Writers Books

This book really helped me explain Jane Austen to my husband. Now he watches the movies with me quite contentedly.

I'm a big fan of Jane Austen in all forms. I've always thought that a mediocre Austen film is better than none at all. This book takes a fascinating scholarly look at Austen's film treatment. The authors say everything all true Austen fans have muttered about the films ("where's THAT in the book?!") and explains why it was done in such a way (for example, modern filmgoers won't appreciate an ugly, boring Edward Ferrers). Contains amusing critique of Thompsons S&S--that Austen's originial may have been more "feminist" than Thompson! If you enjoy the original written Austen and/or the recent film versions, you'll love this book.

Easy and accessible reading on a great writer. One of the best things about this book is the lack of critical consensus on so many important Austen issues (especially concerning her ostensible feminism and her indisputable irony)--it's always amusing (and enlightening) to listen in on a civilised, academic brawl! Do make sure to get the 2nd edition with 14 essays including the new one, "The Mouse that Roared."

The second edition (available only in paperback) contains a new essay, "The Mouse that Roared," about Patricial Rozema's film of Mansfield Park.

Jonathan Bate's admirable biography of John Clare is worthy of this unique poet. There were moments while reading the first two hundred or so pages of John Clare A Biography when I began to sense I was residing in Clare's mind and footsteps which is truly a tribute to Bate's fine scholarship and narrative skills. Definitely worth reading and exploring.

This is a wonderful biography of Clare. Bate not only paints a convincing picture of this largely self-taught genius, but he also provides illuminating information about the social context in which Clare moved. His speculations concerning Clare's mental illness are also on the mark. Take your time with this book. It's an enjoyable ramble through the fields and by the end you'll have a well-rounded picture of John Clare and a greater appreciation for his work.

Endearing, moving and mysterious, this is as sensitive a portrait of John Clare as we are likely to get. Bate's love for his subject is obvious throughout the book, in which he succeeds so well at walking the line between adoration and accuracy. Teeming with observations such as "for Clare even a fishpond is saturated with feeling and memory," Clare's unusually intense absorption in nature is brought to light here with the kind of beauty and empathy only a fellow-writer such as Bate could achieve.

Yet despite Bate's insistence on Clare's genius (I'm quite insistent on it myself after having read the biography and skimming through the Selected Poems) he does not look away from uglier aspects of Clare's life: his infidelity and apparent spousal abuse, his alcoholism and, most of all, the ever-bewildering case of his diagnosis as a "lunatic." This is where Bate's book becomes particularly poignant, and I wish he had spent less time gossiping about Clare's wrangles with publishers and more on the man's complicated and harrowing character. For this reason I felt the book to be a bit longer than it needed to be, but perhaps I'd feel differently had the material in the last 150 pages, which deals extensively with Clare's mental illness, been fleshed-out even more. Surely accounts of Clare's occasional belief that he was Lord Byron or Jack Randall the boxer are of far more interest than how many pounds he was paid for a poem published in the London Magazine.

Nonetheless, Bate does an excellent job of avoiding the temptation to romanticize Clare's dramatic mental illness (for which, in the end, "manic-depression" seems to be the most accurate but not necessarily conclusive diagnosis. In her incredible book, Touched With Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison lists Clare's name among the poets she counted as victims of manic-depressive illness). Unlike other biographers of writers (Quentin Bell's book about Virginia Woolf comes to mind) Bate does not settle for Clare's own metaphorical explanations for his "madness." Indeed, Bate often disputes the very term "madness" and exposes it as a dated and even superstitious label. He does not so thoroughly drench the artist's mental struggles in myth and theory as to have it become the stuff of folklore. Surely it would be flattering to think of Clare as some divinely inspired mystic, but Bate's many more logical scenarios are a refreshing contrast to the "mad genius" stereotype.

While Clare attributed his madness to the day he watched a friend fall to his death from a tree as a child, Bate's more plausible suggestions include: Clare's concussion after tumbling out of a tree himself as a boy, his heavy drinking, the awful malnutrition of his diet, the tormenting stress of his perpetual poverty amid obligations to his wife and seven children, his frustrating efforts to further himself as a poet while having to beg for farm work, and "mercury-poisoning resulting from attempted treatment for syphilis." In a further example of Bate's mature handling of this particular issue, he writes that "we should not rule out the possibility that his own derangement was partially shaped by his reading about the mental suffering of other writers." Clare was terribly impressionable. However, where Bate tells us that Clare's "episodes" afflicted him only after being admitted to the aszlum as if to imply that he was bound to become psychotic after living among the mad for two decades, Jamison writes in "Touched With Fire" that "manic-depressive illness not only worsens over time, it becomes less responsive to medication the longer" it goes untreated, so it seems only logical that his condition would have worsened with age, especially since no such "treatment" as Jamison discusses was available in his day.

Compounding the reasonable possibilities Bate offers is the fact that Clare's very devotion to write poetry may have been interpreted as madness by his neighbors. Tragically, this seems to be a chief reason why he was eventually confined. As Bate says early on, "In summer he walked in the woods and fields alone, a book in his pocket . . . his love of books began to isolate him from other boys . . . the villagers found this behavior very odd: `some fancying it symptoms of lunacy.'" Even after reading the book, it is anyone's guess as to whether Clare was insane; but stories of his battles against what illness he may have suffered from as well as the ignorance, incompetence and greed of those purporting to care for him make for a rather heart-breaking read. What we can be sure of, though, is that mad or not, Clare had become more of a liability than a father or husband. "There is no evidence that he was taken to the asylum because he was `mad' in the sense of having lost consciousness of his identity . . . he was taken to the asylum because he needed better care than could be provided by his family," Bate writes.

Though he probably takes a bit too much liberty in attempting to explain nearly every one of Clare's symptoms in a more rational light, Bate's assertions about Clare's psychological temperament make for some absolutely riveting explications and commentary. "To say that he had written the works of Byron and Scott was but an extreme way of saying he had written works that he hoped might one day be regarded as the equal of" those works, he supposes. In an even farther-fetching attempt at psychoanalysis, Bate explains Clare's delusion that he was a famous boxer as a dramatization "of the fact that Clare spent his life fighting battles - for his poetry, for recognition, for survival, against his inner demons." While this is probably the point at which Bate seems more of an adoring and apologetic fan than biographer, who's to say? We will never really know what was going on inside that jewel of a mind, and considering all that was taken from the man in his life by his illness, time, or other people, maybe that secret is the one thing we can let Clare keep.

A magnificent bio of a fabulous poet. I got to page 167 or so before it occured to me to check what page I was on. When one forgets one is reading, one knows one is reading excellence.

This bio is excellence and this poet is sublime.

In a world in which everyone is thinking about knowing the most hidden secrets of the life, Borges, when is asked to give some advice to the younger generation, only says:

I don't think I can give advice to other people. I've hardly been able to manage my own life. pp 75.

what a man.

He lived in Literature and Literature lived in him. Books were for him his truest friends and the secret intimates of his soul. When he spoke to another he spoke always to himself and to the books within him. But because he knew books so well and loved them so much all his speaking too became a book .And in the end even his final words there were books talking to books and talking to more books.
So for those of us who also love books , his particular love of books taught us so so much - but only in books.

Borges is great in in his writings, and almost as good in conversation. Witty, urbane, stylish, Borges shows that conversation can be as exciting as literature. Buy now!

This offers a series of interviews in chronlogical order (from 1966 until shortly before his death in '85) While he is good humored and self effacing he never lets you know more than he wants you to. There are also certain repetitons of ideas that occur, but anyone that has read Borges before will be used to that. To some extent it happans with most of the better writers in varying degrees anyways. Even with the repetitions it never comes across like he is doing memorized routines (which sometimes happans with William burroughs interviews)all in all important insight into the mind of an important writer.

This brilliant, witty little book is simply the most penetrating essay ever written on the greatest novel of the 20th century, James Joyce's Ulysses. For some odd reason, no critic before Kenner (or since) ever paid much attention to the most salient feature of Ulysses: its stylistic variousness, from the limpid Edwardian tones of its opening chapters through the long internal monologues of Bloom and Molly to the countless genre parodies interlarded throughout. All other critics have been content to dismiss it as a mere humorous quirk by Joyce, unrelated to the main point of the novel. Kenner shows that, in fact, it goes to the very heart of the novel: it is how the modern artist reinvokes the muse.

Kenner's explanation of Joyce's choices is absolutely brilliant. And along the way we get an insightful short history of the objective style and its problems, as well as numerous witty, perceptive asides on sundry matters. This is how literary criticism ought to be written.

What a shame this great little book is out of print. If you're even slightly interested in modern literature, grab a used copy immediately.

I want so much to like Kenner and his fine, early and original work in Joycean scholarship. But I discover myself arguing with him to the point of violent blows. Perhaps this comes from his having something to say.

These chapters originally comprised a series of lectures delivered at the University of Kent at Canterbury in England as part of the TS Eliot Memorial Lectures in 1975. Like Eliot, who based the authority of his early commentary of Ulysses (Ulysses: Order and Myth) on the fact at the time no one in England nor the USA were permitted to purchase the work, Kenner makes several outrageous statements completely opposite the facts of the book at hand. For one thing, addressing a mob of BRitish academes, he plays court jester and appeals to their prejudice regarding the Irish, including their absolute ignorance of Irish literature, myth, history, etc., by stating the Irish, including Joyce, shared that ignorance. For the British the Irish have no history, nor literature, nor mythology, whereas, as later studies such as The Irish Ulysses have proven, Joyce based his novel almost exculsively upon its archetypes, the real reason Joyce removed the Homeric Chapter titles at the last moment, in order not to distract us, instead of the assumptions Kenner presents here.

This brief volume is interesting as a milestone in JOycean scholarship, but its conclusions and judgments must not be taken at face value, as with anything Joycean. It is essential to read the later criticism which refutes, defuses, confuses, complements and deines the statements offered by Kenner. Nevertheless, as noted in other reviews upon this page, Kenner writes in an engaging and a breezy manner, happily opening doors, even if those doors lead on to bricked up passages and cellars without stairs.

Thus, approach this slim collection with caution, and get the more recent commentary, such as Rejoycing, which directly addresses the Uncle Charles Principle which Kenner first presents here.

Worth a reading in an idle moment upon your heroic and indeed Homeric adventure with Ulysses, before engaging in the more serious hand to hand battle with more substantial and later work.

Buy this book cheaply, and read it at your leisure. Then write your own commentary as to how you perceive it so horribly wrong. Unfortunately Professor Kenner is not close at hand to argue with over a small Jamesons. If anything Joyce achieves at least one goal in providing such excuse for lively scholarly conversation as he forges the conscience of our race within the smithy of his soul.

I could not put this down, unlike much of Joyce commentary. I had to read it to the end; it is that engaging. Please see as well his more comprehensive A Colder Eye written nearly ten years later at greater leisure than this brief lecture series, yet with the same engaging brilliance and wit and valuable insights and information. In fact his Colder Eye is as enveloping, enchanting, informing and entertaining as Ulysses himself.

If you're a modern day graduate student (or worse, a professor), you know that modern scholars aren't allowed to write the way Kenner wrote. More's the pity, too: Joyce's Voices is one of the most illuminating short works of criticism, even by New Critics' standards, which for stylistic agility were remarkably high. As Kenner said, he was almost solely responsible for putting the university at which he worked on the map, and it was that level of nonchalant genius that permeates this work.

Viewed first through a comparison between "objective" or "empirical" treatments of experience by other authors, Kenner shows the ways that Joyce sought to illuminate observed experience through a new means: the lens of style for its own sake. Without resorting to the jargon or jingoism that so commonly pervades academia, Kenner reveals Joyce's talent for pursuing his muse through a panopoly of styles and stylistic gestures that leaves one more capable of understanding, and therefore appreciating, Ulysses than ever before.

Well-written essays, concise, and enlightening. Some of Kenner's points blew my mind--and I've been reading Joyce for 20 years (already). Definitely worth a shot.

Much has been made about Kerouac's philosophy of spontaneous prose. The immediacy of it's impact. It's flawed honesty. The sheer weight of his all-too-real emotion as it flowed out of him and stained the page. Like Van Gogh, Kerouac was an artist who did not concern himself with "sentimental melancholy" but looked to express the true sorrow and joy of his life in his works. These letters are a vital piece of the Kerouac puzzle, fore they show us the genesis of the man's method and style. From his early emulation of novelist Thomas Wolfe, through his meeting of first Allan Ginsburg, who was really more of an intellectual influence than a literary one, and subequently, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. It was Cassady's influence that was paramount to Kerouac's creation of his style, and in his letters to Neal, we are shown first hand how Jack sought to withold nothing, to seek out the details of living. These letters are startling in their honesty and emotion. They reveal a man who sought not only a vision of and for himself, but for the rest of us living, dead, and unborn. Maybe he was uncomfortable in his own skin, maybe he couldn't cut the apron strings that bound and stunted him emotionally to his mother, but these letters prove the essentialness of the artist in this world. Those souls like Kerouac who sought to express the unknown, that the reasons for why we all go on living in this world where "all life is suffering," outweigh the reasons why we should just give up and not live at all. Jack may have suffered too much, smoked too much, and drank himself to an early, lonesome grave, but he left behind works of beauty and sadness that changed the landscape of modern literature, whose directionless direction sought the innocent, lost heart in many of us. Like Jack said, one must "live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry."

A fantastic gorp into Kerouac and his 'real' life and the many spontaneous voices that make his dreams. As you read these letters listen to the different tones he gives to those most important in his life ... Sabastian Sampas (boyhood best friend), Gabriella Kerouac (anchor Mom), Allen Ginsberg (understanding friend), William S. Burroughs (adventure friend), Neil Cassady (challenging boyfriend), Stella Sampas (wife subsequently), Carolyn Cassady (complicated :). It is all here! Jack's words bring up the truth about questions that still are not answered today as we go to the 'world of tomorrow'. Buy this to hear it direct from Jack.

If one wants to dig deep into kerouac then this is how. Everything begins to form from reading this. You find Jack inside yourself screaming to come out. You hear his voice and feel his every tear, smile, and high that he has felt. I recommend this to anyone who wants to take a risk in believing in someone with different views then we have today.

Having read most all of Kerouac's published work, reading this book is like finding the keys to the locks. Jack's and other letters provide deep insights into his life, his feelings and all that followed into Jack's novels, poems and stories. Much more than a diary, this book serves almost as reference material for reading his other works. The letters pre-On The Road and post-Big Sur, opens up your eyes to the life he was leading, it is here that you see the fluid motion of his life falling into his work. A must have for any JK bookshelve.

So there I am reading David Lloyd's Kickback, suspicious that the proclaimer (kind of like a disclaimer, only in favor of a person instead of in opposition to them) of this book as a "crime noir thriller" from "the creator of V for Vendetta" was a little one-sided and maybe even pretentious. And I get even more leary as I'm reading and there's what seems to be a transparent narrative structure fueled with weak verbal complexity and, furthermore, half-hearted attempts at pictorial intricacies. But as I keep reading -- even in spite of myself, perhaps -- I am pleasantly surprised by the slow, controlled, and increasingly powerful use of the comics medium to tell what in its fullness becomes a well-wrought story with a moral that's not campy nor Right-wing religious nor didactic. David Lloyd has created a satisfying narrative that does two things effectively: 1) tells a great, action-packed police-procedural / crime story, and 2) makes challenging uses of the comic medium look easy. Kickback is the story of a guy named Joe who used to be a kid named Joey and how a significant part of his (once lost) past allows him to come full-circle (and back to what he believes in) during a police scandal / crisis. This is a nice addition to the noir comic genre; think of it as a thinking woman's / man's Sleeper or Criminal in a British context with higher expectations of its reader. (Which is not meant to cast aspersions on either of the other titles; I have every issue of both.) But behind Lloyd's story is the construction of a chain of images and metaphors for modern (post-modern, if you want) life, the most striking of which is the image of two breast-flesh eyes in the lenses of a pair of hovering glasses. It's an image as stunning as anything you'll find in Renee Magritte's work, and I salute Mr. Lloyd for it. There are many aspects of the work to appreciate artistically: Lloyd's creative ways of rendering motion, the hyper-realism of signs and backgrounds, and, especially, his own unique "soft" penciling and subdued coloring. It all goes together very well with this story of how introspection and remembrance can provide a very real --perhaps all too-real-- path to travel in one's world. Kickback proves that Lloyd can tell a good action story that can have a much greater significance than typical uses of genre fiction allows for. In my opinion, it also proves why he was the perfect choice to work with Alan Moore on V for Vendetta and why he, Lloyd, (with an equal nod to the other, just as deserving half of V's progenitor team) is absolutely deserving of the title "Creator of V for Vendetta." But I'm much more pleased that this reinforces David Lloyd's unique stylistic. LAST NOTE: Pay attention to Lloyd's use of geometrical shapes. I'm still searching for something behind that than what's obvious. There are so many detailed uses of doors (rectangles), scaffolding (triangles and diamonds), rounded ceilings and ribs (arches and ovals) that it is astounding . . .

David Lloyd's art is some of my favorite in comics today, partly because of a very subtle realism he brings to ever frame and partly because I'm drawn to work that used a lot of heavy shadows. Often figures and scenes will be completely dark except for a tiny bit of skillful highlighting which brings the whole thing into three dimensions. It's the kind of thing I'm trying to accomplish with my own art.

The story in Kickback is a bit too short, I think, but very dense, so it takes a few times reading it to get all the details. I wish it were longer because there's a lot in there that can be explored further. I really enjoyed it and I hope Mr. Lloyd decides to continue the story.

David Lloyd's new Graphic Novel delivers what it promises: a crime-noir thriller, but with more depth than one usually sees in this genre. The premise is familiar, the plot recognizable, but what makes this story more than a cop drama is the art.

Lloyd's art grabs the story and lifts it out of its genre and smacks it around with multifaceted techniques, cinematic perspective, and brilliant brush strokes. Some panels were literally breathtaking. His use of color is skillfully applied in order to pound primal emotional responses when the action heats up and softer, even humorous, touches when the story calls for it. The color and technique lay a vivid foundation beneath the story itself that works subliminally to magnify reader involvement with the text, and even more powerfully when there is no text at all.

Unlike a text-only story, Lloyd's new graphic novel gives the reader a multidimensional experience that is best savored slowly and more than once in order to truly appreciate his considerable talents.

Ann Marie

Kickback, the most recent work by artist David Lloyd, whisks the viewer into the world of corruption and greed in this intense crime-noir thriller. Lloyd plays the roles of both artist and writer in this masterpiece, deftly weaving language and imagery to entice the audience to be an active participant, rather than a passive reader. The use of earth tones in monochrome in many passages conveys the grit of the city, as seen through the eyes of a disillusioned "bad cop." However, there is an underlying softness in Lloyd's illustrations, with occasional splashes of color subtly portraying visual puns and even the pathos of a particular character. As opposed to most Graphic Novel's harsh black outlines and garish colors, Lloyd masters light and shadow to give the impression of depth. With Kickback, David Lloyd truly comes of age.

Unfortunately, most kids today don't read OR send thank you notes. One day, when the older generations are reminiscing about how they used to receive so many great birthday and Christmas/Hannukah gifts from extended family and friends, they'll scratch their heads and wonder why nobody sends them gifts anymore.

Look forward to more from this author! As always, thank you.

Jean Summers has written a lovely book teaching kids the etiquette and how-to of thank-you notes. I think this book could accompany presents to young recipients. This is a good book to read to young kids as young as 5-6 or to encourage older kids to read on their own (8-10.) The author is bringing what is becoming a lost art back into our lives. Good for you Jean!

Sometimes it seems as if in this 21st Century America, the practice of writing thank you notes has gone the way of buggy whips. Enter Jean Summers' thoroughly "kid friendly" how-to manual, The Kids' Guide To Writing Great Thank You Notes. The author aptly covers why we write thank you notes, who gets them, and deals with the most common objections kids have to writing thank you notes. From the salutation to a thematically appropriate list of thank you note adjectives, to applicable examples for the most universal occasions, The Kids' Guide To Writing Great Thank You Notes takes children (and their parents!) through an enthusiastically recommended, step-by-step process that will soon have the kids up to speed on the art of saying thank you for the gifts, services, and help that they receive from family and friends.

Sei-Ann Turns a boy in to some men who are chasing him. She forgets the matter and returns to her life as a servant under the Lady Beck-Ja. Once upon a time she was not a servant, and she doesn't remember much but she knows Lady Beck-Ja calls her by the wrong name. She rails against mistreatment from the Lady until one day she meets the handsome Prince who drops a broach of a random crest at her ankles by mistake. Upon inspecting the crest the design seems familiar to Sei-Ann, but her ruminations are interrupted by the Prince's servant, the same young man she turned in to the authorities that very morning.

So begins a fun shojo title full of power struggles and intrigue. Sei-Ann is constantly trying to get the Prince's attention while escaping the mishandling of Lady Beck-Ja while the young servant, Shion, helps her achieve her goal. But when reassignment to the palace proves Shion to be more than what he appears (and Sei-Ann as well) will Sei-Ann be able to handle the new developments?

This is fun. I enjoy it, and I am not prone to Manhwa titles, because I usually find them inferior to most manga. This is great! I liked it more then I thought I would. Story is good, art is good, what's not to like? I am ordering the rest of them so I can check them out as well. I dig it.

This is a charming story with a smart and capable heroine, some good plot twists, and lots of potential.

I look forward to the second volume.

I bought this at Borders yesterday (for the full price, I might add...I could've saved a dollar if I bought it here), and I read it as soon as I got home. It starts off a bit slow, but once Sei-Ann gets to the palace, it gets much better.

This is my first experience with a Korean manga, and it took me a while to get used to because it reads normally, left to right, unlike Japanese manga (which I've grown accustomed to).

The art is very beautiful, and the story is very sweet. I wasn't expecting one of the princes to be a pedophile, though...that took me by surprise. It's kinda weird...

But other than that, it's a good read and worth the price. I totall recommend it.

Let me just start by saying I'm normally more interested in Yaoi (boy's love) manga and it's been a long time since anything of this nature has hooked me. I picked up the title randomly during my search for new manga, and I was just immediately overwhelmed with the beauty of Hee-Eun Kim's art. The cover alone is worth a study, as is the pinup on the inside flap.

As with any new series that I know nothing about, I flipped through the first couple pages at Borders to see how the translation is. Especially since this was originally Korean, it's hard to know if the English is going to be broken or just downright awful. I was pleasantly surprised; the translation is top notch.

I took it home to poke through some more...and instantly fell in love. The characters are very 3D (don't let the rags-to-riches element fool you; it's a simple tale with a romantic twist), interesting, and every page is filled with detailed art. I've never actually seen a manga this well-developed, and it's supposedly Hee-Eun Kim's first! Also, don't be fooled by the slow beginning -- as another reviewer has said, once Sei-Ann gets to the palace, the story really picks up and draws you in.

The detail in the story, characters, and art are the reasons I give this the highest rating possible. My compliments are to the manga-ka first and foremost and second to the translator, whose outdone him/herself.

Pick this one up and give it a read. You won't regret it.

This audio-cassette version of Slaughterhouse-Five is a great way to enjoy Vonnegut at his best. Follow Billy Pilgrim through a hillarious and moving journey through life that has more relevence to real life than any other character in modern American fiction. Vonnegut's influence is wide and well respected mostly due to Slaughterhouse-Five. A must buy

My husband is legally blind and a great Vonnegut fan. This product is wonderful for him.

I loved these books, except for the fact that they are abridged. The main thing I liked was that Vonnegut plays and sings the songs which he writes in the books. Whenever a song appears in a Vonnegut text, you have lyrics, but no melody. I expected to only hear him read the lyrics, but he has an acoustic guitar and SINGS. That was a trip.

There's nothing like listening to an author read from his work. This audio collection - Vonnegut reading from Slaughterhouse Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat's Cradle - is an absolute must for any fans of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Author Price has written a realistic, enjoyable look into the Asian community, especially in the LA Area. I found myself learning about another culture, as well as being caught up in the suspense and intrigue of the story. It is obvious that Price has worked this area of law enforcement investigation, and is right on with his descriptions of Chinatown and police policy and procedures. It is an excellent story, well written, and I look forward to Price's next book.

A retired detective lieutenant, Frederick Price spent thirty-three years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department. He spent time in everything from patrol to special investigations, and investigated cases ranging from organized crime to terrorism. Lair of the Dragon is his first mystery.

Every portion of police work involves the writing of reports. Combine this with the years spent in dangerous situations with bad guys, some life tragedies, and an overbearing captain and you have the beginning of Lair of the Dragon. Chad Belmontes is a Metro Detective who is still mourning the loss of his wife and child. When his supervisor threatens punitive action if he doesn't catch up on his caseload, he fakes some reports to save his hide, never dreaming that his faked report sets up an alibi for a murderer. As he and his friend Stan begin to dig, they uncover an organization of Triads, a Chinese mob, run by Benny Chi:

"Returning to his chair, Wu accepted Belmontes' offered cigarette. 'Chad,' he began again, 'these are real fanatics you're dealing with. Triad rites and ceremonies are based upon 36 Hung Mun oaths. They are...' 'Hung...what?' Belmontes interrupted. 'Blood oaths,' Wu answered. 'These oaths basically demand allegiance by all members to the Triad. As part of their initiation ceremony, new members drink a mixture of their own and other initiates' blood. It's supposed to make them bound for life.'"

Chad Belmontes is a marred cop who is lovable in spite of his warts. The one thing that stands out is his basic sense of honesty and decency...even to the point of putting his life in jeopardy for a system all too ready to pounce on one mistake. Frederick Price does a bang-up job of creating a real police environment, which translates to overworked men who are expected to be superhuman in their pursuit of crime and organizations. They are often outgunned and out manned, and they have to use their wits to get the better of their adversaries. Price reminds us, via Belmontes' character, just what a thankless and dangerous job police work is. Lair of the Dragon pulls the reader through a maze of criminals and murders that is exciting and frightening. A great read!

Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer

A good read! Fast-paced, interesting characters, lots of excitement. An easy to read and follow story, with a more complex plot, with lots of twists which keeps the reader wanting to read another chapter, another chapter, and yet another chapter. There was a little something in each character that I recognized in people that I have personally known which made the book even more interesting. I will definitely keep my eyes open for more of this author's books.

At the recommendation of a friend, I bought this book. To make a long story short, I started it one evening and finished it the next day, as I couldn't put it down. I loved it. It kept me going the entire time. Both the adventure and realism were there. Anyway, I hope that the author does a sequel with the same characters, as I'm hooked.