May Books

This is the best mystery I've read in a while. The writing was impeccable, the characters interesting, the mystery kept me guessing, the Seattle setting was unique, and the protagonist wasn't irritating. I even had to pick up a dictionary for several of the words in the book. Imagine: a mystery that elevates my vocabulary.

Carnegie Kincaid is a wedding planner in Seattle. Normally she doesn't plan stag parties. She plans weddings. But, her new client insisted. After she left the party, she ends up looking through binoculars to watch the party. Why? Her significant other, although they're currently having trouble, is at the party. What she doesn't know is that a killer is there, too.

The next day the best man is pulled from the canal. Who could have killed him? What did she see in those binoculars? Anything important? After she tells police what she saw and gets a friend in trouble, she decides she'd better look into things herself before telling them anything else. She gets Aaron, her significant other, to help her.

Not only does she have this New Year's Eve wedding to be planning, she has another Christmas wedding to plan. And now Ivy, the mother of the bride for the New Year's Eve wedding, has asked her to plan another party.

Since the murder is related to that wedding, she wants to spend as much time as possible with the parties to try to determine who could have been the murderer. Can she do that before anyone else is murdered, including herself? Plus what about her new love interest? Will this muddy the waters?

Carnegie is a great character. She is a lot of fun, and she gets herself into predicaments throughout the book. I felt it was a very believable story, and a lot of fun to read. I can't wait to read more.

I am originally from Washington State, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading a book set in Seattle. I think the author does a great job of weaving the wedding planning and the sleuthing.

I highly recommend this book.

Seattle-based wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid has a lot on her plate. Dry rot has forced a temporary evacuation of her home and office, a rented houseboat moored on the east shore of Washington's Lake Union, and from her interim quarters she is overseeing the final preparations for two end-of-year nuptials. Preparations for the Buckmeister/Frost Christmas Eve wedding aren't unusually problematic, but the blowout Carnegie's planning for New Year's Eve proves to be a trial. For one thing, bride-to-be Sally Tyler--the daughter of renowned conductor Charles Tyler and his superstar CEO wife Ivy--is a spoiled rich girl with the people skills to match. For another, the groom's disagreeable best man turns up dead the morning after the bachelor party, and Carnegie--spying on the debauch for her own reasons through a pair of binoculars--may have witnessed the prelude to his murder.

May the Best Man Die is the third book in Deborah Donnelly's series of Wedding Planner Mysteries. (I have not read the first two books in the series but plan to remedy that fault.) It's a tightly-plotted mystery with a likable protagonist and good, breezy writing: "So, roundly cursing Ms. Tyler and the stack of wedding magazines she rode in on, I climbed into my van [the Vanna White Too, by the way] and drove south." Readers looking for a quick, well-written cozy will find Donnelly's series delightful.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

I am having such a fun time reading each book in this series. I can't wait for the next book to be released.

Deborah Donnelly has a great series with her sleuth/wedding planner - Carnegie Kincaid. The plot/subplots are great and her wedding and party planning ideas are pretty good as well.

I would not have missed reading about the Christmas wedding for anything. The "Killer B's" were great. I am going to miss them and hope that somehow they'll be included in the next book if only slightly. (Kind of how the southern Sheriff always managed to appear SOMEWHERE in the James Bond movies.)

This is not a "gruesome" murder series. It is a joy to find another great read.

Mary's journey is truly extraordinary! I couldn't put the book down. She is an amazing human being to have overcome such adversity! Great read!

I loved this book. Like most of the books I love, it offers a glimpse into a reality so different from my own. BTW, I can't stand depressing books...although Mary had a tough childhood, her book never left me feeling depressed.

I let a woman at my work read it after me and she loved it too!

Could not put the book down. What a quality written autobiography that reads more like a fiction. Entertaining, motivational and educational. No "poor me" in this one - just the facts told in a straightforward manner. As a professional who has worked in the field of Behavioral and Mental Health, I can highly recommend this book to adults AND teens. After reading what Mary experienced as a child and what she overcame to become an educated, successful and caring adult you too will understand that it IS possible!

My career was as the Director of a rape treatment center and child protection team. Having read Mary's book, I assure you that it is a compelling read, hauntingly told without hysteria or histrionics. In an almost eerily pragmatic tone, Mary tells her story of a seriously deprived childhood in which she quickly adapted and accepted the status quo. It is a story with which many of us can identify because of the slow, insidious, and steady impact of growing up in families that not only cannot provide the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter, but do not provide safety, security, or emotional and psychological support. As children we are great at taking responsibility for the family. Mary's story is a plain truth story of survival and determination. I was quite moved and I've heard it all.

This insightful and touching memoir - Catcher in the Rye meets Horatio Alger - makes you wonder how a young woman exposed to such a difficult and deprived childhood can graduate from high school, not to mention earning a PhD from Harvard and becoming a leader in her profession. Even with elaborate support systems in place, most of us accomplish much less. Mary Kilgour's story is just an incredible eye-opener, told with such self-deprecating humor and honesty that you'll find yourself laughing and crying - and happy to learn that Ms Kilgour is now working to help children who are growing up facing some of the same issues she did!

I think our closest modern writer to the great Anthony Trollope is Susan Howatch. While "The Rich are Different" and "Sins of the Fathers' (really parts I and II of the same novel) were annoyingly packaged as romance novels, referring to Howatch as a romance writer is like calling a hurricane a disturbance in the weather. At 1400 pages, Rich/Sins certainly has its romantic elements (sometimes to a fault) but the characters and plot are so richly drawn, which makes these far more than standard romance novels.

Spanning over 45 years (1922-1967) the story takes place through the first-person narratives of 10 of the key characters (two - Dinah and Cornelius - narrate twice). This narrative device, which is also used to great advantage in Howatch's later novel, "The Wheel of Fortune," provides the reader with penetrating insight into the inner voice of the character, but also reveals how each truly feels about the others. The author stays loyal throughout to some basic themes: the trappings of wealth and power, how the past tends to repeat itself, how one can't escape the past, and her two favorites: revenge and redemption (the same themes are explored in "The Wheel of Fortune"). The characters that we meet (including the two principles: Paul and Cornelius)can be both quite exhilarating and frustrating: we cringe at some of the reprehensible decisions they make, but in the end, I think we can understand (or even sympathize) with most, if not all of them. For instance, can't one certainly understand how a parent might do quite unsavory things if s/he truly feels it's in the best interest of his/her child? We cheer when someone gets his revenge, and later on too, when he, himself, gets his comeuppance.

Sometimes Susan Howatch can be too heavy handed in her constant reminders that the present has links to the past. Also, I found some of the sections a little dull(especially in "The Rich Are Different"). However, this 1400 page novel kept my interest and made me think about the characters, which is why I think the books together easily deserve four stars.

Howatch puzzles me, her novels look like run of the mill pulp fiction best sellers to judge by the covers but once you start to read them you discover a formidable intelligance. Why doesn't this author have the reputation her skills entitle her to, she is easly up there with Drabble, Murdoch and other Doyens of the British novel.

This book was recommended to me by a friend. It took me a while to actually pick it up and start reading it, but three pages in, I knew I was hooked.

Other reviews mention that this book is a modern re-telling of the story of Cleopatra's affairs with Caesar and Antony, so I won't go into that too much here, except to add that it's a neat conceit, and Howatch works these plot details into the novel flawlessly. There were several moments when I smiled or chuckled to myself when I noticed something I remembered from I, Claudius or The Lives of the Caesars.

However, even if you don't know or don't care about ancient history, this is a gripping, surprisingly fast-paced, incredibly well-written novel. Dinah Slade is a fascinating woman in her own right, rather than a mere shadow of one of history's most infamous characters. Ditto Paul Van Zale, Steve Sullivan, and Cornelius, all of whom leap off the page and seem right at home in the America and England of the early 20th century. The men and women who populate the world of the novel are driven by the same things that drive us: greed, pride, love, lust, ambition, the need for security, and the hope of a better life for their children.

To me, the most fascinating aspect of the book, and the one that might have been the easiest thing for Howatch to mess up, is the fact that the story is divided into six sections, each narrated by a different character (Dinah Slade gets two.) The varying personalities all come to life, giving us sometimes overlapping accounts of the plot line, all of which add up to one heck of a great story.

I just read that the saga continues in The Sins of the Fathers, which I'm going to purchase right now.

I've ready this book about 6 times for the past 10 years and it always delights. It didn't hit me, until I started studying ancient Rome that it is the very story of Caesar and Cleopatra, but set in Wall Street, New York (as powerful as ancient Rome!) The story begins identical to the first meeting of Caesar and Cleopatra...just as Cleopatra was brought to Caesar rolled in a carpet and carried by her faithful servant...so is Diana Slade brought to Paul Van Zale concealed in a cart and rolled in by her trusty Geoffry. Paul's wife is barren, just as history says that Caesar's wife Calpurnia was barren. Guess what else? Paul has epilepsy - who else can you think of that historians believe ALSO had epilepsy? Paul's right-hand man Steve is described exactly as Marc Antony...burly, surly and with dynamic charm - guess what? Diana and Steve find an even greater love than Diana and Caesar...oops I mean Paul Van Zale...Paul is assasinated by the son of his ex-mistress (If you know your history...you know that Brutus is the son of Caesar's ex-mistress Servilia...) Paul leaves his fortune to his cunning, clever, sickly nephew Cornelius. Who also mirrors Octavian (Augustus Caesar in later years) Octavian becomes Diana's bitter enemy and vows to take from her the one thing that she holds most dear...Mallingham her ancestral home... Just as Octavian vowed to take Egypt from Cleopatra. Steve is hounded by Cornelius much as Antony was hounded by Octavian and finally dies a virtual suicidal death...When Cornelius tries to take Diana back to New York (mmmh, seems to me that Octavian wanted to bring Cleo to Rome...) Diana gets the last laugh. Paul's son also dies in his early years just as Caesarian did. Paul's only daughter Vicky married Paul's enemy just as Caesar married his daughter to Pompei...and Guess what? She dies during her pregnancy just as Julia did! I can go on and on, but you get the picture. In my youth, I considered this a truly original masterpiece...but I now know that the entire story is the most famous in history and that it did not come from Ms. Howatch's incredibly imaginitive mind. It does not mean this book isn't worth reading...It Is!! We'll just have to forgive her for borrowing from history. I have ready many of her books and they are all wonderful. I usually read them many times.

I read this book in 1977 & still remember it as a great book. It is quite long, 658 pages but it is very hard to put down. It is intertaining & interesting. I know I will be reading it over & over again.

We all love this book (parents and kids alike)! It's cute, thoughtful, and inspires good manners. My 4-year-old has on several occasions acted out the entire story (right down to being a "kooky inspektor" and making his own cookies out of paper), and my 5-year-old quotes the whole thing. This is definitely one of those books that I've recommended to all of my friends for their children.

8 Children Under 5 all give this book two hands up! We love the sweet illustrations and the antics of this cookie lover. Learning to say please isn't as easy for some animals as it is for us kids.

I love this book because the mom is smart. She knows that if she explains everything to her little alligator, he won't really learn. So she allows him to go through a tough time while he figures out for himself the right thing to do. In the end she helps him prove to himself that he is as smart as she knows he is.

My almost 4 year old son loves this book! We read it every day; sometimes 2, 3, or 4 times. At first he didn't understand the "lesson". But, after a few times reading it, he did grasp the concept of saying "please". He has told me, several times, that this is his favorite book.

A brief summary of the book: Alfie loves cookies and wants one of the cookies Mommy just baked. Using several "creative" methods, Alfie tries unsuccessfully to get a the cookies. Then, with Mommy's help, he learns the best (easiest?) way of all to get to the cookies is to say "Please").

Cute, colorful pictures, simple wording, easy concept to understand (even for a 3 and a half year old.

I found this to be a very fast read and entertaining for my daughter. I was surprised at how much she liked this story. I wasn't expecting her to learn manners from this book though. While the story is really basic, all I have to say is "How would Alfie ask for that?" if she's being a little too demanding. She immediately says "May I please have a ______?" She often had me read it to her 5-6 times per night. This is one of the first books she learned to read on her own.

As national sports publications go, The Sporting News tends towards the low-brow; this can be charted both with the increase in recent years of NASCAR-coverage and by the quality of the copy itself--certainly not in the same class as Sports Illustrated, which, for all its faults, boasts the cream of the crop in terms of sheer sports journalism.
Thankfully, the book is not marred too noticeably by the usual TSN writing style; namely terse, fumbling little capsules that adhere strictly to certain familiar narrative arcs. The same cannot be said for the opinions therein, which are often almost painfully wrong-minded or dependent on faulty logic. It becomes clear that this volume was meant more as a stately coffee table book than a Bill James-style journey into the jungle of stats and lore to determine the pecking order of the great game.
I am a maniacal fan, to put it kindly, and one that must analyze history for its own sake. This book is intended for a fan of a slightly lesser level of obsession, which is not to say that it cannot be recommended heartily for most.

Baseball is my favorite sport, and I love debating the greatest players of all time just like everyone else. And The Sporting News does a solid job of ranking the players, and offering why. The pictures are a wonderful addition to the text. And while they overvalue players like Rogers Hornsby and Pete Rose and undervalue players like Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, and Stan Musial, the idea of the book like this is to provoke arguments. Foolishy, they did not separate pitchers and position players, and I wish they would have written a little bit more about each player, but overall this is a great book. One final note: For the most part I believe that baseball's greatest players came from the bygone days, but Cal Ripken's 78 ranking in this book is an absolute travesty. He is a top 30 player. Overall, a great book.

GREAT BOOK, GIVEN AS A GIFT AND HE LOVED IT. READS IT AVIDLY EVERYDAY. WIFE TOLD ME HE ABSOLUTELY LOVES IT. I AM SURE IT WILL BE LOVED BY THE AVID BASEBALLL FAN. MAKES A GREAT GIFT OR IF YOU ARE JUST BUYING IT FOR YOURSELF ENJOY EVERY PICTURE AND LINE YOU READ.

Like their pro football book, this book selects what The Sporting News' editors felt who were the greatest 100 baseball players of all time. And it's very difficult to argue too hard with their choices. Babe Ruth at #1 is in my opinion a no-brainer. Ruth really saved the game at a time when it desperately needed a hero and he forever changed the way the game was played with his towering home runs on the field and his "carousing" off it. The book also features a nicely written foreword by the #2 all-time best player, Willie Mays. How honored I am that I got to see him play in his prime some 30 plus years ago as a boy.

I like that the choices in this book are unaffected by race, scandal or personality. Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard, Cool Papa Bell, and Oscar Charleston of the Negro League made this list. It's truly sad that so many talented ballplayers were kept out of the majors because of their race. Joe Jackson, is another "Top 100 member" who of course was banned after the Black Sox scandal. Others like Ty Cobb, who was a notorious hothead in his day are also here.

Reading through the book brought many smiles to my face as I recalled watching so many players, like Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, Willie McCovey (my all-time favorite), Ernie Banks, and Hank Aaaron just to name a few.

So many excellent choices, this book is well-done and a great momento to all the athletes who have made baseball the game it is today.

My favorite sports is baseball, so reviewing this book was an easy choice. As with all books that rank the best of all time, the listing are subjective, although this list is very close to my personal choices. Sporting News is a respected name and that adds credibility to the book.

Starting with Babe Ruth, as most baseball ranking do, right to number 100 Early Wynn, there are stories, photos and quotes that make this book one the best. I was impressed by the vast collection of pictures throughout the book.

The book has a top 100 timeline of players, the All Time top 10 selections lists, all decade teams, top100 breakdowns and a top 100 quiz included in the book as well. For every baseball fan and purest, this would make the prefect gift or collectors item.

A great addition to my library, a book that I will share with my children for years to come, Baseball's 100 Greatest Players needs only to add a video to make the set complete!

Sharan Newman's To Wear the White Cloak pulled me in and held my attention through the story so well that, when it ended, I wanted more. She portrayed a realistic family living in France in the time of the Crusades, with all their problems, and how they related to one another, in a way that my modern mind could embrace; yet the setting and events were authentic to the historical period. I remembered and mused over the characters' words and thoughts long after I closed the book.

This book is quite different than the previous books in this series. For one thing, it's actually quite humourous and although there is a murder, it happens sometime before the book actually begins. The dead body of what appears to be a knight of the crusade is found by Catherine and Edgar in their Paris home after they've been away for a year. The scandal from that, as well as a lot of rumours that are going around Paris about them causes them to set out to find first who the knight was, and then to determine who killed him. This book is peopled by a lot of characters, and that can be confusing, and there is a lot of unrelated action going on, so it gets a bit disjointed at times, but it is funny, and that is very different for a Catherine LeVendeur mystery. Ms. Newman's research is still very extensive, and her two main characters are just as likeable, so not a bad addition to this series.

After reading this book, I am dying to get the next in the series on my nightstand. Sharan Newman's books are so engaging in their plots, well-crafted subplots, and details of medieval life that you almost hate to finish one. Her works are intelligently written and addictively interesting. Four stars, no question.

I couldn't wait for this latest installment of Sharan Newman's series featuring the clever and clumsy Catherine and her stalwart spouse Edgar, set in the 1140's, this time back in Paris. Just as with her previous novels, I was more than satisfied. I discovered Catherine and Edgar in "Cursed in the Blood" just after our return from Scotland and the north of England this summer, visiting castles of our ancestors dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, primarily. Newman has such a thorough grounding in the history of the time and yet she has the ability to bring her characters to life. I raced through all of her previous novels in the series, except for the next to last one--on order!--just prior to this one, "To Wear the White Cloak". In this latest story, Catherine and Edgar were shocked upon their return from what seems to have been a dangerous and difficult journey to Germany to find a very dead (and moldy!) Knight of the Temple locked inside her father's home. The well-educated twosome have to counter the suspicion that quickly falls on their family, as before, by solving the murder themselves. This is accomplished while they deal with the everyday issues of raising their family in health and safety, establishing themselves financially, and even struggling with moral issue of birth control. You will do yourself a favor if you begin reading Newman's books--go back and read the others--if you have an appreciation for this time period and for an excellent mystery. (Note to fans of Ellis Peters: finally, someone to (almost) fill her shoes)

Newman just kepts improving with age. How she manages to come up with all these new settings, people, and situations is beyond me. Each book can stand on it's own, but I'm happy to have read them all in order to allow me to see how each character in the story has changed and matured.
I hope this series never ends!

Like all of Judy Mays books this was Greattttttttttttttt! I really enjoyed this read! I do have to say anything I have read of hers has been great so...ENJOY!!

Serena is content working with the wolves in the preserve. But as the full moon rises, she realizes she has a problem. Aside from being intensely attracted to her boss Kearnan, Serena is going into heat. She needs to stay away from Kearnan before she is overcome with the need to mate with him.

Kearnan has being trying to get Serena to recognize his feelings for her to no avail. He is forced to take drastic measures to try and get Serena to heel. But Kearnan and Serena have many obstacles in their way. Secrets, an old admirer, and a few other foes. But Kearnan has no intention of letting Serena go now that he has her right where he wants her. He'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe and by his side.

Once again Judy Mays delivers an erotic and intense story with In The Heat Of The Night. Kearnan's dominance and desire for Serena is hot. And Serena's insatiable appetite for Kearnan makes this couple irresistible. Their story is hot, entertaining and consuming. It's a great addition to the Heat

Nannette
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

Have recently started reading books from Ellora's Cave publishing and have really enjoyed ... A Touch of Heat continues the joy. If you like your books hot and the characters hotter ... this is a book for you!

Love the hint of more stories of the Gray family. Nice twist and great characters.

For a walk on the wild side, this book will enhance your trip if you don't mind a little fur getting in the way. For some reason stories about shifters have a little more romance than others, if you're into that kind of thing. In my opinion, this was a well-written story and I enjoyed each and every page. But then again I've been told I have strange tastes. Judy Mays is another one of those authors that grabs your attention and keeps it until the very last page has been read.

This was actually my first experience with Doris Lessing, tho I've heard of her for years. Her picture of the So. African experience was quite revealing but I got a little tired of the analysis of those who joined the communist movement. It seems that though she worked as an activist, she never really
'bought' the doctrine, to her credit. But she seems to have a need to over analyse the motives. It seems to me that most of the people were just trying to improve the social ills of the time and were taken in by the communist rhetoric. The writing was good enough to keep me reading even though I wasn't too happy with the her bohemian attitude; abandoning her children, taking successive lovers.... I respect her intellect but not her morals.
I am not inclined to look for the second installment.

Doris Lessing has led such an interesting life, and writing a diary all the time. She writes of a time completely foreign to me, living a history of the changes in Southern Afica. I find her autobiography a great read, and prefer it to her novels. Interesting and moving, and explains much about her!

This is a hard-hitting piece of autobiography. Lessing looks at her parents and their world of colonial mastery from the point of view of her younger, increasingly disenchanted self. Lessing was gathering steam in those years, to emerge as one of the prominent novelists of the post-war era. In this, the first of a two-volume autobiography, she is beginning to grow critical of her parents, colonialism, white supremacy, men - her husband in particular - and just beginning to flirt for a short time with the great experiment in group-think of the period known as Communism. She falls for it for a time, but not for long. It will take her a while, but she finally emerges along with George Orwell as the most articulate critic of this mindless, toxic form of self-imposed mental slavery. She writes of her fellow-traveling, communist-sympathizing friends as silly people, which strikes me as as good a way to think of them as any. Lessing provides, along with her political autobiography, a lovely evocation of Africa, the landscape and people, about whom she wrote as a young novelist and to whom she has continued to refer throughout her long and continuing career as a writer.

This is a candid autobiography with as main themes love, sex (good sex, as Doris Lessing calls it, is a right for everybody) and politics in South-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) ruled by a blank minority.
It is a gripping, moving and realistic picture, wherein the author tries to find answers to personal and more general human questions: why was she so outspoken rebellious and, on the contrary, so strictly loyal to the communist movement?
Why are people fighting relentlessly each other, and on the other hand, striving for happiness?
Are the people of her generation all children of World War I? Why was her father a freemason?

This book is written like an irresistible waterfall. Not to be missed.

Under My Skin

Doris Lessing's autobiography traces her political and emotional development from her earliest childhood memories to her growing, overwhelming, disenchantment with provincial (as she saw it) small town life. "Small town" life for her was pre-WWII Salisbury in the (then) British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Salisbury was a complacent capital city of 10,000 white settlers in a country the size of Spain.
Lessing is quick to debunk the myth of the prosperous, close knit, white farming community - poverty was a real fact of life both for blacks and whites. Her most vivid childhood memories are of escaping from the family home and off into the limitless veld. The emptiness of the veld parallels her youthful emptiness and her growing convictions that the communist party represents a real hope for the world.
The book, a masterpiece of autobiographical writing, is brutally honest in parts and wilfully obscure in others. Some of her emotional mistakes are hardly glanced at (leaving her first two children, for example) but others (the joys of being part of a fast, hard drinking sect, embracing radical politics) are wonderfully engaging. Reading her thoughts you could be forgiven for thinking that the "party" was the only opposition to conservative white rule in Salisbury. This is what makes her book so appealing, her supreme skill as a novelist allowing us to enter the heady world of rushed meetings, leftist newspaper deliveries, drinks on the sports club verandah and back in time to find the cook still waiting to prepare supper. Naturally it couldn't last and Lessing is far too intelligent to think that that is all there is to life. The book ends in 1949 as she arrives in London, apprehensive and hopeful in the capital city of her parents.
This is more than a `who-did-what' from a long time ago, times and dates are (probably deliberately) rarely mentioned. It is the personalities and the ideas - most of all the ideas - sliding from youthful enthusiasm to mature realism which fuse the book with life and vitality. `Under My Skin', published in 1992, is that rare thing, a candid autobiography written by a consummate novelist with skills to spare. Doris Lessing is a national treasure.

Happy to report that (from my perspective) the previous enthusiastic Amazon reviews of "White Corridor," which led me to buy the book, were right on the money. So thanks to those eight and let me add my own applause for this book which is throughly inventive, original and engaging from the first page. Author Fowler has a real knack for the slow revealing of clues that ultimately solve/resolve the several mysteries at work in this book. Also of real interest to me were the wonderful character sketches provided in the book. There are a lot of players here and even the secondary participants are well described and presented for the reader.
This was altogether a great find and encourages me to try other books in the series.

WHITE CORRIDOR represents an advance on the formula of previous Bryant and May books and doesn't depend so directly on their Alistair Sim like charms and the mere fact of their being so old and stubborn. Instead author Christopher Fowler bifurcates the space of the novel into four "white corridors," each with its own puzzle. Two of these dominate most of the detective work. In one, we follow the story of Madeline Gilby, a grocery checkout girl and single mother of a restless young son Ryan. Madeline flees an abusive husband and tries to find life again in the south of France, along the Riviera, in the off season. In the warmth of the sun, Madeline comes back to life and responds to the amorous advances of Johann, sort of a Karl-Boehm-in-Peeping-Tom kind of stud who murdered his mother way back when after enduring a childhood of torment and abuse. Uh-oh, not the perfect guy for Madeline, who has incidentally tried developing her psychic powers to weaken men under the guidance of London's notorious chiseler Kate Summerton.

In the second storyline Bryant and May decide to leave the Unit for a holiday in which they plan to attend a psychics convention in the wilds of England, but the worst snowstorm ever to hit a detective story strands them on a lonely stretch of highway in conditions too perilous to proceed further in. The delicious warmth and sun of the Riviera in the first section here gives way to bonechilling cold and a creeping terror as a madman is apparently stalking the snowbound cars one by one and committing terrible murders whenever his fancy calls him. Will Bryant and May be next?

In the third plot, back home at the PCU, crotchety forensic nut Oswald Finch is found horridly murdered inside his own morgue, and all the doors locked from within. Without their two chiefs, the pressure drops on the younger members of the unit, charged with clearing up the case before the visit of a minor royal princess and a judgmental entourage out to dismantle the archaic PCU. This threat to the PCU doesn't have as much built in suspense as Fowler must think it does, for really, who cares, but in all other respects WHITE CORRIDOR is an immense improvement over last year's TEN SECOND STAIRCASE, with interesting characters, a rollicking Steve Coogan like humor, the most picturesque writing this side of William Trevor, and a genuinely new locked room problem.

I wound up giving Christopher Fowler a lathering last year when STAIRCASE, his "Highwayman" novel, failed to meet my impossibly high standards. Mr. Fowler wrote me a forgiving note that touched me, and now I regret having written from my high horse. I asked him if he were a Buddhist, since in my limited experience who else would have gotten up so amiably after having his arse kicked to the curb, but Fowler replied that he wasn't a Buddhist, only an Englishman LOL.

As with all the Bryant and May mysteries, I have to say that I mostly enjoyed it. In fact, I think I enjoyed White Corridor more than some of the previous volumes in the series. For one thing, the solutions to both cases seemed to be more logical, less beyond the realm of believability.

But something disturbed me...

*** SPOILER WARNING!! Stop reading if you haven't finished the book!! ***

What happens to Ryan?! I was dreadfully concerned about that poor little boy, and at the end, it seemed he was abandoned by both the characters and the author. I'm assuming they didn't leave him out in the cold, alone, but you'd never know it from the rest of the book.

First Sentence: NOTICE: THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT WILL BE SHUT FOR ONE WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 19th FEBRUARY

While the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit is closed down for repairs, Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May had off for an international convention of psychics. Caught in a blizzard and stuck in their van, they are tasked with solving two crimes. Back at the office, the retiring pathologist is found dead within his locked autopsy room. A woman, who escaped her abusive husband with her young son, now finds herself on the run from a man who admitted killing his mother.

One of the things I love about this series is the creativeness of the plots, and there are so many elements I enjoyed in this book. First, I love the characters; the quirkiness of Bryant and the protectiveness of May. The sense of place was excellent; you felt them stuck in that blizzard and dreaded every time they had to get out of their van and into the cold. I appreciated their helping their colleagues solve the case back at headquarters and the approach that they wouldn't always be there to solve the cases. Fowler took what could have been a cliché story line of the woman running from a stalker and gave us something new with it. I am a definite fan and end each book eagerly awaiting the next.

If Ken Bruen's east London crime novels featuring the brutal and boorish Inspector Brant are literature as rugby, then Christopher Fowler's mysteries of the aging Brant and May detective duo are symphonies. Both entertaining, but Bruen is jarring and violent where Fowler is refined, cultured, and subtle. Fowler writes the classic British mystery: dryly humorous, understated, unadorned, and intelligent. In this outing, inspectors Arthur Brant and John May, the irascible and unorthodox heads of London's Peculiar Crimes Division, find themselves stranded in a freak blizzard on the moors of southern England, leaving Sergeant Janice Longbright in charge to solve the ultimate "murder in the inside-locked room" mystery of the team's chief forensic scientist. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose in the snowdrifts, keeping our discerning duo occupied between cell phone-assist calls to Longbright and her short-handed crew. But despite facing simultaneous murder investigations and answering some nagging questions about the apparent drug overdose death of a young woman whose body occupies the morgue, the real terror facing the PCU team is the looming stationhouse tour of an insufferable princess and PCU nemesis Oskar Kasavian, the London PD bureaucrat bent on shutting the renegade crime-solving unit down.

Rich in allegory and clever forensics, contemporary crime fiction's most eccentric inspectors plough through deliciously convoluted threads of seemingly unrelated mysteries, taking a few keenly twisted turns before arriving at a clever and, at least for me, a totally unexpected climax. Brilliant character development and sharp, witty, dialogue add up for one of the year's most engaging and enjoyable crime novels. If you haven't met Brant and May yet, this is as good a place as any to start - and chances are you'll not remain a stranger.

I recieved Aeschylus: Agamemnon right on time and it was crisp and new!

First in a trilogy about the return of the Greeks after the Trojan War. Powerful stuff. Such horrors and tragedy as only the Greeks can master. Agamemnon's father killed his brother's children and set their flesh before him to eat, unknowingly. Agamemnon himself killed his own daughter as a sacrifice to the gods for success in the Trojan War, and when he comes home after ten years (which is where the action begins), his wife, Clytemnestra, stabs him to death in a plot with Aegisthus who was the son of the father who ate his children, and in the next part, Orestes, Agamemnon's son will return and kill them both. Please don't think I'm giving away plot here. Plot is not the point, the writing of it is all. To see it staged by first-rate actors must be a real thrill indeed.

It would be good to have two years of college Greek behind you before starting on Denniston and Page's AGAMEMNON, a Greek text with modern commentary. As a single-volume edition for students, this one could not be bettered: everything is explained and difficult passages are translated in the notes -- about three lines a page are difficult enough to require this treatment. And I mean difficult for everyone, the world's greatest Greek scholars included. The difficulties are very thoroughly discussed. Another reviewer here has said Denniston and Page are dogmatic; not at all: they point out where passages are unclear, disagreed about by scholars, or outright lost. Most of the choruses contain passages so distorted scholars have to guess at what was written, and (assuming their guess is right) exactly what the passages mean. Aeschylus writes a little like Shakespeare in MACBETH: very poetically and not always clearly. In spite of all this, passages, sometimes quite long, of powerful poetry leap out of the page. The play has been compared to KING LEAR and called, along with LEAR, one of the two best tragedies of all time. What's more, it makes you feel, even with Denniston and Page's constant help, that you can really understand Greek if you can understand lines from this play.

I always liked Homer and Sophocles, but I still have a preference for Aeschylus. What makes "Agamemnon" such a great story is that not only is it a story in itself, but it is only part 1 of the trilogy. (Part 2 is "Libation Bearers" and Part 3 is "The Eumenides.") Now "Agamemnon" was of course written centuries before Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." Nevertheless, the events of "Agamemnon" take place after Shakespeare's play. If you read that play by Shakespeare, you know that it deals with the last stages of the Trojan War. In Shakespeare's play, Agamemnon is pictured as a reasonable and competent king who is frustrated at the length of the war, is repulsed by the vanity of Achilles, and shows reasonable strength in diplomacy. Onto the material at hand. The chorus is basically a group of older men who can comment on the situations, but they can't really interfere. (Kind of like the narrator in a play.) The chorus tells us that Troy has fallen and Greece is triumphant. We then meet Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra. She blames Agamemnon for the death of her child Iphigenia. So, she naturally wants to kill Agamemnon. The chorus seems to admit it was strange that the war was fought over the abduction of Helen who was a willing prisoner. Nevertheless, the chorus sides with Agamemnon when he arrives. But an Isaac Asimov proverb seems to explain this nicely: "Such a keen sense of honor is often praised by those who are safe at home." But of course, it is a different story to those who are directly involved. But of course, almost any time romance is involved, the voice and sense of reason take a vacation. Moving on, Agamemnon seems to be a good king in showing his piety in the light of victory. But there is one flaw. He has kidnapped Hector's sister Cassandra. (She was a virgin priestess to Apollo, and that would be the equivalent of kidnapping a nun for the purposes of pleasure.) Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but because she tried to run with Apollo's gift 'without paying for it' Apollo cursed her in that no one would believe her prophecies. Showing reason, she curses Paris for starting the war with the utterly stupid kidnapping, and she tries to tell that Clytemnestra is plotting against Agamemnon, but of course no one will listen. She also tells of how Orestes will avenge his father and kill Clytemnestra (in Part 2). But back to the main plot. Clytemnestra plays the devil and uses Agamemnon's vanity against him which leads to his destruction. (How disturbing that vanity was the downfall of many men centuries ago and often still is.) In comes Clytemnestra's Aegisthus. He talks of the crimes of Agamemnon's father against his father. What happened was Aegithus's father slept with Agamemnon's father's wife. In revenge, Agamemnon's father tricked Aegithus's father into eating the flesh of his own son. The theme of revenge is further emphasized. It is of course a never ending circle. Though I do find it interesting that Aegithus finds it fit that Agamemnon suffers for the crimes of his father. (YET IT WAS AEGITHUS'S FATHER WHO STARTED IT!) So Aegithus and Clytemnestra can be together now. But of course, we know in Part 2, they will get their comeuppance. Overall, it's a great story that emphasizes the evils and the seeming eternity of revenge.

[Note: This edition is a text in ANCIENT GREEK with notes in English. It has no text in English if you are looking for one. There are many to recommend. The best translation of the Oresteia, of which this work is the first part, is in Tony Harrison's Collected Works; the worst, in my opinion at least, was written by Ted Hughes. All the rest are good.]
This is a superb edition with one caveat. At the moment, educated consensus generally holds that a line of poetry seldom has one meaning. Denniston and Page's text plus commentary of Agamemnon apparently was written before this consensus formed. Denniston and Page are feisty, dogmatic, and insistent that they are right, and are largely reacting to Fraenkel's massive text plus commentary to the same play. They take issue with Fraenkel on a number of points while acknowledging his immense erudition. I have no reservations, however, recommending this edition. It was very useful and well-thought out. I give it a high rating.