for him, but he can’t seem to get all of his best elements to come together at the same time.

TITLES N - O

2008-01-20T16:52:00.009-05:00

N or M?
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1941

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are a sensible middle-aged couple who do a little sleuthing. They find themselves, separately, in Leahampton, checking on some Nazi spies. They’re after N or M, code names for the leader. Of course, there’s a full kettle of suspects at the resort, especially Carl von Deinim who left Germany just before the war. In the end, it turns out to be Mrs. Sprot, who kidnaped a baby as the ultimate camouflage.

The Nabob’s Daughter
Dawn Lindsey
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Putnam
2000

Viscount Stone Chance and his impetuous half-sister Georgiana Hughendon attend a ball and encounter the heiress du jour, Anjalie Cantrell. Although her father is a merchant, the fortune-hunters are tripping over each other to meet her, due to her family’s vast holdings in Jamaica. Meanwhile, Georgiana wants to meet her because her erstwhile fiancé, Guy Ludlow, is in Jamaica and she has plans to follow him there, in spite of the Viscount’s objections. Anjalie has been all over the world with her father, and has only come to England out of curiosity to see the homeland of her parents, because she finds the conventions and mores antiquated and oppressive. But everyone assumes she has come for the sole purpose of making an advantageous match, with a title to give respectability to her fortune, no matter what she tells them otherwise. She decides instead to have a little fun at their expense, by seeing how much outrageous behavior society will overlook because of her great wealth, or as the Viscount maintains, her only purpose in coming was to vex him. (Her actual purpose was to buy horses for a possible breeding business back home, where she longs to return and quickly.) On a routine visit to Lord Sedgeburrow, one of Jamaica’s notorious absentee landlords, Anjalie discovers that he has taken advantage of a fallen woman and made her his virtual slave and captive after her family disowns her. Anjalie shocks everyone when she decides to rescue the young woman and infant from the odious Lord, even the Viscount who figured himself beyond being shocked any longer. In fact, when an old family friend arrives from Jamaica and helps her with her schemes, instead of being relieved, the Viscount feels strangely envious. He begins to feel more sentimental about Anjalie and appreciate her high spirits, independence and intelligence, compared to the prissy and empty-headed misses chasing after him in London. So he feels doubly betrayed when he discovers that his impossible sister has made her escape on the same ship to Jamaica as the young mother and infant, plus Adam Trelawney, Mr. Cantrell’s Agent, and roundly blames Anjalie for being the brains behind the operation, never believing his sister to have enough shrewdness on her own. Naturally he hires the first ship going to Jamaica to chase after her, and naturally Anjalie is also on board, so it promises to be a stormy voyage indeed. In fact, that’s exactly what happens when they run into a bad squall before they reach port and have to abandon ship. The longboat with Anjalie and the Viscount gets inadvertently separated from the others before the sailors can board, so they ride out the storm together, with the Viscount refusing to panic in the face of Anjalie’s rugged determination. Fortunately, the favorable trade winds land them at Jamaica, although on the uninhabited north shore. After a long and arduous trek through the interior, they at long last arrive at the Cantrell plantation. Here they discover that the boat did in fact limp into port, but with the grim report of their disappearance at sea, so it was a very happy reunion at home when they wander dirty and bedraggled out of the jungle. By now, the Viscount realizes he’s hopelessly in love with Anjalie and grateful for the adventure, after his empty and pointless existence in England. For her part, she admires his pluck through it all and realizes he’s more than just the stuck-up stuffed shirt she first met in London. So it ends very happily, with them planning to split their time between England and Jamaica, in spite of their recent mishap at sea. In an interesting sub-plot, the Viscount’s step-sister finally wises up and decides to marry Adam Trelawney, Mr. Cantrell’s Agent, rather than her former beau, which she now sees in a whole new light. Way over-plotted for the typical historical romance, but entertaining throughout. Well-written in a breezy and informal style, it moves along briskly and never flags.

Naked Came The Manatee
Dave Barry
Carl Hiaasen
Elmore Leonard
James W. Hall
Edna Buchanan
Les Standiford
Paul Levine
Brian Antoni
Tananarive Due
John Dufresne
Vicki Hendricks
Carolina Hospital
Evelyn Mayerson
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1995

This book is attempting to be a crime drama spoof, in itself a take-off on the earlier “Naked Came The Stranger.” The Miami Herald assembled this collection of Florida writers, and asked them each to contribute one chapter in a serialized story, which they printed in their magazine section. Like any compilation of different authors, the writing varies widely between chapters. On the whole, however, it holds together in terms of plot, more than you would expect. The story involves Fidel Castro and his look-alikes, plus a few look-alike heads in metal canisters, a newspaper reporter, small-time crooks, the Free Cuba Underground in Miami, an actor on location, local residents and a manatee named Booger. Wry without being actually funny, the story moves along in a haphazard way from one confrontation, car chase, speedboat chase or murder to another.

No Holly for Miss Quinn
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Houghton Mifflin
1976

This is another in a series by this author, who writes charming tales of village life in the English countryside. This story begins mostly about a cottage built in 1773, which is nestled in a secluded curve of the road between the bustling town of Caxley and the quiet hamlet of Beech Green. The cottage has many tales to tell, and finally it gets to modern times belonging to a widow, and she has let out the annex (a sort of attached efficiency apartment) to Miriam Quinn. Miss Quinn is a sensible young woman, raised in the country, but now running a busy office in Caxley. She loves the solitude of the cottage, and revels in the peace of the country. She resists all efforts to rope her into the various committees and civic groups that abound in the village, and in fact, sometimes finds the widow’s friendly chattering and invitations to be an intrusion. As much as she tries to be nice, she prefers her own company, and for a young person, is very set in her ways. As it gets nearer to the holidays, more than ever she craves the serenity and isolation of her cottage, so she can enjoy the holiday in her own way, but it is not to be – her brother calls and asks her to stay with him, and look after the children while his wife is in the hospital. So she packs up and goes there instantly, for she and her brother are very close. But she finds the three youngsters very high-spirited, and the whole household is messy and disorganized, which makes her feel put-out and discouraged. But she soon has everything orderly and neat, which makes her feel better, while for the first time she really appreciates how hard mothers work, and she begins to realize that with a growing family and all the hustle and bustle, there are things that are more important than perfect housekeeping. The blissful innocence of the children helps her to see the fun of letting things go, taking it as it comes, and going where the day leads you. She and her brother do all they can to make it a happy Christmas for the children – and they reminisce about their own Christmases growing up in the country. Finally her sister-in-law comes home from the hospital, and the day helper returns from holiday, so Miss Quinn is free to go. And she does leave, but reluctantly, and with a sense that she gained more from the experience than she contributed. But after all, she is a young woman of precise and orderly nature, who enjoys her own company and likes things just so, and returning to her own quiet cottage is a special treat. Even a possibly renewed acquaintance with an old flame doesn’t hold as much appeal as a soft chair by her own fireplace. And that’s where it stops, leaving Miss Quinn alone with her thoughts. These stories are all well-written in an easy conversational style, and the characters are so real, you feel as if you know them. They are all finely drawn, but with tenderness, even with warts and all. The descriptions are effortless and genuine, so you seem to be right there with them. All of the stories are entertaining and enjoyable, without a false note or contrived plot devices. But this one seems rather wistful, almost melancholy, and certainly not the warm and sentimental “happily ever after” confection that you would want for the holidays.

North and South
John Jakes
Drama
Fiction
Rating 2
Dell Publishing / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
1982

This author is famous for his historical novels, especially the multi-volume Kent Family Chronicles. This story begins, as these stories often do, in 1686 Scotland with young Joseph Moffat and his poor widowed mother – when his evil step-father inadvertently causes his mother’s death and he then kills him, it becomes necessary for him to flee to America, pretending to be Joseph Hazard, the nephew of a close neighbor. Meanwhile, Charles de Main leaves France due to religious persecution, and settles in the new Carolina colony, with a small trading outpost. In 1844, George Hazard and Orry Main (one from a wealthy Pennsylvania manufacturing family and the other from a sprawling Southern plantation) meet as new plebes at West Point. Among their classmates are people who would later become famous during the Civil War, for instance, Grant, Pickett and Jackson. Once their class graduates from West Point, they are sent to Mexico, where the two countries are fighting over Texas. Orry, who had wanted to be a career soldier, loses an arm in battle and is sent home, disillusioned and bitter. George’s father dies suddenly, so George resigns his commission to return home. On the way, he stops to visit Orry, but while he’s there, they have a falling out over a runaway slave. When George gets home, he finds his sister Virgilia has become an ardent Abolitionist. George’s mother splits the responsibility for running the family iron business between George and his brother Stanley – this doesn’t sit well with Stanley and his wife Isabel, especially when George marries Constance Flynn, an Irish Catholic he met in Texas. Eventually, the brothers have a falling out and George takes complete control of the company, while Stanley angles for a political appointment. Over the years, the Hazards visit the Mains at Mont Royal, and the Mains and Hazards summer together in Newport. During a visit to Mont Royal, Virgilia helps a runaway slave named Grady escape from a neighboring plantation, and this causes some bad blood between the families. Meanwhile, young Billy Hazard is nearly seduced by the scheming Ashton Main, but instead pledges himself to her sensible younger sister, Brett. Ashton then marries James Huntoon and pushes him to be a success, with the intention of her becoming a great Southern lady with power and influence. Without knowing it, Billy and Brett have a dangerous enemy in Ashton. When they are old enough, Billy Hazard and Orry’s cousin Charles Main enlist at West Point, one year apart. Billy graduates with honors and is posted to the Engineers in New York. Charles is no scholar, but an excellent equestrian, so he finds himself assigned to the 2nd Cavalry in Texas. There, he runs afoul of the evil Captain Bent, who had previously bedeviled George and Orry when they were together at West Point. In 1857, on a visit to Pennsylvania, George and Orry’s differences of opinion about slavery finally erupt into a full-blown fight; as a result, Orry withholds his permission for Billy and Brett to marry, especially after the Harper’s Ferry incident. With the abysmal timing typical of these types of stories, George visits Mont Royal and Orry gives his permission for Billy and Brett to wed, just as South Carolina approves the Proclamation to Secede from the Union. After Lincoln is inaugurated, other Southern states follow suit, and in the military, Southern soldiers are torn between their obligations to the Union and loyalty to their home states. Charles resigns his commission and heads home, while Billy and other Engineers are virtual prisoners at Fort Sumter, since the federal sovereignty of the fort is no longer recognized by the seceded states. When Billy is ordered to Washington with important dispatches, he and Brett take the opportunity to get married first and then travel north together. Unfortunately, Ashton picks this time to exact her revenge on the hapless couple, and sends an accomplice to ambush them on the road. Luckily, Charles gets wind of it and breaks it up. After that, the story lurches to a halt, with a sort of pseudo-epilogue that shows all of the various characters preparing for war, and their tortured concerns about the future. Apparently, it’s only in the Afterword that you find out this is Book One in a series of three about the Civil War – it says nothing about that on the cover, or in the front, and the jacket leaves no doubt that this book is about the war, not just the period leading up to it. Because the villains are so miserably despicable, and even the supposedly heroic characters are so unlikable, it’s hard to believe that anybody would want to follow these people through 3 books. It also suffers from a common malady among books of this type, that the writing is so crammed with details, background, anecdotes and descriptions, that it takes scores and scores of pages for the story to get anywhere. This is a true potboiler in every sense of the word. This author has apparently lost the ability to write with any sense of proportion or understatement, and every page screams with hyperbole and melodrama. There’s so much gratuitous sex all over the place, you think it’s a modern-day Harold Robbins novel instead of a supposed period piece. Drawn-out, uninteresting and not up to the standard of his previous Kent Family Chronicles.

Oh Sir, You’ve Shot Her!
Benjamin Jacobsen
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1958

This is an adorable and delightful memoir of a family in turn-of-the-century Copenhagen, very reminiscent of “Life With Father.” The escapades of the Jacobsen family, as recounted by the oldest son, are alternately charming and hilarious. The characters are all finely drawn, in a sweetly humorous way, but with warts and all nonetheless. The anecdotes range from the whimsical, to incomprehensible, to laugh-out-loud hysterical. My favorites included the boys’ attempt to sell their annoying sister to a supposed white slaver, the inadvertent chocolate-covered boar misfire and the tame lion who stopped by for hazelnuts. Jolly and eccentric, like a favorite uncle, full of holiday calamities, failed schemes and travel disasters, related with wit and disarming candor. Written in a lively, engaging style (even the grandmother’s demise is treated in a light-hearted way) it leaves you wishing for more.

The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens
Drama
Rating 3
Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
1998
(Originally published, 1841)

Little Nell Trent lives with her grandfather who runs a “curiosity shop” (what we would call a thrift shop) in 1800's London. They are poor, but dear Nell is happy just to be of service to her grandfather. Kit Nubbles is a neighbor who cares for Nell and looks after them, though his family is just as poor. There is some trouble with the shop’s landlord, evil Mr. Quilp, and Nell and her grandfather flee out of town at night, and take their chances traveling in the country. Her grandfather loses his grip somewhat, and feels that he can only provide for her future by winning money at cards – but of course, he loses instead, and they must keep running ahead of trouble. Meanwhile, Mr. Quilp and some lawyers named Brass, plus Dick Swiveller keep watch on a shadowy gentleman who seems intent on finding the missing pair. As usual with Dickens’ serialized works, the story bogs down in meandering sub-plots, superfluous characters and excessively wordy descriptive passages. In the end, Quilp drowns, the lawyers are ruined, Dick Swiveller comes into an inheritance, Kit marries into a good family, and the gentleman at last finds Nell and her grandfather – but just too late, as poor Nell has passed away from years of hardship. This book is typically long-winded and rambling – it would have been more depressing except that the surprise of Nell’s demise is revealed in the foreword of the book!

The Old Testament For us
Gustav K. Wiencke
Charles M. Cooper
History
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Lutheran Church Press

This is actually a text book in the LCA Sunday Church School series, but the writers are to be congratulated for making it interesting, coherent and eminently readable. It explains the Old Testament in chronological sequence, and also the historical context in which the events happened. It begins by explaining that in 587 BC, the Babylonians (or Chaldeans) under King Nebuchadnezzar, attacked Jerusalem after a long siege and destroyed it, carrying the inhabitants off to Babylon as captives. It was during this captivity that scribes began writing the pages that would become the books of the Old Testament, so the younger generations, growing up in a foreign land, would understand their religion, history and heritage. Chronologically, the writers of the Old Testament began with Abraham around 2,000 BC, who was famous for his unswerving faith in God. His story includes his nephew Lot, the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, and his only son Isaac. Isaac and his wife had twin boys named Jacob and Esau. Even 2,000 years ago, there was sibling rivalry, and Jacob cheated Esau out of his inheritance. But the story goes on to show that even with flawed and rebellious people, God can accomplish His purposes through them. For instance, Jacob had twelve sons, including his favorite, Joseph. His older brothers detested him, and secretly sold him into slavery. He ended up in Egypt, second in power only to Pharaoh. When years of famine overtook the land, his brothers came to Pharaoh to beg for grain, and imagine their surprise finding their little brother willing to help them. Next we come to Moses, when the Hebrews were living in Egypt. Because the Egyptians were treating them badly, God called Moses to lead them out to the Promised Land, and he made a covenant with them. Of course, they didn’t obey, and faced many trials and obstacles with the Egyptians and in the wilderness. In spite of amazing signs (like parting the Red Sea, or “Sea of Reeds”) the people were still rebellious, even after the Ten Commandments had been given to Moses. Finally, after the Exodus and 40 years in the wilderness, they arrive at Canaan, the Promised Land. Luckily they had Joshua (interestingly, his name in Hebrew is the same as Jesus’) and he was a skilled campaigner who quickly routed the locals. Even after thy settled in Canaan, they continued to have problems with nearby inhabitants, and during this time between Joshua and Samuel, the “Judges” or military leaders kept the Hebrews safe. Perhaps too safe – without depending on God’s protection, the Hebrews became lax in their practices, and even worshiped other gods. After the Judges began the reign of Kings, beginning with Saul and David. It was at this time that the kingdom split into two parts, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. David established his capital in Jerusalem, which was in neither territory. (Eventually, only the southern kingdom of Judah remained. Israel was over-run by the Assyrians in 721 BC.) After David were hundreds of years of Kings, both good and bad. It was at this time that the prophets gained importance, reminding people of God’s covenant. Usually no one listened to the prophets, but their written records are an important witness. It was the prophets who wrote down the stories of the Creation, the Flood, Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel, as instructions for the Hebrews. Describing the prophets together, it shows their similarities and differences in a very interesting way. Suddenly it’s 587 BC, and the Babylonian captivity. One good thing to come out if this is the written records that became the Old Testament. In about 525 BC, a small band of Hebrews went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, and turn the “Remnant” back into God’s chosen people. Here is when they instituted their most stringent and exclusive practices, to keep their members pure and unsullied by foreign influences. Unfortunately, over time the strict adherence to the Law became more important than God, and it was into this haughty and intolerant environment that Jesus’ message could not gain acceptance. There are also chapters about the Psalms and Proverbs, explaining their significance and meaning. The very last part of the book is the most interesting, and concerns the Apocrypha, books written between the end of the Old Testament (around 500 BC) and the beginning of the New Testament (approximately 50 BC) which are included in ancient Latin and modern Catholic Bibles, but not Hebrew or Protestant Bibles. They include many wonderful stories of heroism and great faith, including the Maccabees and the beginning of Chanukah. There are also collections of proverbs and prophecies of things to come. Even though this is a historical reference work, it is anything but dry and boring. On the contrary, the facile writing makes the characters leap off the page and engage the imagination. The style is never pedantic or verbose, and somehow manages to be concise without leaving out vital information. It excels at explaining ancient situations in modern context, and doesn’t try to “explain away” the distasteful aspects. It may still be too abstract for young people to grasp completely, but I found it fascinating, comprehensive and edifying throughout.

One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross
Harry Kemelman
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
William Morrow & Company
1987

Here is another in a series of books by this author, featuring Rabbi David Small as an amateur sleuth in his spare time from tending his flock in Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts. When an elderly congregant asks the Rabbi to join him in Jerusalem and perform a proper bar mitzvah for him at the Wailing Wall, he refuses – but then finds himself vacationing in Israel anyway, as the guest of his wife’s aunt Gittel. Meanwhile, the Arab Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard is trying to help some group of Arabs dig up a hidden stash of munitions using a hapless colleague from North Haven as his stooge carrying messages to Israel. Naturally, many players in the drama are being watched by covert agents of Mossad and others. This story has a little trouble getting off the ground, and by page 100, there’s still no crime to solve. But it’s interesting nonetheless, with many informative discussions about religion, philosophy, politics and history. Then an American businessman named Skinner, who lives next to a radical Yeshiva, has some plumbing excavation in his back yard, and later, who turns up dead in the filled-in trench but the North Haven professor. The Shin Bet (like the FBI) believe they know who he is, because he was reported missing from his hotel, but they can’t seem to find anyone who can identify him independently. Knowing he was from Barnard’s Crossing, the Shin Bet head (who knows David Small from previous books) calls on the Rabbi to see if he can identify his photo. Rabbi Small explains that their town has over 20,000 people and he doesn’t recognize the man. He tells the Chief of some other people in Jerusalem from Barnard’s Crossing that he might also ask, including a young man at the Yeshiva, who conveniently had a falling out with the professor at school years ago. Although the autopsy shows an aneurysm as the cause of death, the Police believe it was precipitated by an altercation between the two men, so they hold the student in custody while they conduct their investigations. In the end, it turns out to be Skinner, of course, whose presence on the plane, at the Yeshiva, hotel and secret meeting place were all too coincidental to be coincidence. Apparently he was trying to intercept the message coming to the professor and when he leaned on him a little too hard, and the professor unexpectedly dropped dead, he decided to impersonate him at the hotel to pick up the letter. The ending is more complicated than it needs to be, involving a lot of political wrangling and inter-departmental rivalry. The congregation pitches in to send the student back to his family (although he gets waylaid by a bunch of Hassids along the way) and even Rabbi Small makes an effort to mend some fences with the members. Good of this type and well-written enough with a sort of folksy charm and no sharp edges. Although interesting, it is slow to get under weigh and the central characters seem to be only peripherally involved in the main plot. The characters are genuine and likable enough, but the story is not completely engaging and instead comes across as confusing, over-populated and unnecessarily complicated. Not quite a match for the best of this series.

Only A Dream
Barbara Cartland
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Jove Books / Berkley Publishing
1988

Young Isla takes care of her ne’er-do-well father in Regency London – he’s a music hall performer who tends to drink away all the money he makes, especially since his wife’s death. Isla’s mother very carefully protected her from her father’s acquaintances, and the seamy underside of his profession, sending her to private schools and exposing her to classical art and culture. But one evening, there is a special benefit show, and her father’s regular partner falls ill, so she persuades him to let her fill in for his specialty number. They are a great success, and the extra money helps her pay off a number of their debts. Even though he rushed her right home after the show, she has made a big impression, especially on the men in the audience. One of the more odious ones, Lord Polegate, insists that her father attend his party after the show – but it proves too much for him, and he collapses there. Lord Polegate rounds up Isla and brings her to his townhouse, where her father is resting. He appears to show the utmost concern for Isla and her father, but it is obvious to the meanest intelligence that his intentions toward Isla are abominable. Since her father is unconscious and under the care of a well-respected doctor, Lord Polegate persuades Isla against her better judgment to join him for a ride to his country house. Although she tries to be polite and enjoy his attentions, she would prefer to remain at her father’s bedside. Suddenly after dinner, his lascivious intentions become all too clear, and Isla barely escapes from the house with her virtue intact. She jumps into the first carriage to come along, and throws herself on the mercy of the Marquis of Longridge. A neighbor of Polegate’s, the Marquis is already familiar with his unsavory behavior. Longridge immediately feels protective of Isla, and determines to shield her from all unpleasantness. After spending some time together, he realizes her beauty, her innocence and her strength of character have made him fall in love with her. At once, he realizes it would be an impossibly unsuitable match, since she is, after all, the daughter of a music hall performer. Suddenly, they get the news that Isla’s father has died without regaining consciousness, and there she is, left all alone in the world. Longridge promises that he will take care of all of the arrangements, and sends her back to her little house to collect her belongings. While cleaning out the writing desk, she finds an envelope addressed to her that says to be read in the event of her parents’ deaths. It turns out to be a letter from her mother, explaining that she was in fact married to the Earl of Strathyre, who is actually Isla’s father, and she ran off when she fell in love with Isla’s supposed father, the famous performer. Of course, the family was scandalized, so Isla never had any contact with any of her relatives. But, her mother writes, if she is orphaned and needs help, she should present herself at the Earl’s townhouse, and presumably some arrangements would be made for her. At this bizarre turn of events, Isla sends a note to Longride saying that she no longer requires his protection, and not wishing to be a burden to him, she sets off for Strathyre House by herself. There she meets her long-lost brother Iain, the new Earl, and he is delighted, because he has always known about her, as she has not known about him. He gets carried away with great plans of her helping him re-decorate the manor house and all sorts of parties they will have. She tries hard to be as enthusiastic about it as he is, but she realizes with a pang that she has fallen in love with the Marquis, and can think of nothing but him. And then suddenly he appears (the sensible thing would be for him to have found the driver who brought her there, but instead, there’s some incomprehensible claptrap that makes no sense) but anyway, they finally recognize that their love is far greater than whatever obstacles there might be, and it all ends very happily. Barbara Cartland is famous for her wide-ranging activities, apart from being a prodigious writer, whose output is celebrated in record books. Her writing style is somewhat breathless, with some trite devices that tend to wear thin. But still, you can’t argue with success, and this is a very sweet book with a nice story and a happy ending. Of course it’s formulaic, but it is all one can ask for in a Regency romance.

Orchid Beach
Stuart Woods
Crime Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Harper Collins
1998

Holly Barker, a career Army officer, runs afoul of a superior, and when she brings him up on charges of sexual misconduct and he is exonerated, she has no choice but to resign her commission. A friend of her father’s picks her to succeed him as Chief of Police in sleepy Orchid Beach, just off the eastern coast of Florida. Unfortunately, just as she reports to work, she finds the Chief has been shot and critically wounded, plus a close friend of his has been killed. The police arrest a vagrant who they find with the Chief’s pistol, but can’t make any charges stick. In the bargain, the Chief’s dead friend (also another Army buddy of her father’s) leaves behind Daisy, a highly trained Doberman, who Holly takes in. Daisy turns out to be a rare find, warning Holly of danger – especially when someone tries to burn down her house trailer. The Chief had warned her that he didn’t trust everyone on the police force, so Holly is afraid to confide in anyone, and does a lot of her own sleuthing. She discovers Palmetto Gardens, a very isolated community ostensibly for wealthy vacationers, but she finds they have their own water, electricity, telephone and security force, heavily armed. In a sweetheart deal with the city council, they were allowed to cut themselves off from all community service, close adjacent roads and use non-local contractors. All of the staff stays inside the complex, except the domestics, who are bussed in from the slums. Holly wangles an invitation out of Barney Noble, head of security, for a cursory tour and a round of golf for her and her father. Ham Barker, suddenly retired from the Army and moved in with his daughter – when the Chief dies of his injuries without regaining consciousness, they discover the Chief’s property falls to his dead friend and then Ham. So he moves into the Chief’s house determined to “help” with the investigation. Holly also finds herself romantically involved with Jackson Oxenhandler, the public defender who cleared the vagrant accused of shooting the Chief. Together, they stumble across the fact that the staff at Palmetto Gardens licensed for firearms have clean records in the Florida state files, but serious criminal records in the national crime files. Jackson contacts a friend at the FBI and they start taking a closer look at Palmetto Gardens. When monitoring their communication transmissions, they discover encrypted micro-bursts between seemingly ordinary messages. The FBI sends an agent in disguised as a domestic, but she gets caught planting a recording device and is killed. This makes the FBI mad, so they launch a full-scale assault on the complex, cutting the power and back-up power, jamming radios and telephones, and taking everyone by surprise. It turns out to be an elaborate international system of drug pay-offs, not smuggling, and the complex was hiding details on all of the transactions plus several billion dollars in cash and gems. Somehow, Barney Noble escapes and Holly knows that he killed the Chief and his friend, because one of her detectives squealed. Later, she realizes the other leak was Jane, the Chief’s secretary, who was Barney’s ex-wife. When she goes to Jane’s house to confront her, she finds Barney there – he kills Jane before Holly and Daisy can subdue him. This book, like all of this author’s work, is a wild ride – it grabs you by the lapels on the first page, and drags you along, tense and breathless, all the way to the very end. A taut and gripping page-turner, it is so well-written that it seems like you’re watching it instead of reading it. All of the characters and realistic and interesting, and the story has no false notes or excess baggage. It even has a happy ending, as Holly and Jackson decide to get married.

Ordeal By Innocence
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1958

Wealthy Rachel Argyle is murdered in her house. One of her adopted children is convicted of the crime. He is sentenced to prison, where he becomes ill and dies. Two years later, Dr. Calgary returns from a polar expedition, and realizes that he would have been the young man’s alibi, making it impossible for him to have committed the crime. The police re-open the case, throwing the family into a spin, since no one is now sure who the murderer was. After another murder and near-miss, the perpetrator is revealed as Kirsten Lindstrom, the Swedish housekeeper. It even has a surprise happy ending.

The Other Side of Midnight
Sidney Sheldon
Drama
Fiction
Rating 1
Dell Publishing
1973

Beautiful Noelle Page, born in France, becomes famous as a sometimes actress, courtesan and jet-setter. She falls in love with American Larry Douglas, who leaves her and marries someone else. She devotes her life to destroying him. She takes up with Greek tycoon Constantin Demiris, who hires Larry as a pilot. Noelle and Larry fall in love again, and plot to murder his wife, however they do not succeed. Unbeknownst to them, she is spirited away to a convent by Demiris, while Noelle and Larry are tried and convicted for the murder. They are executed in the end. I consider this a pointless and wasted excuse for a book. A co-worker talked me into reading it, saying it wasn’t a typical potboiler (which I can’t stand) but that’s exactly what it is, and in spades. It also has a companion book that delves deeper into the backgrounds of the characters before and after this part of the story. Good for people who like this sort of thing, and they’re welcome to it.

Our Hearts Were Young & Gay
Emily Kimbrough
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 5
Dodd, Mead & Company
1942

The authors are famous writers, performers, fashion editors and high society bon vivants. In the early 1920's, when they were 19, they scraped together $80.00 for a very inexpensive passage to Europe so they could spend three months abroad. Cornelia says Emily “attracts trouble the way blue serge attracts lint,” but it was the Skinner’s who decided to go abroad at the same time – although on different ships, so as not to cramp the girls’ style. Their adventures begin before they even sail, when Emily inadvertently enters the wrong hotel room and walks in on an older man, completely naked. Their first day out aboard the Montcalm from Quebec, the ship runs aground and all the passengers are removed by tenders. But not before a man falls overboard and Emily trying to be helpful, knocks him unconscious by throwing him a deck chair. They spend a week in Quebec enjoying the hospitality of an old friend of the Skinner’s, until the Empress of France was ready to sail. Once under weigh, they have what for them is an uneventful passage, apart from Emily hitting a titled gentleman in the face with a deck tennis quoit. Somehow Cornelia comes down with measles just before they dock, and must be smuggled ashore or else face weeks in quarantine. They spend a boring two weeks in Southampton while Cornelia recovers from the measles in her parent’s care. Then they head off to London, where they have arranged to stay in what turns out to be a grimy flat in a bad neighborhood, while the Skinner’s are staying in a luxurious hotel. It doesn’t take long for the girls to realize they would be better off staying with them, and joining them for meals as well. They take in the sights, and even visit the estate of writer H.G. Wells, who knows Mr. Skinner. Next, it’s off to France where the girls enjoy the countryside in St. Valery and Rouen before going on to Paris. Once in Paris, they keep running into people they know from home, as well as old school-mates. They spend the summer in France, seeing all there is to see. They also take some summer courses at the Sorbonne, and even have a few elocution lessons with some famous French actors who take private students. During their sojourn, they had many of their usual mishaps, for which they were becoming famous, and all of them amusingly recounted in vivid detail. Finally, the summer draws to a close, and they realize wistfully that not only do they have to go home again, but if ever they go abroad again, it would never again be like this first time. And that makes them sad, so the end of the book is a little bittersweet. But it’s a wonderful book, delightful and entertaining throughout, a wild and rollicking ride with laugh-out-loud anecdotes. (My favorites might have been Emily eating a sandwich including the decorative ribbon around it, trying to explain their problem with bedbugs, or when they inadvertently lodged at what turned out to be a “house of ill-repute.”) The writing style is lively and informal, and pulls you breathlessly along from one misadventure to the next. When it’s over, you can’t believe you have to leave these fascinating people, and all of their acquaintances, because you feel that you really know them. A true gem, where everything comes together to make one perfectly delectable treat.

The Outrageous Lady
Barbara Cartland
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Bantam Books
1977

Just after their marriage, old Lord Roysdon suffered a stroke, leaving the young and pretty Galatea adrift in society. She was taken under the wing of the worldly D’Arcy, Earl of Sheringham, and although he sometimes led her into questionable pursuits, his standing was sufficient protection against public censure. But after five years married to an invalid, Galatea realizes this protection has come with a high price – the Earl treats her as if she belongs to him, and will marry him when her husband dies. One night at a party, she escapes from the Earl by taking her carriage through a back road, and is held up by a well-dressed highwayman. He takes her jewels, except for a ring of her late mother’s, which she wears for sentimental reasons. He seems uncommonly well-bred and polite, and when he unexpectedly kisses her, she realizes later that she can’t stop thinking about him. When she finds out that her dear but penniless friend has had her only valuable necklace “appropriated” by her dastardly brother-in-law, Galatea tracks down the highwayman and gets him to steal it back for her. This he does and more besides, and she uses the extra booty to set up a trust fund for her friend and two daughters, so they won’t be at the mercy of her late husband’s rotten brother. Galatea is so taken with the highwayman that she agrees to meet him secretly for dinner. She finds out that he is actually Sir Just Trevena of Cornwall, and has been following her escapades for years, since he first saw her and became smitten with her good looks and high spirits. In fact, he placed one of his gang in her household as a groom (Jake) to make it easier to hold up her carriage and meet her at last. The next day, she discovers that the Earl of Sheringham has been trailing her, and had his henchmen pick up Sir Just and hold him captive. Galatea has to think fast to get him sprung, and then helps him escape back to Cornwall before the Prince of Wales’ soldiers can arrive. Shortly after, she gets a message that her husband’s condition has worsened, and she returns to London, where he dies quietly, and she does the appropriate things for the funeral, and working out details with the new Lord Roysdon, her husband’s nephew. Once a suitable time passes, she packs up her few personal belongings, wipes the dust of London from her feet, and heads for Cornwall as fast as horses will carry her. She and Just are married by the Vicar in the chapel at Trevena Priory, and who can doubt but they will live happily ever after. This was a strange and almost unsettling book, which is not uncommon with this author. It manages to be tedious and over-plotted by turns, which is not easy to do. It’s far too mawkish to be a good adventure story, but it’s also too hectic and scary to be a good romances, and manages to combine the worst elements of both genres in one sorry hash. The writing has that over-blown, breathless quality that fails to engage, and the story is alternately so deeply bogged down in details, or else completely oblivious to them. It has moments of interest, but disappointing overall.

Over The Gate
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Academy Chicago Publishers / Houghton Mifflin
1988

This is another in a series of books by this author, which depict English country life in the small village of Fairacre. The stories do not follow consecutively, but rather fit together like a tapestry made from the details of ordinary lives. This book is not exactly a novel, but more a series of vignettes, tied together by Miss Read, the Head Mistress of the tiny village school. As she goes along in her daily routine, certain events recall tales from the past, which are recounted by neighbors or visitors. The church Sexton, Mr. Willet, tells the tale of stout Sally Gray, who believed that she uncovered an old recipe for weight loss – but instead, it made her weightless and she floated around. Miss Clare recalled two neighbors, Bertha Foster and Polly Norton, who had a famous falling-out because Mrs. Norton copied everything Mrs. Foster ever did, from her furniture and garden, right down to the children’s clothes. Mrs. Willet dives in with the story about war-time Londoners billeted in Thrush Green, and the pitched battle between local Mrs. Pringle and visitor Mrs. Jarman, culminating with Mrs. Jarman contriving to ruin Mrs. Pringle’s Christmas pudding. In between these recollections, Miss Read describes life around the village and happenings at the school throughout the year. These books are uniformly lively, well-written and engaging, and reading them is like having a jolly visit with a good friend. Although idyllic, they are never idealized, and while the characters are treated with kindness, they are sharply drawn with warts and all. Some of the vignettes are sad, and some of them are funny, some of them are fantastic, but all of them are interesting. The characters are all true-to-life, and the descriptive passages make you feel as if you’re really there, without being dull or intrusive. This is a great series of books and all of them are charming and enjoyable.

TITLES L - M

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The Lady Who Hated Shakespeare
Susan Carroll
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1992

Cordelia Renwick finds that her hopes for an exciting summer in Brighton have been ruined when her father invites Miles, a distant cousin, to stay with them, and indulge the gents’ mutual fascination for Shakespeare. Cordelia and Miles accidentally meet under odd circumstances, so that she immediately detests him and he is fascinated by her. They spend a lot of time playing tricks on each other, but everyone can see they are falling in love. (Except of course, her erstwhile boyfriend, the eminently dull Lord Walsing.) Somehow they all get roped into a local performance of “Othello,” with an unfortunate accident that nearly kills Cordelia – this forces the lovers to see their relationship in a new light. At the last minute, Delia and another young lady are nearly murdered by Lord Walsing (who of course turns out to be an imposter) but they are rescued by Miles, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well-written and lively, but a little complicated for a Regency romance.

Lady With A Black Umbrella
Mary Balogh
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Books
1989

Head-strong Daisy Morrison is determined that her younger sister Rose should have a season in London and find an eligible husband. So they set off together, intending to stay with relatives in town. Along the way, Daisy rescues a Viscount who has been set upon by highwaymen, beating them off with her late father’s big black umbrella. The Viscount left in a huff, embarrassed at being helped by a young lady, and was further mortified to find out that she had gone back and paid off his debts when his purse had been stolen. Meanwhile, Daisy and Rose arrived in London to find their relatives abroad, but Daisy insisted on making a go of it anyway. When the Viscount, Giles Kincade, sought her out to repay his debt to her (only the presence of his brother, the clergyman, prevented him from throttling her for her interference and obliviousness) she asked him to introduce her and her sister to a respectable family member who could sponsor them for the season in the absence of her relatives. Lord Kincade is astounded at her audacity, but his brother Arthur immediately volunteers their cousin Hetty, who would be only too happy to oblige. So they launch Rose on her season (at 25, Daisy is already a confirmed spinster) and Daisy continues to embarrass the Viscount with her antics. At one point, it becomes necessary for Daisy and Giles to pretend they are engaged, in order to protect her reputation, so that her sister’s season won’t be compromised. It also turns out the attack on the Viscount was part of a larger plan to get him out of the way, so a fortune hunter can elope with his younger sister. Daisy comes up with the idea to dangle herself in front of the fortune hunter as an even better catch – and it falls to Giles to rescue her from the unscrupulous louse. Of course, they finally realize that they are hopelessly in love after all, and their fake engagement becomes a real engagement. Rose, who never wanted an exciting life in the city with a titled man-about-town, agrees to marry dear Arthur the clergyman. Well-written and interesting throughout, and a little more racy than you expect from this genre.

Larry, The Stooge In The Middle
Morris Feinberg
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Last Gasp of San Francisco
1984

Lively, anecdotal biography of Larry Fine from The Three Stooges, as told by his brother. A warm and loving tribute; but never maudlin look behind the scenes at a show business phenomenon. The ups and down of The Stooges’ history regarded with humor and good will, and all of the Stooge members are treated with respect. The vignettes are more sentimental than hysterical, but it’s always interesting. It’s very well-written, in a punchy, engaging style for someone who is not a writer by trade.

Latin For All Occasions
Henry Beard
Humor
Fiction
Rating 5
Random House
1990

This hilarious book takes modern phrases such as “Hot enough for you?” and “Give me a break” and translates them into Latin for you. This is so you can drop them innocently into your conversations to amaze your friends, astound your co-workers, and impress total strangers. It includes everyday Latin that can be used at work (“Darn! My beeper just went off”), at sporting events (“Here comes the Zamboni”) and my favorite, at the spa (“There is something wrong with this scale.”) The author said he wrote the book in gratitude for his Latin training when something he was about to order in an Italian restaurant reminded him of the Latin word for “eels.”

The Lawless
John Jakes
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Jove Publications
1978

Part 7 of The Kent Family Chronicles, which spans almost 200 years of American history. This volume concerns the brothers Gideon, Matthew and Jeremiah Kent, sons of Jephtha and Fan Kent, separated by the Civil War. Gideon assumes control of the family printing business, and his family falls apart. When his wife dies, he takes up with Julia, widow of his cousin Louis. Matthew is a painter in Europe, whose wife leaves him. Jeremiah, believed killed in the war, is a gunman using different names. He ends up dying at Gideon’s feet. Consistent with this series.

Lena
Margaret Jensen
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Here’s Life Books
1985

This is the third book in a series of auto-biographical books by this author, with the first two about her parents. This one is about the cook-housekeeper in the college infirmary where the author worked as a nurse. Lena’s strong, towering faith and love of people radiates around her like fireworks. She sings and prays all day at work, giving advice, encouragement and being an inspiration to everyone who sees her. Her common-sense philosophy deflates the pompous, and buoys up the down-trodden. The author’s son sinks in a world of drugs and misery, but Lena never gives up on him, and eventually he returns to the family. Well-written in an easy, engaging style; humorous and sentimental without being sappy.

Lift Every Voice
Dr. Walter Turnbull
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Hyperion
1995

The author was raised in poverty in Mississippi, but longed for a better life. His was a large close-knit family with close ties to the community and church. He developed a love of music singing in the choir. He went on to Tougaloo College and studied music there. With generous support of friends and admirers, he was able to continue his education at prestigious institutions and he became a well-respected operatic tenor. But opera is a hard field to break into (especially for minorities) so he looked for other ways to support himself. He organized a small boys choir at a church in the Bronx, which went on to become the world famous Boys Choir of Harlem. They have performed all over the world and inspired millions. This book explains all of the behind-the-scenes details of organizing and running a performing group of youngsters. It tells many stories of broken families, children at risk, and society’s failure to protect them – and how the structure of the choir helps them turn their lives around and make something of themselves. This is not a fairy tale, but a stark unflinching look at youth in peril. This should be a positive and uplifting book, but the author’s bitterness and sense of persecution wash over the story without let-up. He had to fight to get where he is, and he is still fighting. In spite of his lip-service of nurturing, respect and encouragement, he comes across as an angry, impatient and autocratic tyrant. This book was recommended highly by advice columnist Ann Landers as a testament to discipline, hard work and caring, turning troubled youths into productive members of society – but I found it disappointing in that sense. The writing is flat and reads like a textbook.

The Lion in the North
John Prebble
History
Non-Fiction
Rating 1
Martin Secker & Warburg / Penguin Books 1973
1971

This book has the distinction of being one of the most incomprehensible and unreadable books I’ve ever read. It suffers from a common malady, especially among non-fiction writers, of being too close to their subject and knowing too much about it. (The prime example of this was Barbara Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower” which hit new heights of unreadability.) This author is famous for his historical reference works, and they may all be fine and interesting books. The biggest problem with this book is its scope – it is trying to minutely describe Scottish history from pre-historic times to the present in one slim volume. As a result, it is at once too bogged down in details and too scattershot to do the job. You slog through page after page after page of meaningless drivel until your brain goes completely numb. Then, when something interesting or memorable comes along, like William Wallace or Mary Queen of Scots, it is dashed off so fleetingly that it makes no impression at all. It somehow manages to be simultaneously drowned in boring minutiae, and also completely dis-connected from any other contemporary history, so you have no idea of where or how any of this fits together. Miraculously, I understood less about Scottish history when I finished the book than before I started! The book is so stultifyingly dull and uninviting, with its dense pages cramped with text. The author has an easy familiarity with his subject, but tends to have a feverish need to hit you over the head with every fact at his disposal. Some of the passages are quite lucid and even humorous, making me think that with a narrower focus, he could write a fairly entertaining and interesting book. But that’s not this book, in spades.

Looking for Rachel Wallace
Robert B. Parker
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dell Publishing / Bantam Doubleday Dell
1980

Another in a series by this author featuring Private Investigator Spenser in Boston. He is hired by the publisher to protect Rachel Wallace on her book tour. She is a radical feminist and gay, and her books are strident and polarizing. Her newest one is about to be released, but enough is already known about it that she’s been getting death threats. In the first two days of guarding her, Spenser was nearly run off the road, harassed by picketers, and pulled his gun on a couple of pranksters who threw a pie at Rachel. She’s tough and humorless, and she and Spenser got along about as well as nitro and glycerine. But before long, she begins to appreciate his competence in protecting her. One day, she loses her temper and fires him, and shortly after that, she is kidnapped, apparently by some ultra-conservative group calling itself “Restore American Morality.” Lt. Quirk and Detective Belson (from previous books) start investigating, and Spenser does what he usually does – leaning on informers, beating up suspicious folks who won’t cooperate and generally making a big nuisance of himself. When the police don’t get any further demands, things start to look very bleak for poor Rachel, and Spenser blames himself for what happened. Little by little, things start to come together. The leader of the picketers is Lawrence English, whose wealthy family supports his Belmont Vigilance Committee – he not only arranged for the picketing of Rachel’s appearance at the library, but it was his chauffeur and a couple of thugs who tried to run them off the road also. Then it comes to light that English’s sister is a model using another name, and Spenser knows her as one of Rachel’s lovers from when he was protecting her. He believes this is enough reason to suspect that English has kidnapped her (although not enough for the police to do anything about it) so he sneaks into their house to check it out. He gets up to the attic before he is discovered, but by then he has found Rachel, which is a big relief for both of them. He has to kill English and the chauffeur to get out of the attic, and by then, even Rachel thinks this is a good thing. After that, the ending of the book is sweet and sentimental, and makes you feel good all over. The story is a little more tense than these usually are, but not unpleasantly so, and the ending really makes it all worthwhile. Well-written, entertaining and engaging throughout, with no superfluous touches or distracting elements. A very satisfying book, although Hawk doesn’t appear in it.

Lord Carew’s Bride
Mary Balogh
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Books
1995

Samantha Newman is staying with her cousin, the Earl of Thornhill and family, at their country estate. While out walking, she meets Hartley Wade, who she supposes is the gardener of nearby Highmoor Abbey – but who is in fact the Marquess of Carew who lives there. She finds him unassuming and non-threatening, and he is totally enchanted with her, so much so that he despairs of letting her find out his true identity in case it changes her impression of him. (The Marquess is self-conscious about a childhood accident that left him with a limp and maimed hand.) They meet several times and enjoy each other’s company, before Samantha has to return to London for the Season. After she leaves, the Marquess is so miserable that he finally follows her to London, although he usually avoids the social whirl. Next we meet Lionel, the new Earl of Rushford, whose improper behavior with Samantha in her first season created such a scandal that his family exiled him to the continent. Now that he has returned, she is horrified to discover that she is still hopelessly attracted to him, in spite of her attempts to steel herself against his charms. We also learn that it was Lionel (an older cousin of the Marquess) who was responsible for the “accident” that left him crippled, so anyone could see where this was leading. Whenever she sees Lionel, he assures her that he has changed, and he still loves her and wants to make it up to her for his previous behavior. She is convinced that he is only toying with her, although to what purpose, she has no idea. When the Marquess finally screws up his nerve and asks her to marry him, she accepts gladly, because although she feels no burning desire for him like Lionel, at least he makes her feel safe and protected. So she and the Marquess are married in town, making her the new Marchioness of Carew, and many people suppose that she married him in spite of his handicap for his title and fortune. After they’re married and still in town, Lionel manages to make the Marquess believe that his previous liaison with Samantha was more intimate than it really was, and although his friends do everything they can to make him see reason, the Marquess and Samantha have an ugly scene about it. Neither of them wants to admit that Lionel still has the power to cast a pall over their lives, and they wonder if they will ever be free of his influence. One fateful night at a ball, Lionel corners Samantha in a garden where she is waiting for her husband, but before he can take liberties with her, she kicks and slaps him so there is no mistaking her true feelings for him. The Marquess then challenges Lionel to a fight of honor, which Lionel finds hugely amusing, although unbeknownst to him, the Marquess has spent years training to fight, as a way of compensating for his infirmity. To the surprise of all, except his seconds, he beats Lionel handily, and he and Samantha are reconciled, and finally feel they are out from under Lionel’s shadow at long last. Well-written and engaging throughout, with characters who have genuineness and spunk. Nicely entertaining of this type.

Lord Dancy’s Delight
Emily Hendrickson
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Books
1993

Young Amelia Longworth is sent to London with her Chinese chaperon, Chen Mei, from her father’s estate in Macao where he is an important official with the East India Company. She is to stay with his sister, Lady Spencer, and have a proper coming-out. At a stop-over in Lisbon, she crashes into the dashing Geoffrey Dancy, who is returning to England to claim the Baronetcy of his late father. In a short period of time, Dancy manages to rescue Amelia three times – from a highway accident, a boating mishap and a fire. Chen Mei points out that in Chinese culture, after someone’s life is saved three times, they become the property of their rescuer. Although Amelia is too high-spirited to be anyone’s chattel, she does feel obligated to Dancy and wishes to protect him – especially after she overhears some conversations that lead her to believe that his life is in danger. Once safely settled in her aunt’s townhouse, the ladies embark on a social whirlwind, and Amelia attracts quite a lot of attention, not all of it welcome. Amelia and Chen Mei also contrive to appear at the same places as Dancy, as part of their plan to keep him from harm. In short order, she saves him from an unscrupulous fortune-hunter, a disreputable card-sharp and an unsavory looking foreigner bound on making attempts on his life. Rather than being pleased with these results, His Lordship is instead embarrassed and aggravated at having a mere slip of a girl as his ubiquitous protector. When he is finally cornered by his adversary and Amelia attempts to help him, the ogre grabs her and flees with the expectation that using her as a shield will allow him to escape. He holds her hostage for days while the authorities turn London inside-out, and Amelia’s friends and family heap scorn upon Dancy for allowing this to happen. At last she is rescued and she realizes the depth of her feelings for Dancy, but he picks this time to tell her that they should see less of each other, which he feels would make things safer for both of them. At first crushed and then seething, Amelia immediately packs up and goes to stay with other relatives in the country. Instead of feeling happy and liberated, Dancy suddenly finds his life boring and empty. That’s when he discovers that everyone has promised Amelia not to reveal her whereabouts, especially to him. In desperation, he hires a Bow Street Runner to track her down, which he does, and it all ends very happily. Entertaining throughout and well-written, although it reads more like a modern romance than a period piece, and the occasional old-fashioned dialogue that wants to lend authenticity to it, seems instead forced and heavy-handed. But it moves along briskly and never lags, and the characters are all interesting and delightful.

Losing The Edge
Barry Meisel
Sports
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Simon & Schuster
1995

In 1994, the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940. Sports columnist Barry Meisel describes in detail the events leading up to the victory, and the internecine warfare and management disarray that followed in its wake. Although interesting, the book is extremely dense, over-loaded with facts, details, asides and peripheral characters. It is essentially a hatchet job on winning coach Mike Keenan (who bolted to St. Louis before the champagne was flat) but it is also no love letter to General Manager Neil Smith, the Garden management or Viacom, their owners. Everyone comes under the gun in this investigation, including the players and incoming coach Colin Campbell, and is found wanting.

The Lost Generation
Robert Vaughan
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1992

This is Part 3 of “The American Chronicles,” which began at the turn of the century. This story covers the period of the 20's and 30's, and follows the lives of the Canfields, writer Eric Twainbough, actress Demaris Hunter and gangster Kerry O’Braugh. Somewhat of a potboiler, but well-written in a concise and lively style. (See also Dawn of the Century and Hard Times.)

Lost in a Good Book
Jasper Fforde
Fantasy
Rating 2
Penguin Books
Hodder and Stoughton, UK
2002

This is the second in a series of books by this author and featuring literary detective Thursday Next, fresh from her adventures in “The Eyre Affair,” and still doing P.R. tours for it through the Special Operations Network, so that she has practically no time to spend with her new husband, Landen. We are introduced to Mr. Schitt-Hawse, who is the half-brother of the infamous Jack Schitt from the previous book, also of the Goliath Corporation, who is still trapped inside “The Raven.” Next is still working in Swindon at SO-27, the Literary Detectives, although after stints in the police and Crimean War (just starting peace talks after 130 years) she would like something a little more challenging. She is contacted by the mysterious lawyer Akrid Snell, who says he has been hired to defend her against unspecified charges, which she knows nothing about. Then her boss Victor Analogy sends her and her partner, Bowden Cable, to investigate reports of “Cardenio” forgeries, which are apparently the Shakespearean equivalent of the Holy Grail, which is to say, that there is no such thing, but con artists keep selling them like the Brooklyn Bridge. While they are examining a very promising copy of the missing treasure in the collection of Lord Volescamper, Next is inexplicably drawn to a passing SkyRail, so she climbs aboard. The conductor of the SkyRail is Neanderthal, and there are seven strangers aboard all named Irma Cohen. Neanderthals were re-introduced, after millions of years of being extinct, through genetic engineering, and like the re-engineered dodo birds and woolly mammoths, was a socio-scientific experiment with some unfortunate consequences, with the project ultimately becoming a cultural failure that had to be abandoned. The Neanderthal is protesting bad treatment of his species, and when Next tries to protect him from the SpecOps agents trying to shoot him, she ends up getting killed instead. Luckily at that moment, her time-traveling father (who has gone rogue from the ChronoGuard in order to correct historical errors that will affect the future) whisks her away to 1972, so that she can protect a cyclist from an accident (this has far-reaching implications in the future) and she asks her father to return her to the present 30 minutes earlier, so she will know how to properly handle the SkyRail incident without getting killed. Unaccountably, when she returns to the earlier present, the same thing doesn’t happen, and she ends up getting in a lot of trouble by trying to prevent a hijacking that didn’t occur. She and Landen go to visit her family, and find Uncle Mycroft still inventing his eccentric gadgets, although he professes to be retired., and he gives her a handy device to warn her when the ludicrously unlikely coincidences have reached a dangerous level. This comes in handy when it gives her a warning so that she and her friends can just barely escape having a car fall on them from a blimp overhead. When Mycroft and Polly disappear with the entire contents of his workshop, Schitt-Hawse realizes that he can’t use him to retrieve Jack Schitt out of “The Raven,” so he leans on Next instead. Flanker from SO-1 (the division that polices SpecOps itself) calls her in an attempt to get at her father, but she stonewalls him, and Stiggins, a Neanderthal, unexpectedly covers for her. During this period, she notices subtle changes in her environment, and later she realizes that Goliath has engineered a time shift so that her erstwhile husband Landen died in childhood, which means that in 1985, he doesn’t exist anymore. She experiments with some books to see if she can “jump” into them without Mycroft’s Prose Portal, which she will need to do in order to extricate Jack Schitt and save Landen, and while dreaming, she finds Landen (and her arch-nemesis, Acheron Hades) living in her memories. Even her father can't reverse the eradication of her husband, and when he tries, he nearly steps right into a trap by Lavoisier, his sworn enemy, whose only purpose in life is to capture the notorious (although officially non-existent) renegade. She finally meets Akrid Snell, who turns out to be a fictional lawyer from a series of crime dramas, who is defending her for changing the ending of Jane Eyre in a Jurisfiction case. She calls on Mrs. Nakajima, the Japanese tourist she bumped into inside of Jane Eyre, who helps her enter the Jurisfiction library, where they maintain control over all books ever written, or will be written, including drafts, discarded changes, unused characters and hypothetical plot lines. She meets the Cheshire Cat in the library, and finds out that she has been assigned to the spinster Miss Havisham of “Great Expectations.” When she is not in the narrative, Miss Havisham is a spunky old spitfire, who takes Next on a wild ride through several books, as well as out in the real world, where she is well-known to the police everywhere for her reckless driving. At the Jurisfiction meeting, the operatives are a diverse group of fictional characters, and they are assigned to infiltrate various books to remove interlopers, or to protect the story from damage, such as well-meaning “improvement” by single-minded zealots. (In a funny aside, she discovers that her dear departed Uncle Mycroft has insinuated himself into the works of Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes' brother.) She finally determines that her unborn baby must really be Landen’s, although nobody knows who he is since being eradicated, when she discovers the hunky coworker she thought she was involved with since Landen didn’t exist, was really her brother Joffy’s boyfriend instead. This makes her all the more determined to rescue Landen, so she makes a deal with Schitt-Hawse, and she is able to extricate Jack Schitt from “The Raven” all by herself. But instead of keeping their end of the bargain, the siblings and Lavoisier conspire to keep her prisoner at Goliath, and only the supernatural skills of Miss Havisham can rescue her. After that, she and Harris Tweed recover the lost “Cardenio” from Lord Volescamper, since it had been stolen from the Jurisfiction Library by a book character posing as a politician in the real world. With Landen’s help in her memory, she finally realizes that it must be Acheron Hades’ diabolical sister Aornis who is responsible for all of the eerie coincidences that have nearly killed her. Finally, Aornis manipulates enough coincidences to cause the world to end in a flood of pink goo (this was a recurring theme throughout) but makes a deal that if Next sacrifices herself instead, Aornis will spare the planet. Next is prepared to do just that, but at the last second, her father turns up to remove the incipient danger back to the primordial past, and give himself up for the greater good. This is a truly wistful moment, at least until she goes to her mother’s house with the news that her father is gone for good, and instead, finds her father there alive and well as ever, since this episode is apparently just another in a series of experiences in his timeless existence. Since Next is in danger from Aornis, in trouble with SpecOps, and on the run from Goliath, her father suggests sending her to a parallel reality (which is more like actual reality) which had Winston Churchill and bananas, and the Crimean War ended in 1854 like it should. Although she’s tempted to agree, without the Crimean War, she and Landen wouldn’t have met, and she would have no memories of him, so she declines instead. Then without telling anyone, she returns to the Jurisfiction library and enrolls in their Character Exchange Program, whereby (usually minor) characters have the opportunity for a change of scenery if they’re tired of being in the same book for all time. She changes places with a secondary character in an unpublished work in a deep sub-basement of the library, along with her dodo Pickwick (with egg) as part of her plan to have Landen’s baby in seclusion and safety, and return afterward to sort out the problems she left behind. Incredibly, this is where the book ends, which would come as an unwelcome shock to anyone looking for a resolution to any of the welter of plot lines just left dangling. As a result, this book doesn't really stand on its own, as a stand-alone story, the way some serialized collections do, as too much that happens is incomprehensible if you haven't read the previous book, and also that there is no conclusion to speak of. These books are not for every taste, and this one more disappointing than the first one, by virtue of having no ending. The writing style is punchy, but still manages to be dense and crammed with literary references, in jokes and allusions of all sorts, while all too often, the plot bogs down in pointless digressions just to make room for more of the same. Because the writing is is so full of itself with layers of meaning, after a while it becomes more tedious than entertaining. This type of high maintenance escapade would probably work better in smaller doses, but all of these books are 400+ pages of thick text which gets to be a little bit too much. The main characters are world-weary and cynical, as often happens in modern novels (Carole Nelson Douglas and M.D. Lake spring to mind) and don’t entirely engage your interest. Undeniably intelligent and impressively written, but more arch than charming, and hard to warm up to. Surprisingly, the gun left in the future in the first book still doesn’t show up in this story, which would strain the patience of the most indulgent reader.

Love and Glory
Robert B. Parker
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell / Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
In agreement with Seymour Lawrence / Delacorte Press
1983

This author is famous for his “Spenser” detective stories, but this is not one of those, although it has eerie similarities to the characters in Spenser’s world. It concerns a young man named Boone Adams, who is coming of age in the 1950's – he is very intelligent, but tends to be impatient and antagonistic. At college, he meets Jennifer Grayle and falls head over heels for her, even though she’s involved with someone else. When she breaks up with her beau, they start going out. Then he is drafted and sent to Korea during the “police action” there. While he is over there, she sends him a letter saying that she met someone else and is going to marry him. He writes her back begging her not to leave him, and he keeps writing to her trying to change her mind. Eventually his letters to her are returned unopened, so he keeps them as a kind of journal – and he writes to her every day, even though he doesn’t mail them. After he gets back to the United States, he gets invited to her wedding to John Merchant. He goes, but he gets drunk at the reception and makes a scene. From there, he begins a painful descent into an abysmal quasi-life of drunkenness, squalor, jail and homeless shelters. He hits rock bottom on California, and finally decides to start living again. He gets a job washing dishes in a greasy spoon, and finds that he can get through a day without drinking. He stops smoking, and starts to take an interest in his grooming and clothes. He joins a gym and gets in shape. (Here he meets the Hawk parallel – amateur boxer Roy Washington who becomes his friend and workout buddy.) In the back of his sub-conscious is a plan to improve himself so he becomes worthy of Jennifer, and that is what drives him to become a better person. One day he sees a picture of Jennifer and her professor husband at Harvard, and the next day, he is on his way there to enroll as a student. She is surprised to see him when they meet at a university function, but in a subdued way. He makes no bones about his intention to win her back, and although she is resistant to the idea, she finally succumbs to the inevitability of it. Well-written in an easy, conversational style, with a surprisingly happy ending that is neither sappy nor contrived. It would be impossible for this author to write a bad book. It manages to be simultaneously poignant and entertaining throughout, as well as unexpectedly sentimental and uplifting.

Lovely In Her Bones
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine / Random House
1985

This author has written a series of mysteries featuring Elizabeth MacPherson as a forensic anthropologist. In this book, Elizabeth is still an undergrad, and taking herbal and folk medicine courses while she decides what to do next. Her brother Bill’s roommate, Milo, invites her to join him on an archeological dig in the Appalachian Mountains, on behalf of the local Cullowhee Indians, who need scientific documentation to get tribal recognition from the U.S. government. However, there is another faction, led by Deputy Harkness, determined to block any tribal recognition, so they can sell their land to a mining company. At the dig, Elizabeth meets Mrs. Stecoah, the tribe’s wise woman and specialist in herbs and folk remedies. The plot thickens when the leader of the expedition is murdered, using a cheap souvenir tomahawk, after spurning the romantic advances of one student, and embarrassing another publicly. The local Police come to investigate, and also remove Deputy Harkness form the case, due to a conflict of interest. Milo, as second-in-command, elects to continue with the project, although some of their research materials were impounded as evidence. But the very next day, someone else turns up dead, in fact, it’s the student who was embarrassed by the director previously. The Police call in Ron Garrett, the local FBI agent, because of the possibility that the crimes may have been committed on federal land. Later, when Milo enters the data on skull measurements into the computer, he discovers what the professor probably already found out – that the Cullowhees’ ancestors do not fit the skull measurements for Indians at all. He leaps at the conclusion that Elizabeth measured the skulls wrong, and gets into a fight with her about it. But Elizabeth instead comes to the right conclusion, which was that someone was trying to stop the project precisely because it disproved their tribal recognition claims. She realizes that the murderer has to be Mrs. Stecoah, the supposed Indian wise woman, and she goes there to help her develop a plausible defense while still protecting their tribal recognition application. Mrs. Stecoah poisons her instead, but fortunately, Milo turns up not so belatedly and rushes her to the hospital in time. It turns out that most of the Cullowhee’s already knew they were probably descendants of slaves, settlers and the odd Native here and there anyway. But since most tribes featured at least some inter-marriage along the way, they figured it wouldn’t hinder their application, and it didn’t. But they thought that having a scientific document would lend credence to their application, regardless of its findings. So the whole thing was politically motivated in the first place, and the poor student who was killed, for no other reason than pretending he knew more than he did. But these books are always lively and engaging, with colorful characters and evocative descriptions. This story highlights Elizabeth’s burgeoning interest in forensic anthropology, as well as her relationship with Milo. Well-written and entertaining throughout, and fits in well with other books in this series.

Love’s Lady Lost
Gwyneth Moore
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Harlequin Books
1991

The autocratic grandmother of Leopold Savage, well-known London playboy, insists that he must marry within a year, or she will grant her estates to his doltish cousin instead. Then he makes an ill-advised wager with some other young bucks at his club, which riles her up even further, so he sets off to Portsmouth to apologize. When the weather turns bad, he pulls off the road in a village to spend the night. There are no lodgings, except for the widow Primrose Hythe, with a rambling estate that she can only afford by taking in boarders. He meets her befuddled cousin Barrett Elstow, and her spirited toddler, the irrepressible Consuela, plus her black Persian cat called M’Lord. He discovers some tantalizing clues that indicate she’s hiding a deep dark secret, but he can’t imagine what. When she agrees to show him through the old ruined abbey on the property and turns her ankle in a fall, he stays on and nurses her, and also attempts to hold down the rest of the household, with predictably hilarious results. His friend Everard Paynton shows up unexpectedly, by back-tracking from when he never showed up in Portsmouth, to let him know that the family is planning a “marriage ball” for him in March, at which time he is expected to pick a suitable mate or else. Paynton misses no opportunity to flirt with the comely widow, which makes Savage unaccountably jealous. Later, he happens across a chance acquaintance named Furness, passing through from London who confides that Consuela was born out of wedlock to the disgrace of the family. But he finds out later this Furness is actually an interested party in the situation, a bounder who forced himself on the widow’s timid sister, to get even with the family for a perceived slight. He coerced the sister into marrying him for her inheritance, which has bunches of ridiculously convoluted restrictions in it, although he abandoned her before she died in childbirth. To protect Consuela from him, the story was circulated that the baby died also. Primrose and her good friend Ambrose Hythe cook up the scheme to pretend they were married in Italy and that Consuela is their daughter. Unfortunately Ambrose died before they could actually marry, so Consuela’s legitimacy could be called into question too easily. Savage is shocked at the story and indignant that there were no men to stand up to Furness and defend the family’s honor, although Primrose was more concerned about keeping Consuela away from him than protecting their reputation. Against her wishes, he brings her to his marriage ball and then leaves her to the slings and arrows of gossips and bigots. This is part of his plan to gain sympathy for her later when the truth is known. When he exposes Furness, they duel and Savage is wounded while luckily Furness is killed. Savage realizes that he must leave the country promptly and his family rallies around him in the idea of marrying Primrose quickly before he leaves and it all ends very happily. In fact, even the missing M’Lord shows up at the end and with a brood of kittens, necessitating a change of named to M’Lady instead. Well-written and entertaining throughout, although a little too melodramatic for every taste. The characters are well-defined and likable for the most part, although Consuela is too obstreperous by half. It’s a bit too over-plotted for these types of stories, but still nice enough, though there’s certainly not enough romance in it to qualify as any sort of a real romance.

MacPherson’s Lament
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Ballantine Books
1992

This is another in a series of books by this author, featuring forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson. These are supposedly mysteries, but only in the most marginal sense – they are mostly travelogues or histories, wonderfully unencumbered by plot, but all of them are entertaining nonetheless. In this story, Elizabeth is married to Cameron Dawson (from “Highland Laddie Gone,” my favorite of her books) and living in Scotland. Her brother Bill has just graduated law school and opened a law practice in the sleepy town of Danville, Virginia, with a fellow law student. A.P. Hill is the namesake of a famous Confederate general, except that her name is really Amy – although she does engage in historical re-enactments as a nod to the family’s Civil War connection. A.P. gets a case as a public defender that begins as a simple charge of passing bad checks, but unexpectedly turns into a murder case. They gain another client who is looking for a lawyer to be on retainer as a gift for her husband – she agrees to pay $50 per week so Bill can do the legal research on whatever little, eccentric matters her husband dreams up. (For instance, can you sue your neighbor for “kitty support” if his cat makes your cat pregnant?) Another client that Bill really doesn’t want is his mother, who needs a lawyer for a divorce. The bulk of the book is taken up with eight old women who live in a home for Confederate widows and orphans, who arrange with Bill to sell their communal house for $1.5 million to a Northerner. He is so blinded by the large commission for the sale that he doesn’t see the trap until it swallows him up. It turns out the State of Virginia has claimed the house with a Writ of Eminent Domain (conveniently missing from official records) so the ladies had no legal right to sell the house – the proceeds go into a numbered account in the Cayman Islands and the ladies disappear, leaving Bill in the middle of the State and an angry buyer, under suspicion of fraud, larceny and possible murder. This is too much for Elizabeth, who flies over from Scotland to straighten things out. Also running throughout this book is the story of some Confederate soldiers at the very tail end of the Civil War, and what happened to gold bars of the Confederacy that were being transported by wagon. That turns out to be what is behind the whole sale of the house and all, is the search for the supposed Confederate treasure (even the house buyer is digging for it) as Elizabeth learns when she finds the ladies in Georgia. Once we reach that point, the book really falls off a table, and everything gets wrapped up cursorily. Bill gets cleared, the ladies disappear for good, Amy’s client plea-bargains, the other client decides to study law on his own, and the parents are not reconciled. No one finds the alleged treasure. Well-written in a breezy, conversational style, all of these books are fun, engaging and interesting.

The Maine Mutiny
Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet, Division of Penguin Group
2005

This is another in a series of books based on the hit TV show “Murder, She Wrote” and featuring mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher. In this story, the civic leaders in her home town of Cabot Cove, Maine, decide to organize a lobster festival with a variety of events to draw tourists to the downtown area. Perky Gwen Anissina is spearheading the effort with publicity and arrangements for the events, and to help her out, Jessica agrees to write a “day in the life” type article about the local lobstermen for the media. This turns out to be not as easy as it sounds, as none of the lobstermen want her on board, and in fact, are getting upset about the whole festival situation. (It seems they agreed to hold onto their catch to save for the festival so there would be plenty for the tourists, and in the meantime, the price has increased to the point where they could be losing significant money. She attends a meeting of the lobstermen’s association and sees first-hand the antagonism between the men, the leadership and Henry Pettie, the dealer who they feel is taking advantage of them for his own gain.) Linc Williams, the association president, makes Levi Carver agree to let Jessica sail with him, so they can get a good publicity story for the local gazette to be distributed at the festival. But it’s obvious that a lot of the lobstermen are still rankled by the direction things are going. She finds her day at sea interesting but exhausting, and she discovers the work required to make a living on lobsters is grueling and frustrating, as they have to throw back half of what they catch, for being non-compliant with the standards. When some of the boats cluster together to share lunch, Jessica hears even more grumbling about the association leadership and the dealer, who they don’t trust. In fact, when the day is over and they bring the catch to the dealer for payment, the price is even less than the day before, even though the supply is less, which should drive the price higher instead. The very next day, one of the disgruntled lobstermen, Ike Bower, found a hole chopped in the side of his boat, although he refused to file a complaint with the police. When Jessica arranges to meet with another man to discuss it later, instead she finds he’s been roughed up and winds up in the hospital. Next, she questions Spencer Durkee, a previous target of retribution, and he indicates that the delinquents responsible for the vandalism are related to Linc Williams, so everyone is afraid to complain and get tossed from the association, or make too much trouble about collusion between the leadership and the crooked dealer. Later, when she tries to speak to Spencer on his boat, she is knocked unconscious and the boat left drifting out at sea with no power and the dead body of Henry Pettie. It also has a hole, making it sink slowly, and Jessica manages to salvage enough to keep her and Pettie afloat (in a hopelessly unrealistic manner) until help arrives. The police arrest Spencer Durkee for the murder, but Jessica is unconvinced. It seems that someone left him a elaborate bottle of home-made blueberry wine, which he drank down on the beach while Pettie was being murdered and Spencer’s boat was being commandeered. Later, a young couple comes forward to say they saw him on the beach and removed the bottle to cover their tracks so no one would know they were there. (This had something to do with the morality clause in the Miss Lobsterfest beauty pageant the young lady was participating in.) Then Jessica finds Pettie’s earring in Levi Carver’s kitchen, so she confronts him about the murder. She finds out that Pettie’s death was an accident (he fell and hit his head while arguing with Levi about prices) but the real crime was the subsequent cover-up, as a bunch of the lobstermen banded together to protect Levi. Linc Williams called his no-account nephew and sleazy friends to dispose of the body, and they’re the ones who hauled the body to Spencer’s boat, knocked out Jessica and sank the boat with them both on it. The plan was to implicate Spencer by getting him drunk so he would have no alibi. But they broke ranks once they realized the jig was up, and each willingly ratted on the others while maintaining their own innocence. The nephew and friends got the worst of it, for attempting to kill Jessica in cold blood, although I thought a better plot device would have been for them to have sent out the rescue teams for her, after getting her out of the way at the critical moment. The Lobsterfest went off swimmingly (although without some fo the arrested lobstermen) and everything else was resolved satisfactorily for the most part, thanks to a handy epilogue. (However, for all of his machinations in the skullduggery, Linc Williams seems to have gotten off scott-free and unrepentant.) Interesting and well-written enough of this type, although parts were much too far-fetched or illogical. Not all of the characters are likable, but they are well fleshed-out. The story holds together fairly well, without a lot of extraneous plot elements or superfluous characters. A fine entry in this series and entertaining throughout.

The Man in the Brown Suit
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1924

Anne Beddingfeld has been managing the household of her anthropologist father since her mother’s death years earlier. When her father dies unexpectedly, Anne decides she wants more excitement in her life, and she moves to London. One day in the subway, a man becomes frightened and accidentally falls on the tracks, and is killed instantly. A man in a brown suit is seen running away from the scene, and drops a piece of paper, so she picks it up. Suddenly, she finds herself caught up in a whirlwind of international intrigue, diamond smuggling, murder and political skullduggery. The man in the brown suit is also implicated in the murder of a young woman who is found in the house of Sir Eustace Pedler while he is at Cannes. The victim turns out to be a famous Russian ballerina, who is actually part of an international crime ring, and has been blackmailing the head of the organization, a shadowy figure known as “The Colonel.” The paper dropped in the train station leads Anne to board the Kilmorden Castle sailing to South Africa, where political unrest is going on. On board, Anne meets the pretty and jolly Suzanne Blair and Colonel Race, who is rumored to be with the Secret Service. She also meets the foppish Sir Eustace, who is traveling with his secretary, Guy Pagett, and another shadowy figure called Harry Rayburn, who keeps out of sight and turns out the be the man in the brown suit. (It is Sir Eustace’s diary that provides those parts of the narrative that Anne can not know about first-hand.) After a mix-up of cabins, someone inadvertently throws a packet of stolen diamonds in Mrs. Blair’s window, and these were the linch-pin of this mystery. They were originally part of a heist pulled off by “The Colonel,” but spirited away by the ballerina to use for blackmail, and the crime was pinned on two English youths (one of whom was Harry Rayburn) whose lives were ruined by the scandal. Anne and Harry team up to clear his name, expose “The Colonel,” and identify the ballerina’s murderer. It turns out “The Colonel” was Sir Eustace of all people (and he killed the ballerina by himself) and Colonel Race really was with the Secret Service, and hot on Sir Eustace’s trail. Anne pretends to walk into his trap, and Sir Eustace believes he has her, Harry and the diamonds – but they turn the tables on him, and he is taken into custody. Harry’s name is cleared, and Suzanne returns home to plan a big wedding for Harry and Anne, but instead they elope and raise a family in the South African wilds. Sir Eustace escapes and goes into hiding. All the loose ends are resolved satisfactorily, and this turned out to be a rip-roaring, crackerjack mystery that was rousing and entertaining throughout.

Martinis and Mayhem
Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Penguin Books
1995

This story is taken from the “Murder, She Wrote” TV series, wherein mystery writer Jessica Fletcher turns sleuth to solve murders. While on a book promotion tour in San Francisco, she is contacted by a woman in prison who was framed for killing her husband. Jessica’s friend George Sutherland from Scotland Yard is also visiting San Francisco, and they team up to find the real killer. There are more murders and “convenient accidents;” though told in a lively style, it tends to be a bit disjointed and confusing, with way too many peripheral characters. The ending is roundabout, over-populated and extremely involved.

Member of the Wedding
Carson McCullers
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Houghton Mifflin
1946

This is a coming-of-age story of a gangly young girl in the south. Frankie Addams lives with her father and housekeeper, but feels alienated and out of place. When her older brother announces plans to marry someone nearby, Frankie decides to stay with them so she will finally have somewhere to fit in. The housekeeper does her best to make Frankie see reason, but things inevitably go awry. Told in an eccentric and melodramatic way in keeping with the characters, poignant but not engaging. Also made as a movie with Piper Laurie and Ethel Waters.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
John Gray
Self-Help
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Harper Collins
1992

Dr. Gray had a successful practice as a counselor for people in troubled relationships. This led him to identify certain recurring themes that problem couples had. He developed a series of seminars that couples could attend, and practice the techniques he created to resolve their differences. The program has been wildly successful, and he has written several other books that focus on individual elements of his program. This book is interesting and very supportive, well-written and credible. It is sensitive and comforting, with many helpful anecdotes and practical suggestions.

Midshipman Bolitho
Alexander Kent
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Hutchinson, UK
1975

This is the first book in this series, set in 1772 with Richard Bolitho as a 16-year-old midshipman, and setting out for Africa on the HMS Gorgon (ship of the line) under Captain Conway. Apparently their orders are to rout out pirates along the African coast, but the pirates are already two steps ahead of them, and using some captured British ships to lure Gorgon into a trap that nearly succeeds. But instead, the Captain decides on a risky plan to snatch the captured ships back from under the pirates’ noses. One of the unpopular officers chooses all the sailors he doesn’t like for this mission, Bolitho included. But the youngsters acquit themselves well, with Bolitho taking command when the officer is indisposed. The dangerous mission has an unlikely success, to the amazement of all. The officer doesn’t offer credit to anyone, but Bolitho senses that the Captain understands more than he reveals. Next, they commandeer a slave ship and pretend to chase it with the re-captured British ship, so the pirates let the slave ship into their dock, even though it’s really full of Marines and sailors instead of slaves. They have a rousing success and re-take the fort, although the head pirate escapes. But the Captain is very pleased with everyone, and that’s as far as this part of the story gets wrapped up, with its loose ends left flapping behind it. This modern reprint of the book actually includes two early stories together, with the first followed by “Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger.” After the Gorgon returns to England for repairs, Bolitho and another Midshipman, Martin Dancer, plan to spend the Christmas holiday on leave with the Bolitho family. But they no sooner arrive, than a body washes up nearby (this is at Falmouth in Cornwall) and they get roped into a mission trying to eradicate smugglers in the area. The King’s ship that shows up for this task is the Avenger, captained in an interesting coincidence by his older brother, Hugh Bolitho. Unlike him, his brother tends to be more reckless, impetuous and self-centered. He keeps getting into scrapes of one disreputable sort or another, and slithering out of it with his charm, threats or bullets. They have a lively time against some smugglers, saving a merchant ship from being lured into a trap, although most of the smugglers snuck away through the hills. But Hugh can’t help but have a grudging respect for the quick wits and courage of his younger brother during the mission. Then Hugh comes up with a sort of hare-brained scheme to set a trap for the smugglers, and assigns Dancer to that mission. But an insider betrays them, and also prevents reinforcements from reaching them, so they lose the cargo and the Company, and Hugh’s career appears to be in tatters. Then they find out the smugglers are holding Dancer for ransom, and when they exchange him for one of the captives, he is able to identify the informant who spoiled Hugh’s caper. It turns out to be Sir Henry Vyvyan the local Magistrate, whose job it was to keep order and protect the town, which was sort of like having the fox keeping watch on the chicken coop. Of course they have no proof, and Hugh is unceremoniously summoned back to Plymouth for an investigation of his ill-fated schemes. Instead, Richard suggests they chase after Sir Henry, who is sailing to the American colonies with his booty, until things quiet down in Cornwall. They catch him on Christmas Day, and although Sir Henry is killed by cannon fire, the stolen cargo is all they need to prove his involvement with the smugglers. That’s where this part of the story ends, although it’s still a nice enough ending for all that. And the brothers seem to have developed a deeper relationship and mutual respect, more so than would have been expected at the beginning of the story. These are another two crackerjack adventures that never lag, and are lively and interesting throughout, as is the whole series. The characters are genuine and likable, which is so rare nowadays. The stories are historically interesting, colorful and exciting, while even the battle scenes manage to be realistic without being gruesome. Thoroughly enjoyable, even if you read the books out of sequence, which is a hard trick to pull off.

Miss Clare Remembers
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Academy, Chicago / Houghton Mifflin Company
1962

Here is another in a series of books by this author and featuring tales of English country life from a bygone era. At the beginning of this book, retired school teacher Dolly Clare is expecting a visit from her life-long companion, Emily Davis, and while getting ready, she reminisces. When she was born in 1888, Dolly’s parents and older sister Ada were living in genteel poverty in nearby Caxley, a bustling market town. Her father was a thatcher, a seasonal business at best, and when he was injured, things got very difficult financially. It was only the generosity and support of relatives and neighbors that pulled them through in one piece. Dolly and Ada attended the school in Caxley, a big barn of a place with 100 students of all ages and descriptions, from the well-to-do merchant children, to the farmers, shopkeepers and servants children, and some even worse off than the Clares, living in the slums by the marsh. Dolly who was quiet and shy, unlike her boisterous sister, did not meet many people, but she was very observant. One bright ray in their poor lives were visits to their paternal grandparents, close enough to walk in nice weather and full of good food, plush comforts and treats. One day when Dolly was 6, her father came home with the good news that one of the local landlords had offered him a cottage in the country at a very attractive rent, which was just as well, because it turned out their current place was among those in the way of a new railroad. So they packed up everything they owned and set off for Beech Green, a bucolic paradise compared to gritty Caxley, although not far away. One disaster of moving was losing Dolly’s beloved rag doll, Emily, but when she went to the school in Beech Green, in an interesting coincidence, she was paired with another newcomer, Emily Davis, and that took some of the sting out of the loss. They take to village life like country ducks to water, and make friends with everyone, especially all of the large and rollicking Davis family nearby. When Dolly’s brother Frank is born, both she and Emily dote on him. The big excitement in 1897 is Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, although setbacks in the Boer War and local casualties take the excitement out of it for the sensitive youngsters. When she was 14, Ada left school and was expected to work as a maid in the Manor House of Beech Green, but that was too dull for the headstrong Ada, who preferred instead a more exciting job in a shop at Caxley. Poor Frank was only 4 years old when he was struck down with bronchitis, leaving the family bereft. The new Headmaster raised hackles in the village with his modern ways, and their disgruntled parents sent Dolly and Emily to school in neighboring Fairacre instead. When the old Queen finally dies, the older people are prostrate, although the children don’t realize the significance until they’re older. Their new Headmaster is so taken with Dolly and Emily that he invites them to become Teacher’s Assistants, preparatory to studying to become teachers. Ever the headstrong Ada has a falling out with her family over an unsuitable match, who she marries anyway, perhaps just for spite. It’s only later when Ada has a son, and asks Dolly to be godmother, that they are reconciled. When Fairacre’s Infant Teacher retires, Dolly takes that job, and Emily one in another town beyond Caxley. The Manor family in Beech Green sails on the Titanic and is lost along with her, stunning the village to its roots. When the new Headmaster’s daughter suddenly dies, he drowns his sorrow in drink, which Dolly cannot understand. But when her fiancé is killed in the Great War, it is only her strength of character and sheer will-power that keep her going. She feels even worse for poor Emily, whose fiancé is injured and then runs off with his nurse, practically leaving Emily at the altar. After that, a lot of things happen at once, as even in the country, the modern post-war era is ushered in. There are buses, so families can visit or shop more easily between towns. Dolly and Emily accept the idea that they will grow into old spinster teachers together, and so they do. Dolly’s father passes away quietly, and years later, her mother also. Then there’s another war, and worse this time, with everyone in the country taking in children escaping from London air raids. There continue to be changes in government and education after the war, but in Fairacre and Beech Green, some things never seem to change. Finally Dolly’s health begins to fail (this was told in greater detail in another book) and she retires at long last. And then like a dream coming true, Emily Davis finds her life suddenly free of all family encumbrances, and with rejoicing, she moves in with Dolly, making it the happiest ending of all. Although all of these books are charmingly quaint and sweetly amusing, this one stands apart for the length and breadth, as well as detail, of its narrative, and pulling together so many elements over the years that make up the other stories in this series, such as Mrs. Pringle, Mr. Willet, Miss Read and others. They are always well-written and with genuine affection for the characters, although carefully drawn with warts and all. They are always a pleasure to read, like visiting with an old friend, and sorry to finish them. Although Dolly’s ill-fated romance seems superficially told, but that is only a small quibble in an otherwise interesting and entertaining book.

Missing Susan
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine Books / Random House
1991

Forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson finds herself at loose ends when her husband leaves on a 6-week expedition, so she joins a murder mystery tour through the south of England. The tour guide, Rowan Rover, has been hired to kill one of the tourists by her uncle. The story follows the many accidents and near-misses along the tour as Susan manages to elude her destiny. More travelogue than murder mystery, even for this author, whose books are long on atmosphere and short on plot.

Missouri Homestead
T.L. Tedrow
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Thomas Nelson Inc.
1992

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the experiences of her family growing up out west in the 1800's and her books were so widely read and revered that they were turned into a hit TV show in the 1970's - “Little House on the Prairie” with Michael Landon. This author has taken Laura, all grown up and married, and woven a fictionalized story around some of the actual events in her life. Before this story begins, Laura has married Almonzo Wilder, even though she never wanted to be a farmer’s wife like her mother. Things went from bad to worse for them in South Dakota, with failed crops, illness, losing farm after farm, the death of their baby son, and the fire that burned them out and left them homeless. This book begins in 1894 when Laura and Manly and daughter Rose have settled in the tiny village of Mansfield, Missouri. They sink everything they have into 4-acres of Apple Hill Farm and hope for better luck this time. Ten years later, they have a large modern farmhouse on 80 acres, and Rose is going to boarding school in New Orleans to give her a better chance in life. Always willing to speak her mind, and not the kind to back down from a fight, Laura begins writing a column for the local newspaper, The Mansfield Monitor. She discusses items of importance to her, such as women’s suffrage, illiteracy and conservation. She especially decries the neglect of good farm land and clearing trees without re-planting. This flies in the face of wealthy and powerful William Bentley, whose logging company is cutting the trees and leaving farms to erode away. Their feud splits the small town in two, since Bentley employs many of the residents, and he has many influential friends in government, and creates bad feelings on both sides. Finally, Laura’s better nature comes to the fore, and she decides to tone down the rhetoric and try to bury the hatchet for the good of the community, figuring that working together with compromises is better than fighting. But Bentley won’t let up, and in fact, is gleeful when his loggers discover blight at Apple Hill Farm, and their trees start dying. Things get ugly at the Independence Day celebrations, with Manly and Bentley getting into a fight, and Laura pushes the snooty Mrs. Bentley into the punch bowl. At last, the newspaper editor gets word from another state who suffered a similar problem, of these particular loggers deliberately poisoning trees, convincing people it’s blight, and ensuring a steady paycheck as the towns agree to have all the trees cut down to stop the spread of the supposed blight. This bombshell really takes the wind out of Bentley’s sails (he had been duped by the logging foreman like everyone else) and like Ebenezer Scrooge, has an immediate change of heart, and turns into a pillar of society overnight. The book ends happily with peace and good will for all. This book is nice enough as a clean and uplifting example of country life at the t\turn of the century. It’s a little too tense to be the charming and bucolic stroll through the meadow that it might be trying to be, and it’s much too dull to be a real adventure story. But the feud and the logging scam are too arch and sinister for this type of story, coloring everything with tension and nastiness, and completely overwhelming the nice and picaresque elements of the story, such as the children’s horse race and Manly’s love of new gadgets. But even in these nicer elements, there are mixed messages and moral ambivalence (such as the Pastor’s misbehaving scamps) that I don’t expect to find in juvenile literature. Well-written in an easy and informal style, it’s nice enough and you could read more from this series, but it fails to entirely engage you and really make you want to be a part of their lives.

Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle
Hamilton Crane
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 2
Berkley Publishing
1992

Miss Emily Seeton is a retired art teacher who, in a series of books by this author (plus nom de plumes Heron Carvic and Hampton Charles) helps Scotland Yard Inspector Delphick solve cases by sketching cryptic pictures (apparently subconsciously) that only make sense in retrospect. In this story, the heir to the MacSporran family, the baby Marguerite is kidnaped, but left outside Miss Seeton’s door in the first chapter. Her drawing of a blackbird somehow helps the police capture the would-be kidnapers. She is then invited to the MacSporran Castle by a grateful family. She travels there with Mel Forby, a newspaper reporter from previous books, who believes she has discovered some dangerous conspiracies being hatched in the local pub. Part history book, part travelogue, and amazingly unhindered by plot – the story meanders along slowly and aimlessly chapter after chapter. Although told in a gently amusing style, it is one of the wordiest and most pointless books I’ve ever read. Eventually, Miss Seeton stumbles onto a Jacobite plot to blow up Balmoral, and another sub-plot involving a discovery of platinum in the area, and it turns out the bartender was behind it all. A strange, almost stream-of-consciousness book, and an extremely disappointing ending – it’s a wonder this series ever caught on.

Mistress Mischief
Susan Carroll
Romance
Fiction
Rating 4
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1992

The young widow Lady Raincliff is left penniless at the sudden demise of her elderly husband, and thrown out of the family home by her nasty step-son, with nothing but her companion and the clothes on her back. They settle in London selling off jewelry and clothes, hoping to win a little money at card playing, and perhaps find a gentleman to support them. Some distant relatives, fearing the dowager’s fast reputation might scandalize their daughters’ debuts, send Max Warfield out to make sure she stays respectable. Although Max has no patience for dithering females, he feels sorry for the widow, which of course infuriates her. There follows an entertaining and spirited romp involving all manner of adventures while they try not to fall in love with each other, but of course, they do. Even her companion makes a good match. Gently amusing, interesting and very satisfying.

Mistress of Myself
Mrs. Robert Henrey
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
J.M. Dent & Sons
1959

Charmless and erratic tale of a woman in middle life. The writer is French and married to an English businessman. A succession of books have been published that are biographical sketches of her life from childhood forward. She and her friends are so vain, insipid and useless, they are impossible to care about. Their vapid lives revolve around shopping, food and parties – and are so utterly pointless with no redeeming features. Anachronistic in the most irritating way, it’s enough to make a Communist out of anybody. The ending is stupefying. A waste of time.

The Moon-Spinners
Mary Stewart
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Crest / M.S. Mill Company Inc.
1962

Young Miss Ferris, an English woman attached to the British Embassy in Greece, plans to meet her cousin Frances in Agios Georgios on Crete. But along the way, she gets waylaid by a Greek and a wounded Englishman hiding out in a shepherd’s hut in the mountains. It turns out the Greek, Lambis, was acting as tour guide to Mark Langley and his younger brother Colin, who accidentally happened upon a group of Cretans who had killed a man, and when they spotted the Englishman, they shot Mark and abducted Colin, trying to keep things quiet. Lambis found Mark later and hid him in the hut, while looking out for the Cretans coming back to finish the job. Nicola gives them her food and cleans Mark’s wounds and stays with him while Lambis goes back to the boat at night for supplies. In the morning they spot the Cretan searching for Mark, but they elude him and everyone decides it would be best for Nicola to go back to town with her cousin and keep out of danger. When she goes to Agios Georgios, she finds that it is such tiny place that nothing can happen there without everyone knowing about it and her suspicions are naturally aroused by the new hotel (actually a converted house) which is the only place a foreigner would have to go. The owner, Stratos Alexiakis, came back from London with his fortune and brought with him Tony Gamble as his right-hand man. Meanwhile, his sister Sofia helps out at the hotel to get away from her brutish husband, Josef. When cousin Frances arrives, under the pretext of her being such a nature enthusiast, the girls set off sleuthing in earnest. They poke into everything and everywhere to be found, taking pictures and insinuating themselves into peoples’ homes, businesses, boats and even windmills. It’s in Sofia’s windmill that Nicola finds evidence that she believes proves that Colin had been a captive there and was later killed. When she decides to somehow track down Mark and give him the bad news, she instead bumps into Colin disguised as a shepherd up in the hills. Apparently Sofia let him go, rather than have his blood on her hands if Josef killed him. What happens next is a great twist, although his little hard to get through. Nicola and Colin set off trying somehow to reconnect with Mark and Lambis, and stumble across a shallow grave with Mark’s body along the way. Then they notice Lambis in the distance, in conversation with the Cretan, which makes them think very terrible things, and when the two separate, they sneak after Lambis. They get the drop on him, and at gunpoint, he admits to the killing although the claims it was accidental. Here Nicola becomes hysterical and hurls invective upon him mercilessly, which is why they were not paying attention when the Cretan suddenly appeared among them. Luckily it turned out to be Mark in the Cretan’s clothes and it was in fact Sofia’s horrible husband Josef the Cretan who had been accidentally killed and Mark swapped clothes with him to try and blend in as they continued looking for Colin. At this point, Nicola goes completely to pieces, partly relieved and partly embarrassed over her feelings for Mark. It’s a sweetly touching moment in an otherwise tense story. Their plan is for Nicola to return to the hotel while the men sail to Athens to alert the authorities, but they set up a pre-arranged signal in case Nicola and her cousin feel that they need to leave in a hurry. This may turn out to be the case, when Nicola realizes that she somehow has the dead Josef’s knife in her pocket and everyone of the hotel seems to know about it. The girls sneak out of the hotel in the dead of night and tiptoe along the beach to the meeting place, but they can’t signal because the flashlight is broken. When Nicola believes she sees their dark boat slipping stealthily into the day, she swims out to it, but it turns out to be Stratos instead, who tries to harpoon her. Luckily she is rescued by Mark and crew, and they discover that Stratos was out of in the dark checking on his stash of hot jewels which were the basis for the whole shebang - a falling out among partners, leaving England, laying low here, and killing the estranged partner who showed up unexpectedly to claim his share. The authorities take care of Stratos, but Tony apparently manages to slip away with the jewels and a boat for some reason. The ending is chaotic and disjointed, and without the emotional payoff that might be expected, it’s ultimately disappointing. With a better ending (letting Tony get away was just too ridiculous) it would have been a great book, because it’s very well written throughout and is emotionally involving because you genuinely care about the characters. It’s faintly Hitchcockian, as ordinary people are thrust into terrifying situations unexpectedly and rise to the occasion. It grabs you by the lapels on the first page and puls you right along with it, headlong all the way and over some pretty bumpy terrain. The only quibble I have with the writing is that because it’s so tense and breathless, the descriptive passages can’t hold their own and get lost in the shuffle. A more romantic ending might have seemed too prosaic, but I would have liked it better.

Murder in Moscow
Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 2
Signet / Penguin Putnam (MCS Publishing)
1998

Here is another in a series of books based on the hit TV show “Murder, She Wrote” and featuring mystery writer Jessica Fletcher also operates as an amateur sleuth. In this tale, Jessica leaves the cozy confines of Cabot Cove, Maine, for Washington, D.C., where she joins a delegation of writers and publishers going to Russia on a cultural exchange visit sponsored by the Commerce Department. (In a funny aside, Jessica mentions one of her favorite new authors, Sharyn McCrumb, whose “Missing Susan” is the same sort of glorified travelogue, with explicit descriptions of all of the tourist attractions throughout.) While the delegation is being wined and dined in the Capitol and meeting the President (a big fan) Jessica is approached by a shadowy figure from the State Department who asks her to submit to a de-briefing after returning from abroad, even though these are private citizens engaged in free market business dealings. When she stumbles over his dead body in the bushes later, it seems a strange coincidence. It’s almost a relief to fly out of Washington with its political intrigue and cloak-and-dagger mentality. But it doesn’t take long once they reach Moscow for Jessica’s new Russian publisher to keel over dead at dinner, and she also just ducks a gangland-style killing on a street corner. Meanwhile a cadre of American and Russian spy sorts is trying to convince Jessica to meet with a Ms. Kozhina, a mysterious Russian woman whose name was given to Jessica by a Russian ex-patriate before she left home. Although she meets with Kozhina at the behest of her own government, things do not go as planned. She brings along Vaughn Buckley (her American publisher) and his wife for security in numbers, but she is spirited away from them and led on a merry chase of speeding cars, dark alleys, rooftops, abandoned buildings and isolated countryside, with the sound of bullets dogging their footsteps. Finally the two ladies are hustled onto a plane with the Buckley’s and tearing off to London without even their luggage. After that, the story peters out in fits and starts, and the ending totally makes no sense whatsoever. Apparently Kozhina had been working as a double-agent along, but was being recruited through Jessica by another American agency that didn’t realize it. (?!) Someone tries to kill Kozhina, but Jessica acting quickly with Scotland Yard chief George Sutherland (from previous books) foil the attempt. The wind-up, where the government officials explain everything, explains nothing and in fact makes things even more confused. Everyone goes home and one year later, Kozhina writes a book about her life as a spy and then disappears. This seems like a book written by a team of people who never spoke to each other and no one told the last group what the ending was. Not at all well-written with typos and grammar lapses that distract the narrative. The story is too ridiculous, even in the beginning, and becomes increasingly far-fetched as it goes along, until the ludicrous and incomprehensible chase out of Moscow just loses it altogether. A good ending might have saved it, but the ending was the worst and most confusing part of all. Even for a workmanlike and formulaic series of books like this, this one was really a notch or two below par. Very disappointing.

Murder in the Oval Office
Elliott Roosevelt
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
St. Martin’s Press / Avon Books
1989

The author must be some relation to Franklin Roosevelt, although you’d never know it to read the book jacket or blurbs, and this is one in a series of these mysteries featuring feisty First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as an amateur sleuth. In 1933, at a state dinner for a French diplomat, Congressman Winstead Colmer (unpopular Chairman of the Banking Sub-committee) is killed in the Oval Office. Although the room was entirely locked and bolted from the inside, none of Colmer’s fingerprints were found there, leading Police to doubt it could be suicide. Although he had many enemies, most of them would not have access to the Oval Office, although everyone agrees that the security at that time left a lot to be desired. Also, the pretty young Mrs. Colmer (much maligned by his Alabama family) refused to account for her whereabouts at the time. Then Douglas McKinney (a low-level White House staffer who may not be what he appears) begins poking around on his own and asking questions, and the next thing you know, someone clobbers him also in the Oval Office, but fortunately not fatally. Doug is of the school of thought that the father of Jane Stebbins killed Colmer, for getting his daughter pregnant, and in fact, some incriminating evidence was conveniently left in the Oval Office implicating him. Meanwhile, Mrs. Colmer bolts, which looks very suspicious, and we find her hiding out in the unlikely company of Sally Rand, famous fan dancer, of all people. Otto Peavy of Enterprise Bank in Chicago (suspected of laundering money for mobsters) had strong motives for wanting Colmer eliminated, and FDR decides to send J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI chasing after him, although he considers him a pain in the neck, mostly useless and a grand-standing publicity hound. Peavy thinks things are starting to get a little too hot, so he sends his goons out to find Mrs. Colmer, which they do, and then tip off the Police, so the focus of the investigation will shift over to her instead. The Police put her in custody for her own protection, because interested parties keep breaking in and ransacking her house, obviously looking for something. We also discover that Peavy and Colmer’s estranged brother, Lee Bob Colmer, have been meeting covertly, and suddenly Lee Bob is missing as well. When Lee Bob turns up dead in Chicago, FDR sends Hoover back out to lean on Peavy harder and get some answers this time. Finally we have that celebrated cliche of whodunits the world over – gathering everyone together into a room to unmask the culprit. It turns out to be Doug McKiney of course, who seemed to crop up everywhere in this story, and although it might have been a red herring, it certainly did seem suspicious, even to me. He and Mrs. Colmer were having an affair, so he killed her husband in the Oval Office and then bolted the door from the outside using fishing line pulled through the door jamb. He also killed the abortionist he sent her to (which she didn’t use) who was blackmailing him. All of the other shenanigans were totally unrelated to what was essentially a romantic triangle gone bad. In the epilogue, McKinney is executed and Mrs. Colmer gives up the baby and later marries one of the Secret Service agents involved in the case. The other malefactors go to prison, while the ordinary folks go back to leading their quiet lives. This book was interesting from a historical standpoint, especially as it introduced young and unimportant unknowns who later became famous, like Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, Dean Acheson and others. It’s well-written in an informal and straightforward style, and what political or partisan axes it has to grind, it grinds them calmly and without hysteria. But it certainly doesn’t show off Eleanor Roosevelt’s sleuthing ability, since like everyone else, she only seems to be on the periphery of the story, not its protagonist. Because the book has no narrative and is told in the third person throughout, it loses a lot of its impact. The characters are nice enough, but there’s way too many of them and they’re all very sketchy, including the First Couple. It was interesting throughout, although the ending was something of a mish-mosh, but it would certainly not make you want to run out and read another one.

Murder Well-Done
Claudia Bishop
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Berkley Publishing
1996

This author has written a series of mysteries set in the tiny village of Hemlock Falls in upstate New York. The Inn at Hemlock Falls is run by sisters Meg and Sarah Quilliam, plus John Raintree. The Inn is famous for Meg’s cuisine (each book sports a recipe and has a food-related title) and the sisters also do some amateur sleuthing. Just before Christmas, ex-Senator Alphonse Santini is having his wedding at the Inn. This brings all sorts of crowds, media and chaos to the area. When local news anchor Nora Cahill is killed (conveniently on traffic video-taping equipment) Sarah is arrested for the crime. While she is in jail, someone kills the sheriff and puts the body in her cell, in an attempt to frame her. Fortunately, that doesn’t work and Sarah starts poking around for the real killer. Next murdered is the ex-Senator himself, and then everyone realizes it must be his future father-in-law, Vittorio McIntosh, who was being blackmailed (by all three victims?!) over his mob connections. This book, and perhaps the whole series, is hopelessly over-populated with the most irritating, uninteresting and obnoxious characters that are impossible to care about. It is so over-stuffed with pointless activity that it is exhausting to read. The dialogue is arch and obtuse. Much too strident to be the quaintly eccentric mystery it thinks it is.

Murder With Mirrors
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster (Dodd, Mead)
1952

Amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple goes for a visit to Stony Gates, a country club-like facility for emotionally disturbed youngsters, at the request of a friend who is concerned about the goings-on there. Mrs. Serrocold funds the facility, along with her third husband, who is a zealot for causes like this. When her step-son is killed on a visit, suspicion is immediately thrown on the unbalanced young men at Stony Gates. The house is full of relatives upon relatives, all with some motive or other; there are sub-plots and red herrings galore, including a rumor that someone has been trying to poison Mrs. Serrocold. It turns out of course the no-good Mr. Serrocold killed him and two others (with the help of his illegitimate son, posing as a Stony Gates inmate) to cover up financial hanky-panky in the foundation that supported the facility.

Music in the Hills
D.E. Stevenson
Drama
Rating 4
ACE Books / Div. Charter Communications Inc.
Grosset & Dunlap / In agreement with Holt, Rinehart and Winston
1950

The story is set in the hills of the southern border of Scotland at Mureth Farm, which has been home to Jock Johnstone and his family for generations. His wife, Mamie, meets the new shepherd, Daniel Reid, who it turns out is the son of one of their former farmhands, returned to his homeland after years of traveling abroad. This is the second book in a trilogy, so anyone who read “Vittoria Cottage” would already know Mamie’s sisters Harriet, Caroline and Jean. When Caroline’s odious husband dies, she remarries Robert Shepperton, who was ostensibly Harriet’s beau, causing Harriet to flee to America and pursue her acting career. Caroline’s son James comes back to Scotland after years of adventure abroad, and stays with the Johnstones to learn farming techniques, although he admits to Mamie that farming would never appeal to his dream girl, Rhoda, an artist he met in London who rebuffed his advances. James meets Daniel Reid, and they get along famously, as well as many other tenants of the farm, who remember him from when his family would visit when he was a little boy. (Sensitive readers might want to avoid the rabbit hunting episode.) He also meets Lady Steele, the matriarch of the area's ancestral family (they still maintain the ancient tower that was once a fortress used in border disputes between England and Scotland) and her pretty niece, Holly Douglas. Later, he meets the autocratic Sir Anthony Steele and finds him insufferable, although he is charmed by their young daughter Eleanor, who he feels is being stifled by their insularity. The Johnstones had taken in Lizzie Smith and her two children Duggie and Greta who were relocated to the country during the London blitz, and Lizzie stayed on as cook, although Mamie finds Lizzie humorless and superstitious, and the children aloof and wary, even years later. Mamie makes Greta a Topsy doll in the hopes of getting to know her better. Meanwhile, James gets off on the wrong foot with Mr. McKenzie at Boscath Farm, whose lackadaisical approach to farming makes even the mild-mannered Jock see red. Just when James is feeling that he’ll never be able to stand on his own two feet at farming, his Uncle Jock surprises him by offering the position of managing Boscath, after giving McKenzie the heave-ho, so he can learn all he needs to while still being close enough for help if necessary. James is amazed and jumps at it gratefully, but that isn’t all. Jock says that they want to leave Mureth to him as their heir, and ask if he would also assume the Johnstone name, for tradition’s sake, which he quickly agrees to, although his head is spinning at this sudden change in his fortunes. Next up is the Mureth barn dance, to which James asks Mamie to invite Holly Douglas and Eleanor Steele, although her parents refuse to let Eleanor attend. Everyone else has a fine time, including some townspeople that had been invited for James’ sake, so he could meet more people than just the local farming families. Now that James’ future is assured, he intends to propose to Holly, but finds that he can’t stop thinking of Rhoda instead. Later, Daniel Reid is surprised to stumble across Eleanor in the woods, where she had gotten lost trying to walk to the party at night, after sneaking out of her house. When James finds out, he realizes that she’s terribly infatuated with him, and knows that he and Daniel had better sneak her back without anyone finding out, or the whole community will be in a stink about it. Daniel agrees to run her back home on his motor-bike, so she can let herself back inside without arousing comment. But James prevails upon Mamie to speak to Lady Steele about sending Eleanor to school, rather than keeping her home with a governess, and Mamie does her best, in spite of Lady Steele’s icy reception of this idea. Then James and Daniel go looking to retrieve some lost sheep who had wandered through a gap in a stone wall, but they run afoul of Mr. Heddle, the business tycoon who bought the neighboring property, who rightfully assumes that they’re stealing his sheep instead. James does his best to defuse the antagonism, but both sides feel aggrieved, so all of James’ logic and reasonableness is wasted on them. After the incident with Mr. Heddle, Jock admits that he has his doubts about Daniel Reid, and he sets James to draining a meadow to keep him busy, while giving the men less time to be together. There is a colorful sideline about the entire farming community hiring a bus for an excursion to view the King and Queen pass by in the Royal Train, although the real show is put on by the locals, exhibiting all of their ordinary foibles. One night James and Daniel go after sheep stealers in earnest, and James is astounded to uncover Daniel in cahoots with the scoundrels. Actually, it turns out to be Daniel’s ne’er-do-well brother Jed, who escapes, but it has the benefit of making Jock realize that he had been blaming Daniel for things he had seen Jed doing instead. Then James is invited to a party at the new neighbors, and figures he should go to make amends for the lost sheep incident, but he and the other country folk find the Heddles and their fancy London friends to be strange and unappealing company. In speaking with Holly later, he finds that she had a wonderful time at the party, and he can’t help but wonder if she would be right for him as a farmer’s wife, which makes him feel guilty about stringing her along. Then he and Jock go to Edinburgh, to see the lawyer about changing his will. Meanwhile, Mamie had written a letter to the object of James’ affection, the London artist Rhoda Ware, as part of her attempts to keep James from being involved with Holly Douglas (who she considers unsuitable) and when the young lady unexpectedly shows up at Mureth, she invites her to stay with them, rather than be an object of curiosity in town. News of the stranger spreads like wildfire, and sets the community on its ear, wondering about her, especially as Rhoda wanders about sketching the landscape and town. On Sunday, the ladies go together to church, where Rhoda is properly introduced to the neighbors. She also meets Holly Douglas, who makes such a show of her involvement with James that it scares Rhoda into leaving Mureth before James returns, in case his feelings for her have changed since they parted. Mamie persuades her to stay a bit longer and finish her painting that she had started, and while she is doing that, the men return unexpectedly, and James happens upon Rhoda in veritable paroxysms of joy. Actually, the book ends as he espies her in a meadow, and we are left to imagine their transports of ecstasy at being reunited. This is a lovely and charming book, full of genuine and likable characters, and told with warmth and humor. It’s delightful company and comfortable as an old easy chair, with its gentle depictions of country life and simple pleasures. This story has the advantage of standing on its own, regardless of not reading the other two books in the trilogy, which can be a difficult trick to pull off. Not technically a romance, it is nonetheless interesting and engaging, and not a bit melodramatic or overly sentimental. Somehow, this author always manages to strike just the right emotional note, and all of her books are enjoyable and satisfying. In modern cynical times, this is truly a lost art, so discovering one of these hidden treasures is a real treat.

Mutual Consent
Gayle Buck
Romance
Rating 3
Penguin Books
1991

Barbara Cribbage marries Marcus, Earl of Chatworth, because her father holds his gambling debts and he wants to be accepted in society. Babs and Marcus agree to have a “marriage of convenience,” and scheme to get out from under her father’s control once and for all. Their relationship has its ups and downs, but of course they fall in love. Unstartling but pleasant enough and typical of this genre.

My Anecdotal Life
Carl Reiner
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
St. Martin’s Press
2003

The author is a comedy writer who worked on early TV programs such as “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” His other credits include “The 2000 Year Old Man” with Mel Brooks. He went on to produce and direct other shows, as well as movies like “The Jerk” and “Oh God!” He later became famous as the father of Rob Reiner, a well-known actor and director in his own right, as well as being married to Penny Marshall, herself a well-known actress and director. Previously he had written two semi-autobiographical novels, “Enter Laughing” and “Continue Laughing,” so this book, rather than being technically a memoir, is more a series of anecdotes or favorite stories from his past. He started in the Catskills, doing skits and musical revues with other hopefuls, and in fact, met his wife Estelle there. After the war, he was hired for the road company of a Broadway musical, and was widely praised. It’s at this point that Rob is born, in a trunk as it were, as his parents travel around with the show, and finishing up in San Francisco. We also hear the behind-the-scenes story of the 2000 year old man from its impromptu beginnings in the writers room at “Your Show of Shows.” Although the author is known for his humor, many of the stories are suffused with an almost typically Jewish sense of melancholy, where you don’t so much laugh at them, as appreciate them intellectually. He tells three tales about inadvertently insulting people – one older man with a stroke, a pretty young girl with polio, and a young ad executive with a horrible birthmark. The last one turned out to be an accidental ink stain instead, but after his first two gaffes, he wasn’t about to say anything with the third one. An interesting anecdote about “Enter Laughing” also includes the famous writer, Herman Wouk. His stories about being on “This Is Your Life,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and the Hall of Fame Award from his high school were funny, but with that same wistful quality that permeates the rest of the book. We also hear about his play “Something Different,” which has the usual tribulations common to all plays, and runs three months on Broadway. He has kind words but dreadful stories about two of his movies, “The Comic” and “Where’s Poppa?” which were critical successes but financial failures. He also tells a nice story about his immigrant watchmaker father, a well-known tinkerer with several patents to his name, and who invented a simple pendulum clock that could run decades on the same home-made battery. There are other somewhat amusing tales about his one excursion with the Gourmet Eating Club, a dinner party with the famous French director Jean Renoir, and taking a pratfall when hosting a banquet that required emergency surgery with an 8-inch scar. There’s another story about a cookie recipe, which should have been funny, but instead falls flat in more ways than one. The book closes with a moving tribute to his older brother Charlie, and coincidentally, President Clinton, and stops right there. I found this a really disappointing book, which although interesting and well-written, is uniformly unfunny. I would expect the anecdotes of a famous comedy writer to be funny, but these are most definitely not. They range from the wincingly embarrassing to the desperately tragic, with nothing really funny anywhere. Apparently he’s lived a full life, traveled the world and hobnobbed with the rich and famous, but as he describes it, as if through a glass darkly, it all seems very sad and unfulfilling. For all of the show-biz types that he can tell stories about, from the very early days right up tho the present, I would expect this to be a much more entertaining book.

My Friends From Cairnton
Jane Duncan
Drama
Fiction
Rating 2
St. Martin’s Press
1964

This is one in a series of “My Friends” books from this author. The covers give the impression that they are jolly, happy-go-lucky tales of English country life – something like a grown-up version of the “Miss Read” stories. Not this one, however, which is strange, dreary and depressing. It involves Janet Sandison and Twice Alexander (everyone thinks of them as husband and wife, even though they are not married) working for an English agricultural company in the islands. Before the book starts, Twice (his name is Alexander Alexander, which is why they call him “Twice”) has a heart attack and spends a year as a semi-invalid. This puts a tremendous strain on their relationship, and makes Janet especially introspective, remembering her childhood in Scotland, and the people she knew then, and still knows now. But instead of being happy and idyllic, her childhood seems sad and pathetic, and gives the impression that her life has lurched from one crisis or disaster to the next – right up to Twice’s heart attack. Not interesting dramatically, and too arch to be funny, it walks a wobbly line between boredom and disgust. The characters are inarticulate (and yet verbose!) and so uninteresting, and even the descriptive passages lack interest. Reminiscent in all the worst ways of “Mistress of Myself,” another over-blown exercise in navel-gazing. Written in a plodding, unimaginative style that steadfastly refuses to engage your feelings or curiosity. Very disappointing.

My Friends George and Tom
Jane Duncan
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
St. Martin’s Press
1976

This is another in a series of semi-autobiographical novels by this author, featuring Janet Sandison and her family in Achcraggan in the northern wilds of Scotland above Inverness. When she had married Alexander Alexander (everyone called him “Twice”) they had moved to St. Jago in the West Indies for his health. But after 20+ years abroad, she finds herself a young widow and returning to her roots. The ancestral home, Reachfar, has passed out of their family, so she moves into a nearby cottage with her Uncle George and childhood friend Tom. She uses her publisher’s advance to modernize the cottage and make it more comfortable for the three of them. When her younger brother Jock and his wife Shona visit with their rambunctious children (see “My Friends, the Hungry Generation”) they realize the youngest has Down Syndrome. After they go back home, Janet is called into London by Mr. Arden of the publishing company for the release of her first novel in a blaze of publicity. She detests all of the attention and quickly scuttles back home, only to find that she has turned into not only a curiosity by the neighbors, but something of a local celebrity, called on for such events as opening the church’s jumble sale and bazaar. She also receives many well-wishing telegrams from all over the world, including her friends Sashie de Marnay and Sir Ian Dulac from St. Jago. Sir Ian’s plantation had been absorbed by a large corporation, and although very wealthy, he finds himself at loose ends and unwanted, and when Janet invites him to visit, he jumps at it like a drowning man on a life preserver, hanging around and shooting the breeze with George and Tom. Meanwhile, the pediatrician tells Shona what everybody else already knows about Sandy-Tom, the baby, and she goes completely to pieces. Then Janet’s second novel is as successful as her first, and she decides that it might be easier to write in a larger place that was more accommodating to their needs. She buys an old barn nearby (from Andrew Boyd, an Achcraggan ne’er-do-well who made good in the city, and who has been quietly buying up abandoned local properties to be restored for the general improvement of the village) and has it renovated to suit them. One unfortunate result of her recent fame is the fear that her evil step-mother will re-surface (whose name is a byword in the area) and it comes as almost a relief when they hear that she has died. Next, Jock is felled with some sort of cattle pox, and spends six weeks in the hospital, while the older children stay at the cottage. In an interesting development, Jock’s illness seems to prod Shona back to reality, and by the time he’s released, she’s practically her old self again, which is a great weight off of everyone. During this period, visitors to the cottage include Miss Arden, her publisher’s sister (who seems to cozy up to Sir Ian), Monica Daviot and Andrew Boyd (her scheming to entrap Andrew brings out unexpected jealousy in Janet), and the extravagantly wonderful Sashie de Marnay. After all this excitement, it seems that things will never get back to normal, but then people do leave (and Andrew tells Monica to go peddle her papers) and things start settling down. After all the recent hubbub, it’s almost an anti-climax when the contractors finally finish work on the barn in April and they move in. This leaves the cottage available for Jock’s family and school chums to stay over the Easter holiday. When Tom is laid up with bursitis, calling for enforced rest, Janet quickly re-hires the contractors to excavate a garden, mostly to keep Tom’s spirits up and give him something to be interested in. Janet goes to London again for another book publishing, and makes a side trip to Birmingham to visit Andrew Boyd’s country home. Later, Sashie points out the obvious – that Andrew is gay and his aide-de-camp David is really his partner, and this makes Janet feel even more protective of him. Andrew also finds the perfect house for Sashie nearby, whenever he’s in the area. Other visitors include Mark Alexander, Twice’s son from his first marriage, and the ubiquitous Monica Daviot, now with her hooks in Edward, Sir Ian’s hare-brained son. This author is famous for killing off characters, so in a book about George and Tom, it’s no big surprise that Tom doesn’t make it all the way to the end. When the time comes to tell the engravers what to put on the stone, this is the first that George tells everyone that Tom was actually his half-brother of his father’s(Jock and Janet’s grandfather) fling with a local lass. George’s mother did right by the young Tom, taking him in when his own mother died, and trusting the secret only to George. So the book ends in a bittersweet way, although it doesn’t seem terribly sad. I usually find these books arch, superficial and tiresome, but this one was surprisingly gentle, engaging and almost endearing in its careful depictions of country life. It showed the author in a much more mellow light than ever before, or would have believed possible, and the resulting book is full of charming stories and winsome anecdotes that are one pleasure after another. A pleasant surprise and welcome as a breath of spring.

My Friends, The Hungry Generation
Jane Duncan
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
St. Martin’s Press / MacMillan & Company
1968

Another in a series of stories by this author, featuring Janet & Twice Alexander, who have re-located from Scotland to the islands. (In “My Friends From Cairnton,” we discover that they are living together as husband and wife although they were not married.) Starting in 1956, an earthquake has shaken the island and killed a neighboring couple, the Macleans. Although Twice’s heart condition prevents traveling, Janet returns to Scotland with the new orphan, Roddy Maclean, and visits with her family. When her sister-in-law, Shona, goes into the hospital to have a baby, Janet is left at home to watch the other children – 3 boisterous youngsters that Janet finds a handful and then some. She discovers they have taken her and their father’s childhood at Reachfar, the old family estate, and turned it into a kind of mythical fantasy peopled with wonderful and magical characters. So when confronted with one of these supposed ethereal beings in the actual flesh, the children feel threatened and become distant and almost hostile. But Janet wins them over by telling them stories that support their fantasies, like fairy tales that happened long ago and far away, and most importantly, to different magical people and not the regular ordinary people who are here now. Meanwhile, the worldly Roddy falls for Shona’s sensible sister Sheila, but her family regards him as a sort of alien curiosity, because to their provincial tastes, he seems impossibly grandiose, impetuous and radical. Just before Janet has to return to St. Jago, the children have a ceremony accepting her into their mythical kingdom, and it all ends very happily. This book is better than the previous one, but still the characters are uniformly unlikable (especially the narrator) melodramatic and self-absorbed. It’s well-written in an engaging and informal style, and makes you feel as if you really know these people, although they’re still impossible to care about. The immediacy of the writing, which steeps you in the environment in a seemingly effortless way, makes you wish this author would write a book about more appealing characters for a change.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
John Lane Company
1921

Philanthropist Mrs. Inglethorpe is murdered at her estate, but fortunately, Hercule Poirot is visiting as a guest. Suspicion immediately falls on her husband, who nobody likes, and is considered a fortune-hunter by all. Scotland Yard investigates everyone staying at the estate, plus the neighbors. The story rambles along in a disjointed, incoherent way, until Hercule Poirot proves that it was her husband after all. This was the first case of Hercule Poirot, but not what I would consider to be Agatha Christie’s best.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Penguin English Library (1974)
1870

This book is based on a serialized novel, unfinished due to the author’s death. It appears that young Edwin Drood is killed by his uncle, John Jasper. However, the body is never recovered, and there are many tantalizing loose ends in this half-story. Much of the book is devoted to explanation of the author’s notes, including correspondence that touches on this work, and a whole body of controversy has sprung up around what may have happened in the unwritten remainder. The writing is typical for Dickens, although a little more obtuse and unwieldy perhaps. Includes one hilarious sequence with Billickin, the landlady.

TITLES I - J - K

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I’d Love To But I Have A Game
27 Years Without A Life
Marv Albert with Rick Reilly
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 5
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1993

Legendary sports broadcaster Marv Albert has written a rollicking and hilarious book about his life in and around sports. He began doing his own play-by-play to radio games, and hanging around ballparks doing odd jobs. At 19, he was hired by a Triple A baseball team as announcer and never looked back. He went on to become one of the busiest sports personalities anywhere, doing baseball, basketball and hockey games for NBC, as well as network news, plus play-by-play for the Knicks and Rangers, and other miscellaneous sports such as boxing, golf or drag racing. He crams this lively and punchy book full of uproarious anecdotes, bloopers and laugh-out-loud zingers. (My favorite is Morgan Fairchild introducing him as “Merv” Albert.) This book grabs you at the cover and drags you happily along, alternately laughing and groaning, until the end of the last chapter and leaves you begging for more. A wildly entertaining and unforgettable book.

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 1
Ballantine Books / Random House
1990

This author is famous for her mysteries featuring Elizabeth MacPherson, but this is from a different collection of stories set in the Appalachian hills and knows as The Ballad Series. These books are part of the author’s stated mission to “set the record straight” about the proud and misunderstood Appalachian people. This story is set in tiny Hamelin, Tennessee, which is set on its ear when faded folk singer Peggy Muryan buys a house in town with the intention of launching a comeback. She calls on Sheriff Spencer Arrowood when she receives what she considers a threatening postcard using a reference from a very old and obscure folk song called “Little Margaret.” Spence tries to reassure her that she’s not in any danger, but the next day someone has killed her dog commando-style. The deputy, Joe Ledonne, suspects there may be a crazy Vietnam vet lurking in the area (we already know there is at least one skulking between the chapters of the book) since he is familiar with the symbolism. When a high school student is reported missing, her resemblance to Peggy Muryan raises even more troubling questions. Spence’s preliminary investigation turns up nothing, but then Peggy gets another postcard with more lyrics from another old folk song about a young blond girl who was killed and thrown in a river. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, the have a dead body turn up in their river. Finally, Peggy figures she’d better tell Spence about Travis Perdue, who was from the local area, and they met in college. Originally they started singing as a duo, but when the record company came calling, they only wanted Peggy. They broke up and Travis went to Vietnam, from where he wrote her bitter and obtuse letters – these appear sporadically between chapters. Finally she received word that he was missing and presumed dead, which she believed for 20 years, until now when all of these happenings seem to be indicating otherwise. With the murder, the State authorities get involved, instead to the local officers, and they begin investigating all the Vietnam veterans in the area, plus any deranged people, and the supposedly dead Travis Perdue. Before they can make any headway, the killer turns up in Peggy’s house, catching her by surprise and cutting her telephone line. Luckily, Peggy has a gun and disarms her assailant, who turns out to be a local youngster name Pix-Kyle Weaver with a Vietnam fascination. He had found some of Peggy’s mementos from Travis at a rummage sale and decided to play-act at being Travis 20 years later, coming back to even the score. Peggy is so incensed at his immature arrogance and nonchalance about the killings, plus her outraged feeling that his youth would protect him from the full penalty of the law, that she shoots him in cold blood. This doesn’t sit well with Spence, but he drops it, and her also since they had been dating casually, and washes his hands of the whole business. This is a horrible book, and especially disappointing because her other series of mysteries is so lovable and jaunty that you just can’t get enough of them. The story is a Gothic horror, reeking of menace and nihilism. It utterly fails in its attempts to blend the trivial (a 20th high school reunion) with the looming terror of a psychopath on the loose. This is a good writer whose books are uniformly well-written and lively, but in this book, the psychotic overtones completely overwhelm the writing style. The characters are bland, uninteresting or unlikable, and the plot lurches along episodically from dull to terrifying. And for a book whose mission is to portray the proud and misunderstood Appalachian people in a positive light, this story of demented veterans, serial killers and local rubes in an eerie landscape of poverty and backwardness is scarcely the homage they might be looking for. Hard to read, disquieting and a relief to finish, a real disappointment from start to finish.

Illinois!
Dana Fuller Ross
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Book Creations
1986

This is apparently one in a series of “Wagons West” historical dramas set on the American frontier. Some of the characters came in from other books, and some of them obviously go on to other books as well. Here, Toby Holt goes to Chicago just in time for the famous fire in 1871. Like all epics, the cast of characters is sprawling, and the action, melodramatic. But it’s well-written and interesting, and pulls the reader along with it.

I’m Not Really Here
Tim Allen
Philosophy
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Boxing Cat Productions
1996

Stand-up comic and actor Tim Allen is the star of the hit TV series “Home Improvement.” His first book, “Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man,” was autobiographical, and described his early life before his success on TV and in movies. However, this one is a really strange book, dealing with quantum physics and the nature of reality. It’s too weird and depressing to be really funny, although it has moments of strained humor. It has the kind of pitiful, whining angst common to Yuppies reaching their mid-life crisis. It finally descends totally into psycho-babble, without ever getting anywhere. Demoralizing, disjoined, depressing and very disappointing compared to his first book.

In Gallant Company
Alexander Kent
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
McBooks Press, Inc.
1998
(1977 - Hutchinson, UK)

This is another in a series of fictionalized naval histories, and featuring our hero, Richard Bolitho, who is now a Fourth Lieutenant on a massive gunboat called Trojan. Under the command of Captain Pears, it has a crew of 600, and in 1777, is part of the naval blockade at New York trying to quell the uprising of the colonies. When their orders send them up north to protect a convoy of munitions from falling into enemy hands, they find themselves being followed by a privateer out of Boston. They decided to attack their shadow under cover of fog, rather than leading the pirates to the convoy. This works better than anyone expects, and they end up with a prize ship, a fast schooner, that soon comes in very handy in concert with the lumbering gunboat. When Capt. Pears discovers that the prize ship was expected at a rendezvous in Delaware Bay, he sends Bolitho with the prize to keep the rendezvous and hopefully capture the other vessel using the element of surprise. But Lt. Sparke in charge of the mission fails to inspire confidence in Bolitho, on top of all the other dangers they face from bad weather and their own warships. They do manage to make the rendezvous, and even capture one ship and destroy another. But getting wind of yet another prize laid up and ripe for the taking, they walk straight into a trap that decimates their company, including Lt. Sparke. This made Bolitho suddenly the new Third Lieutenant, which should have been a happy occasion. But the war was not going well in general, and the loss of manpower would be hard to replace. He is sent ashore in New York to round up any replacements he could find or capture. While there, he stumbles into a fracas in a brothel, where a youngster is killed, who turns out to be a colonial spy who is not only a woman, but the daughter of a high-ranking English official. This causes a predictable fuss, and Trojan joins a small convoy going to South Carolina to attack a munitions stockpile there. The structure is well-defended from the sea, so they hatch a plan to land troops up the coast under cover of darkness, and then continue sailing past in plain sight, while the troops attack from the inland side instead. This works better than anyone expects, even trapping a French privateer that arrives with more supplies. Another officer sails away with that ship, leaving Bolitho and the others to fight off the fort’s colonial troops, who return unexpectedly before the rescue ship can remove the sailors. They manage to blow up the fort and munitions in front of the rebels, and just make it to the rescue ships with the prisoners and wounded. But the casualties are appalling, and when they return to the convoy, Bolitho finds himself suddenly promoted from 4th to 2nd Lieutenant. The wounded and prisoners were sent back to New York with dispatches, but Trojan continues south on another mission to destroy an important colonial supply site. Unfortunately, a French warship shows up that disables their companion sloop, and then turns on Trojan with such savagery that the toll in men and damages is almost inconceivable. The daring Admiral who came up with these schemes decides to scoot away to safer waters, and asks Bolitho to join him with promises of promotions. But Bolitho realizes the attempt to make his own Captain Pears a scapegoat for the misguided escapades, and he politely refuses. Afer putting into Antigua for repairs, they hear the unbelievable news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, and all ships that can move are sent back to New York. The Trojan is sent instead to Jamaica with Marines to put down the slave uprisings on the plantations, which puts everyone’s noses out of joint. On the way, they decide to chase a privateer carrying munitions, but find themselves walking into another trap. Fortunately, they sink the munitions ship and capture the other as a prize, and while Trojan continues with her mission, Capt. Pears detaches Bolitho to return to Antigua on the captured ship, White Hills. Unfortunately, they discover too late that White Hills was part of a rendezvous, and when they meet up with the other ship, there’s a terrible fight. All that saves them is the British sailors being held prisoner on the other ship, who turn the tide in the deck fighting and win the day for the Brits, giving them two prize ships instead of one. Even the hapless Junior Lieutenant Quinn, who was being sent back in disgrace to his family in London for cowardice, redeems himself by giving his life to save another officer. The story ends right there with no epilogue. These books are always interesting and well-written, with characters that are genuine and plainly drawn with warts and all. The stories never lag and are entertaining throughout, although this is no light-hearted rose-colored naval romp by any means. On the contrary, the stories are dead earnest and no one seems to be having any fun, from the top all the way to the very bottom. Unlike the other books in this series, where you can count on the British Navy to come out on top, we already know what happens in the American Revolution, which casts a sort of bittersweet pall over this whole escapade. It would have been more interesting if the characters in the story had any real involvement with the actual Revolution, instead of being an off-shore observer going everywhere except where the action was. But that’s a small quibble and this is another fine entry in this series which is consistently good and satisfying.

Inside, Outside
Herman Wouk
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Little, Brown & Company
1985

This is a semi-autobiographical work from an author perhaps better known for his sweeping historical sagas and military adventures. The narrator is David Goodkind, working at a sort of nebulous job in the beleaguered Nixon administration, and in his spare time, jotting down his family reminiscences. He begins with his grandparents and parents in Jewish Minsk and how they came to America. Although his parents were from the same small town in Russia, they never met until they were introduced in New York’s Lower East Side. His father worked with other emigres in the laundry business, eventually starting his own company with two partners. His mother was a great beauty from a good family and had many suitors, but his father prevailed, saved his money and they married. Young David was the apple of their eye, much to the chagrin of older sister Lee, still grumbling to this day. Where they lived in the south Bronx was so Jewish that the children didn’t know there was anything else, until the older boys started filling their heads with terrifying tales of the dreaded “Krishts” who hated Jews. Even the public school was all Jewish, except the teachers, so they were never exposed to anti-Semitism until they wandered out of their own neighborhood. His father’s business was successful enough that he could bring other relatives over from Russia, including his brothers and mother. As much as he tried to get them up and on their own feet, they continued to be a drain on him, especially the mother, who moved in with them. This led to friction between wife and mother-in-law, culminating in the infamous sauerkraut episode. As they did better financially, they moved to a better neighborhood and the children went to summer camp, some of which weren’t even Jewish. We are regaled with the usual tales from camp, and no less entertaining for that. Then it’s off to prep school and we hear about that and his very theatrical bar mitzvah, interspersed with a recounting of a modern-day visit to Israel by his mother and daughter, for which he tags along, actually on an errand for the President. At last his father’s father Zaideh, an imposing and scholarly Rabbi, moves in with them, along with his youngest daughter Faiga. She has the idealistic socialist leanings of youth, and causes problems in the family when she encourages the laundry workers to strike. Zaideh helps David study the Talmud for two years at Yeshiva, but David dreams of a regular education at Columbia, and fortunately, they have a Jewish quota, so he’s accepted. It’s at this point in his young life that he begins to chafe at the religious strictures at home that are not recognized by society at large. He meets independent thinkers and begins dating, and his world seems upside-down. After his dream girl throws him over, he and a buddy from the school paper get jobs writing gags for Harry Goldhandler’s radio show, instead of going to law school. They make good money for Depression times and find themselves hob-nobbing with the rich and famous. They move into a swanky apartment together, and he takes up with an intoxicating Irish showgirl named Bobbie Webb. Their relationship has more ups and downs than an elevator, and manages to be both wildly passionate and also madly infuriating, often at the same time. He realizes he can’t live with her or without her, but knowing that marriage would be impossible because of his religion, he finally has to give her up. After years of dithering about writing gags or going to law school, of living a religious or secular life, of giving in to his desires for Bobbie or finding someone more appropriate, finally Harry Goldhandler dies and the young gag-writer has some tough choices to make. He starts law school just as Hitler is rising to power in Germany, and enlists in the Air Force Reserve, although he fails to qualify as a pilot for health reasons. He proposes to Bobbie, but has second thoughts, and his father convinces him that the honorable thing to do is to make a settlement on her, which she accepts and they part ways. (Although nothing is ever completely over with him and Bobbie, it seems.) His father dies suddenly just before Pearl Harbor and he is called up, serving as flight navigator, instructor and various desk jobs. After the war, he met his wife Jan and we come back to where we started, after Israel and America beat back the Arabs and Russians in the Yom Kippur War. I found this book overly long as well as boring and depressing, so much it’s hard to believe it’s fictional. It’s well-written of course, because it would be impossible for him to do otherwise. The characters are so true to life that they seem like people you really know, although you would wish you didn’t. The central relationship is achingly pathetic and doomed, with all the assumed fascination of a train wreck. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Marjorie Morningstar, as told from the male perspective instead. For all of its length and breadth and scope, I found it pitifully small and sad and ultimately too miserable to enjoy. The early part of the book was a bit jauntier, but even that suffered from the weight of gloomy overtones. Like watching someone with a terminal illness, it’s a relief when it’s over.

It’s Always Something
Gilda Radner
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Hearst Corporation
1989

Interesting but ultimately depressing book about the author’s career, marriage to Gene Wilder, and battle with cancer. The writing is humorous and sets off sparks, but it cannot shake the undertow of tragedy. It’s lively (in a morbid sort of way) and chock-full of wonderful anecdotes. It would have been an excellent book, with a better ending.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
Scott Rice
Humor
Non-Fiction
Rating 5
Penguin Books
1984

Uproarious collection of entries in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest, aiming for the worst opening sentence that could be written for an imaginary novel. The contest is run by the San Jose State University, and attracts thousands of entries from all over the world. Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific novelist in the 1800's, but unfortunately, his over-blown and florid style is considered laughable today. Some entries are so bad they are bad, some are so bad they are funny, and some are just priceless. A thoroughly enjoyable book.

Jo’s Boys (And How They Turned Out)
Louisa May Alcott
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Little, Brown
1886

The author of “Little Women” and “Little Men” wrote this follow-up story to show the progress of the next generation as they grew to adulthood, married and settled into careers. A pleasant, unstartling book that trudges along, vignette-style, and then ends rather abruptly.

The Judas Goat
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell Publishing / Bantam Doubleday Dell
1978

Here is another in a series of books by this author featuring Boston Private Investigator Spenser. (A fairly early one, because Susan Silverman is still a student and doesn’t have her own practice.) Hugh Dixon is a business tycoon, whose family was killed and he was paralyzed, in a London bombing by Liberty, some squirrelly terrorist group. He sends Spenser to London to track down the 9 people involved in the bombing. The local Police have no leads, so Spenser places a newspaper ad offering a reward, and receives a message to meet someone at the London Zoo the next day. However, the night before, he surprises two thugs in his hotel room who try to kill him, but he kills them first. The next day, he stakes out the Zoo in a disguise and follows one of them home without her spotting him. When he goes back to his hotel later, he finds two more thugs waiting for him, and he beats them both up, although one escapes. Inspector Downes of the London Police is getting understandably weary of these rogue tactics, especially happening right under his nose, and he warns Spenser about wearing out his welcome. Before things get much worse, Spenser arranges for Hawk to come over and help out. They stake out Kathie (the girl from the Zoo) and then spook her so she flees the country and goes to Copenhagen. They follow her there and Spenser lets her cohorts pick him up so he can scope them out. He meets Paul, the ring-leader, who has a plan to make Africa a continent for white people. Hawk kills two of the group, but Paul escapes with Kathie, and they flee to Amsterdam. They follow them there, but find no sign of them. Later at their hotel room, Paul has left the last two dead Liberty members of the original 9 that Spenser was tracking, plus Kathie bound and gagged. They untie her in their room, which seems extremely ill-advised on the face of it. Although Kathie seems to alternate between being hostile or pathetic, she doesn’t cause any more trouble, and in fact, volunteers the information that Paul is planning an attack at the Summer Olympic Games in Montreal. So they quickly re-locate to Montreal, even though their part of the case is basically over, but they hate to walk away with Paul still at large. On the way, Spenser stops in to update Hugh Dixon, who is very pleased with his work so far. Spenser explains about Paul and asks Dixon to help get him tickets into the Olympic Stadium, so hopefully they can spot Paul before anything happens. Dixon not only gets tickets for them, but insists on under-writing this part of the operation as well, even though it is unrelated to the bombing of his family. Somewhat miraculously, they manage to spot Paul in a stadium of 80,000 spectators, and notice him setting up a shooting alley along one of the ramps. They keep watching the same spot for days, until Paul returns with a high-powered rifle and a mammoth bodyguard named Zachary. (If this is Canada’s idea of tight security for the Olympics – how times have changed!) They jump Paul and spoil his plans, but Zachary gets away and they chase after him for 10 pages, even the two of them together can’t make much headway against this giant. They finally wear him down just as the Police round them all up and take them to the hospital under guard. They also find out that Kathie apparently took advantage of the situation to kill Paul while he was unconscious, which he probably should have done when he dumped her on Spenser in the first place. They explain things satisfactorily to the Police, and then Hugh Dixon shows up to thank them and way over-pays them for a job well done. Here Spenser protects Kathie and tells Dixon and the Police that she wasn’t mixed up with Liberty. The Police let her go, which seems like another really bad idea on the face of it. The book ends with Spenser and Susan vacationing in London and seeing the sights just like any tourist. Well-written as always, and especially entertaining is the banter between Spenser and Hawk, who share more time together than in most of these books. Not a great story, because terrorists are an uncomfortable subject to start with, and Kathie is particularly unappealing in a lot of different ways. Has a couple of dead spots while waiting for the other shoe to drop, but generally lopes right along in a breezy and effortless style. Interesting for being early in the series and entertaining throughout with only a few quibbles about the ending.

Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Alfred A. Knopf
1990

A taut, gripping and literate thriller about modern dinosaurs. Eccentric John Hammond hires a team of geneticists, engineers, zoologists and paleontologists, and with the backing of foreign investors, they create a theme park of assorted dinosaurs. (They make dinosaurs by replicating the DNA found in biting insects of that period fossilized in amber.) Of course, things go horribly wrong and in the end, the entire park has to be destroyed. A real page-turner, and more interesting than terrifying. The ending was rather anti-climactic, but as often happens with these types of books, it would have been impossible to maintain that level of excitement to the end.

Kavanagh
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
College & University Press
1965 (reprint)

Longfellow is better known for his epic poems such as “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha.” This is identified as a “tale” but it’s really more of a novella. It concerns the residents of a small town in the 1800's and is a charming, whimsical story. Arthur Kavanagh is the new minister who comes to the village after the previous minister resigns. Mostly, the story concerns Mr. Churchill, the schoolmaster, who fancies himself a future great novelist. However, he remains long on dreams and promise, but woefully short on action and accomplishment. The theme of the book is basically that human dramas unfold even in small towns, but no one notices them – only the big dramatic events that happen in faraway places. The story is sentimental in a nice way, and the characters are drawn with warts and all, but with kindness and humor. My favorite part is about the church organist, who feels that any popular music, if it is played slow enough, becomes sacred music that is appropriate to insert into the service!

Kiss and Make Up
Gene Simmons
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Crown Publishers / Random House
2001

The author is famous as the fire-breathing, blood-spewing demonic bass player for the rock group KISS, which they say here is second only to the Beatles in gold albums for bands. Founded in 1972, the band quickly became a world-wide phenomenon of music, theatrics and marketing. This book begins way before that in 1949, when Chaim Witz is born in Haifa in the brand new State of Israel, to Hungarian Jewish parents who re-located there. Feri Witz was a talented man, but not a practical businessman, so the family was very poor. When Chaim was only 5, his parents separated, and he and his mother moved to another small village in Israel. By the time he was 8, his mother decided to join her brothers in Queens, so they fly to America. She works in a sweatshop sewing on buttons, and he goes to Yeshiva nearby. Obviously he’s overwhelmed at the vastness and abundance of America, after the poverty and privation in Israel, although he and his mother are still pretty poor. Once in America, he begins using the name Gene instead of Chaim, and Klein, his mother’s maiden name. As far as American culture, making a big impression of him are TV, movies and comic books. When he sees the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, he realizes that being in a band would be a good way to meet girls. He begins going to public school and starts a band with some friends, where they play at dances, and do in fact meet girls. He has always been industrious and saved money from his after-school jobs. When he decides to make music his career, his mother insists that he get a college degree to fall back on if necessary. In 1970, he and his friend Steve Coronel start a band called Wicked Lester that includes someone Steve knows called Stanley Eisen, later to become Paul Stanley. Even though Wicked Lester is offered a record contract by Epic, Gene and Paul realize that it doesn’t represent the type of band that they want to be in. As they begin to develop a vision for the band, they need to round it out with musicians who can share their goals. Next we hear the stories about auditioning Peter Criss and “Ace” Frehley, which have been told before, but no less entertaining for that. One of their early performances draws the attention of Bill Aucoin, who persuades Neil Bogart to sign them to his new record company, and along with Sean Delaney, try to get the fledgling outfit off the ground. This works better than expected, and by 1975, they are headlining and playing arenas. You would think four young men with all the fame, booze, drugs and sex they could want would be happy as clams, and it’s demoralizing to hear how they could not get along, even in the very beginning. We get sketches from making the early albums, plus the tours, and even “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.” Next, Cher enters the picture, and for someone who seems so introspective, this relationship turns his whole life upside down. Meanwhile, continuing problems in the band lead to the idea of solo albums, and give everyone a bit of a breather from each other for a time. This works up to a point, but eventually things have to be resolved, and Peter is removed from the band. They replace him with Eric Carr, who Gene likes a lot, which is a nice change of pace. At this time, he was seeing Cher’s friend Diana Ross, which effectively ended that friendship – plus everyone in the band was mad about him “going Hollywood.” Suddenly, a lot of things happen at once: Eric Carr dies unexpectedly, Ace leaves the band, Paul gets married, and Gene meets Shannon Tweed who knocks him off his feet, and before you know it, he’s the proud father of Nicholas and Sophie. For a while, the band runs through a bunch of guitarists before settling on Bruce Kulick, and Eric Singer is brought in as the new drummer. Around 1995, a series of KISS conventions begins the germ of an idea for a reunion. First, the 1995 KISS performs on MTV Unplugged, then Peter and Ace sit in and do a few old songs, then it wraps up with everybody all together. Later Eric and Bruce are accommodating enough to step aside as the “classic” KISS reunion tour takes the world by storm for 2 years. They continue to have problems with Ace and Peter, but manage to limp along, wrapping up with a world-wide farewell tour that finishes in 2000. (Interestingly, Eric Singer sat in for Peter – cat makeup and all – for the Pacific leg of the tour when they could not agree to terms.) This is where the book ends, and I must say it’s very disappointing. It’s no doubt an unintended consequence of writing the book, that someone who seems so charismatic and larger than life, should instead come off as a complete jerk, and with almost no redeeming qualities. It’s one thing to be self-centered and feeling so superior that you think you’re infallible – but after 30 years of almost unparalleled success and literally billions of dollars, you might expect someone to mellow out, bury the hatchet and let bygones be bygones. Instead, the book is basically nothing but a poison pen letter, ripping Ace and Peter unmercifully, and practically skipping right over Paul altogether (which is probably a good thing the way he blasts everybody else) and manages to be so completely uninteresting that even a die-hard fan like me couldn’t wait to put it down. The writing style is somewhat inconsistent, but not bad, and it’s full of interesting pictures. But this is so far from being a fan’s book, where a little humor and diplomacy, not to mention perspective, would have gone a long way. After all, who wants to read the KISS version of “Mommie Dearest” with all the dirty laundry and bad blood – not me. Hopefully, Paul will write a book for the rest of us.