Spencer Books

This book was terrible. I stuck with it, always hoping it would get better. I didn't care an ounce about the main character. It was really just one battle scene after another, throwing in a new weapon each time. The story wasn't very interesting either. Good concept, but not enough was said about the gods and their roles.

I love this trilogy, from the start of book one to the end of book three, the historical aspects are pointed out in a way that fits as part of the story and they don't overthrow the plot, lending the books a very authoritative tone. The Characters are great, (Brand is one of my favorites) and there's plenty of action. What I like best about these books is that Harrison really makes you feel inside the story, the way he handles the characters attitudes towards each other and their surroundings really makes you feel like you're right with them weather it's Anglo-Saxon England, Scandinavia, The Frankish Empire, Muslum Spain or what's left of Rome. As for character development, Harrison has a great way of using the third-person point of view in a way that can convey things unknown to the characters yet at the same time the tone of the narrative is flavored with the particular character's personality, culture and view of their surroundings, helping the reader understand more fully the motives and inhibitions of the people he describes. I read these back in high school and loved them then as much I still do now.

This was a fun book-I enjoyed it so much that I slogged through the end of the series, which I thought was pretty crappy, because I liked this one so much.

It's sort of sad that people say 'It's great history' or 'It changed my life', though. It's not that hard to write a history that makes one people look evil and another saintly, especially if you use 'alternate history' to do it, and Harrison is far from an un-biased observer in matters of religion.

From the beginning you are caught up in the viking age, and the story of Shef, who changes the course of history through the help he recives from the Norse Gods in the form of visions. As an ametuer historian, I found this novel exceptional, and as someone who personally followes the old norse gods, I was not dissapointed. The Gods and Goddesses are portraied truly, I get the feeling the author has had experience with them himself, or at least the input of someone else who does.

This is a long book by itself, full of action. The two books which follow it only get better.

I normally dislike alternate history. But this proved that people can pull this genre off. If you come to this book looking for stories about the Norse gods you won't find them. Instead, you find an Englishman who falls in among Viking raiders . He meets a Way-man(i.e. Asatruar) who tells him about the Asier and Vanir (Norse gods). His life from that point is then touched by his patron god (can't say who, it will spoil the book).
This is a grand story, filled with romance, action, adventure, mystery, and one suprise after another. I'm currently reading the sequel and so far it is proving to be just as impressive. You will not be disappointed if you buy this book.

There is not much that I want to say other than the book was great!!! I finished the book on the same day it arrived in the mail. This book gives a wonderful look at some characters that were only casually mentioned in P&P. It combines the characters of Northanger Abbey and P&P very well. If I say anymore I fear I will say too much. Try this book out for yourself. You will be glad you did.

This is the first mystery book I have ever enjoyed and finished. Lizzy and Darcy get conned by yet another idiot thirsty for their fortune. My favorite JA book is Northanger Abbey, so for me I loved the fact that I got another glimpse inside the creepy, disturbing manor. Lizzy gets to read all of Darcy's mom's old letters and even though Lady C. is there for most of the book, it held my attention until the end.

The first two follow-on books for Pride & Prejudice by Carrie Berris had very silly plot lines and should be avoided.

THIS book, however, was a well-written and natural follow-up. The dialog was believable, the feel for the characters, the setting of Pemberley and other locations worked well, and the plot itself had merit. Many of our favorite characters from Pride & Prejudice participate in the plot, along with local additions. We are even treated to the clever inclusion of some characters from Northanger Abbey.

I recommend you read this book before any others (on P&P) by Carrie Berris. I hope that from here she can write more books for us to enjoy in future years!

The author kept the characters consistent with Jane'a original Pride and Prejudice Darcy and Lizzy. I enjoyed the story and recommend it for those who want futher adventures of Darcy and Lizzy.

This third offering in the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy series is a vast improvement over the previous two. A diverting mystery; a bit of a surprise towards the end; and none of the overt paranomality that spoiled the first two for me.

I'm 55 years old and I finally have an explanation for problems that have plagued me since I was in kindergarten. That's right... kindergarten. I started having to use deodorant at the age of 5, and the problems escalated from there. With this book, Solved: The Riddle of Illness, I now know that both of my parents had thyroid problems, many of their physical difficulties were very likely linked to hypothyroidism, and the possibility that I was BORN with a low-functioning thyroid is very high.

If it had been diagnosed and treated when I was 5, I have no idea how my life would've turned out. I'm just glad I found out before I died of something that could've been prevented with thyroid treatment. One point the book makes is that thyroid can make the difference between an office boy with no ambition and a corporate empire-builder. I had no idea that thyroid had anything to do with ambition, drive and motivation.

I am now working with my naturopath to get this situation under control, and I know my life will change for the better.

Read this book... just read it. You will be blown away. And if your regular doctor won't listen to you when you talk about this with them, I highly recommend finding a new doctor -- maybe a different kind of doctor altogether. Hypothyroidism can undermine your entire life and contribute to or directly cause soooo many other conditions, and some of them are fatal. Don't wait.

This was my introduction to understanding that terrible illness - low thyroid. I recommend this book to all my patients with depression and anxiety, if GP's recognised the role of thyroid in mental illness we wouldn't be so snowed under trying to treat them.
A well researched and written book, easy to understand and broad in its application to all medical and mental illness touched by Hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Hyperthyroidism.
Also read: 'The Real Cause of Schizophrenia' by H.D.Foster.

This has the best method of determining for yourself whether your thyroid is functioning below "good health" and it's free! The biggest challenge after determining that your thyroid is not helping maintain your health properly is convincing your "mainstream" medical doctor to give you the prescription for the supplement!

Low thyroid must be the most overlooked of chronic diseases. This book goes far to correct that. After reading numerous books and articles on thyroid while writing HONEST NUTRITON, I found this one clarified the issue well. It is the best for information, as well as easier reading. I only wish Dr. Dyer had used a more relevent title. This book is about thyroid disease and complications of this problem, and it does solve the riddle of some illnesses.

The author presents the clear connection between hypothyrodism (improper activity of the thyroid) and the many seemingly isolated diseases (arthrisits, cancer, diabetwes, obsesity, hear disease, fibromyalgia, sexual problems, and many issues of memory, mental and emotional deficiencies and consequent behavior patterns. The author supplements the evidence and remedies (e.g., vitamins A,B compex, C, D3 and other iodine, zinc, coper)with case histories and research conducted over the years, as well as the consequences of those medics who misdiagnose and mis-apply corrective medicines. This is one of the more comprehensive and effective books.

This book was a great help to my husband and me when we sought to demystify his brother's suicide. Smalley and Trent clearly and practically explain what a blessing is and is not in addition to giving the reader compelling reasons to make immediate changes in one's life. If you are interested in creating a well-built foundation for your family, this book is an excellent place to begin.

While I felt there was one or two missteps with the use of Old Testament examples, this book challenged me to speak more into the lives of my children.

This book fully describes the Blessing given and withheld in families, but I thought it could go into depth more about how to deal with the lack of your family's blessing.

Anything you read by Gary Smalley is excellent but "The Blessing" gives great insights ino how relationships fail in your life becuse of nurturing you did not receive as a child. Very insightful and helpful!! I would highly recommend anyone to read this informative book. Gary Smalley is an expert on the study of relationships.

Reading this book revealed my blessings from others...
...and my responsibility to be a blessing in the lives of others...

well written...

SIN CITY is another pretty good CSI read, with dual plot lines. A religious housewife is missing, and Grissom and Brass are pretty sure her husband is behind her mysterious disappearance. At the same time, Catherine and Sara are working on the strangulation murder of an exotic dancer in the stripclub where she worked.

An overall decent and quick read.

Follow your favorite CSI team with two more great investigations. While I enjoy the television program, there are some great moments of character development that are thrust upon the reader in these printed stories. For CSI fans, these works can only really add to fan appreciation of a great team of minds. For a nice evening of mystery and imaginative fun, sit down and get to know Gil Grissom, Captain Jim Brass and the CSI team members.

I'm a huge CSI fan and I found this book to find something good to read. Once I read the first page, I couldn't put it down at all! The author stays true to the characters and the basis of the show that I was very impressed! If you're a true CSI fan like I am, this is great to read to get your CSI fix while it's on break for the summer.

I'm not too ashamed to admit the fact that I am a closet fan of CSI. I watched one episode of the series and I got hooked on how the underappreciated members of the Las Vegas Police Department's Criminalistics Division(the CSI's more common name) use an unorthodox combination of high-tech wizardry and gadgetry along with old-fashioned guesswork and detecting to solve the crimes most other agencies would balk at. My further interest in the series has even led to me purchasing both of the CSI computer games. But this was the first book in the CSI books that I read and it captures the TV style to a T.

The CSI crew find themselves involved in 2 unique cases: the disappearance of a loving wife named Lynn Pierce and the brutal murder of an exotic dancer named Jenna Patrick. The book splits the cases with team leader Gil Grissom taking the case of the missing woman and Catherine Willows (Grissom's unofficial second in command) somewhat reluctantly taking the stripper murder (as CSI fans will know Catherine herself used to be a stripper)

Suspicion grows in both cases as the teams find clues that lead them to believe that the people that were closest to the respective victims (The woman's husband in the disappearance case, and Patrick's close friend and co-worker Tera Jameson in the dancer case) are the ones that may be the most responsible for these ghastly crimes. But can they really prove their hunches?

Sin City is a great read for those who are CSI fans and fans of mystery alike. It takes the CSI TV experience and gives it an innovative written form. Capturing the style and dry wit that has made the show a bonafide hit (especially the very sly game of name switching in the stripper case) is what makes the book worth every penny.

Max Allan Collins continues his second career (in addition to being an award-winning historical mystery writer and graphic novel scripter) of authoring the best TV/movie tie-ins in the business. Sin City repeats everything that was good about Double Dealer -- solid plotting, familiar characterization, loyalty to the format. It's the rare sophomore effort that improves upon its predecessor. That it is also longer makes this feat even more surprising.

Las Vegas earns its notorious nickname when a man's wife disappears and their neighbors suspect the husband, particularly since the wife gave them a secreted cassette tape with the husband threatening to dismember her recorded on it. Meanwhile, a stripper is murdered in the lapdance room at Dream Dolls (where Catherine used to work) and the surveillance cameras point to her boyfriend, who was not only under a restraining order, but also claims he was home watching the game at the time.

Sin City fulfills on all levels and the reader profits from the experience that author Collins has in writing for already-existing television characters. The voices are perfect and one can go from watching the television series to reading the novels seamlessly, which is likely the best compliment one can give to a genre that gains little respect from the literary community but has been vastly appreciated by TV watchers and readers alike for decades.

I can so identify with Lark, Sally and Beverly because I was the same age they were in the middle/late 1930's. The surroundings and activities they engaged in were so "true to life" in my own life. Sullivan leaves the reader hungry for the next novel, hoping that we will find out that Sally was able to recapture her life and go on to success. She leaves us with the feeling that Lark and Beverly know what they want and will accomplish it.

If you haven't discoverd Faith Sullivan's books, you are missing out on a great read! I first read Cape Ann, then followed it up with The Empress of One and Gardenias. These books and the characters transported me to the 1940's and immersed me in their lives. I loved that Empress of One and Gardenias are parallel stories told from two different points of view - reflective of real-life. Remember when you have read a book that you didn't want to end?....That is a perfect description of these!

I finished "The Cape Ann" by Faith Sullivan and had to begin on "The Empress Of One" right away. I loved both books. This one picks up where The Cape Ann left off, except it focuses more on Sally Wheeler, Lark's best friend. Sally has had a hard childhood, dealing with her mother who is suffering from depression, but at this time nobody understood the disease and thought she was crazy. Lark has moved away to California, so Sally's main friend now is Beverly, who has also had a tough time, but is able to make the best of it. Sally's grandparents on both sides come to stay occasionally and help out, but for the most part she is home alone with her dad. Sally has a knack for acting and loves reading, which helps carry her through alot of turmoil... Sullivan has totally captured the essence of a young girl growing up, learning about boys, puberty, and sex, all without the help of a mother. Sally has gotten involved with a boy that is using her, but feels almost addicted to him. On top of that, her favorite teacher is run out of town after someone tells the school that he is gay. The teacher soon turns up dead and Sally blames herself, all of this combines to make Sally start to act like her mother. Will she go crazy too? I enjoyed this book so much that I will be looking for other novels by Sullivan, and will recommend these two books to others.

After reading & enjoying The Cape Ann, I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Empress of One is another great story. It may be helpful to read The Cape Ann first as you get a better understanding of one of the characters, Lark, and her mother, but it is not essential. It is interesting to read The Empress of One, and glaze over some of the same incidents from The Cape Ann from a different perspective.

Sullivan's writing is wonderful. She has a great ability to take you back to the old days of small town life, when everybody knew everyone and day to day life was more community centered. The Empress of One is the coming of age story of Sally, a little girl who grows up with a mother who is deemed "crazy", but as we know today would be described as clinically depressed. It's both interesting and sad to see how society back in the day, dealt with some heavy issues, such as mental illness, compared to the strides we've made today. Sullivan will have you so familiar with the quaintness of Harvester and it's townfolk, you'll feel like it's your own home town as well. My only complaint is that she did leave a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends. If she ties those up in another novel, there won't be any complaints~

I gave The Empress of One five stars for the superb writing. Author Faith Sullivan has the knack of using the most beautiful prose without being flowery and the talent to use words as if they were musical notes or colours in a painting. Sally Wheeler grows up in the small town of Harvester, Minnesota, the only child of beautiful, but strange, Stella, and a loving father. Today, Stella's strangeness would be immediately recognized as chronic depression and treated a such but,as was done in the 30's and 40's, she was given a hysterectomy and locked up in an institution. Perhaps a hysterectomy was part of the treatment back then...what a horrifying thought! With the help of both her paternal and maternal grandparents, Sally has a fairly normal childhood while battling the stigma of having a "crazy" mother, until she comes under the sexual spell of an emotionally needy teenaged boy who dominates her to try to make her dependant on him. It's a wonderfully written book which will stir memories, good or bad,of anyone who grew up in the 40's or 50's.

Having watched the DVDs of The Flame Trees of Thika several times, I was delighted to see the reissue of Elspeth Huxley's book of the same title. This is a unique case of both the book and the movie being about equal. Knowing the story from the movie in no way detracts from reading the book. Huxley's devotion to the land and people of Kenya shines through her descriptions of encounters with both. A semi-biographical account, it not only gives the reader insight into the colonial thinking of the times, but accurately predicts the inevitable conflicts (for example with the Mau Mau) that would later occur. It is a description of what must have been, for Huxley, an idyllic childhood living in the shadow of Mount Kenya, with its exotic animals and her interactions with the local tribes people. A most enjoyable read, this is a cameo of a time long past.

All that is now needed is a re-issue of the sequel : The Mottled Lizard.

This is by now a revered classic of a young girl's childhood in the Kenyan countryside under British rule. One reads this and instantly identifies with the colonial family. It's a kind of Swiss Family Robinson story about that magical time in Kenya and thereabouts before World War I when the world seemed to be at the feet of the British King and all globes glowed pink under the Empire. Were people ever so free and happy as the colonialists in Africa who instantly had countless servants, nearly free land, and the British fleet for protection? This is Out of Africa for the middle class, as opposed to Isak Dinesen's aristocratic take on things. Still, the going was good, as Evelyn Waugh once said. Ms Huxley is a charming writer. Required reading for lovers of things African.

The Flame Trees of Thika is a wonderfully written book giving the reader a glimpse of what it must have been like to grow up in Colonial Africa. It is an experience most of us will only have through reading and can only be compared to what it must have been to be one of the early settlers on the American Frontier.

I loved this book. It is beautifully written and is a gripping story on growing up in Africa.

In 1913, a little English girl named Elspeth relocated with her family from their native country to begin a coffee plantation in the wilds of Kenya. Similar in a way to Laura Ingall Wilder's adventurous and sentimental "take" on what was surely a very difficult experience for her family, Elspeth remembers Kenya as a wonderful place and tells us with lingering excitement of her experiences there in the short time before the First World War changed nearly everything. A delightful memoir that is a pleasure every time it's read.

May be of interest to househunters trying to envision what their happy home to be might want to be. It's basically a selective history of the concepts of home and comfort, related to changing forms of the family, over the last four or five hundred years. It's full of interesting factoids, probably ultimately of less significance than Rybczynski had hoped, but he's a good writer and charming (a hair too warm and fuzzy for me). It's a light, easy and pleasant read. It didn't leave me with anything of substance that stuck in my memory, but I definitely enjoyed reading it. It's the type of book you curl up with next to a fire with a skim mocha nutmeg and cinnamon whatever when you need to give your brain a break but can't quite stoop to watching American Idol. Okay, sorry - it's a much better book than that. And it's fun - and we all probably need to have a little fun now and then (in between reading all these serious books and growing our big, fat brains). But in the end it's not really substantial.

You probably have notions about what "home" means, and those notions probably revolve around your immediate family, domestic comfort and convenience, with a dash of nostalgia. Most likely you share my sense that home has been thus for a long time, subject to the whims of fashion and demands of social hierarchy. What I learned from Witold Rybczynski is that those are very near-sighted suppositions. The modern (Western) idea of a home is very new, historically. Even the notion of "family" that occupies so much of modern political cant, and seems so central to our social organization, goes back no further than the early 18th Century. Households before that time were comprised of groups of working adults, house owners and employees and servants, plus infants. Children were farmed out as apprentices at a tender age -- even in the wealthiest households where fortunate youngsters were placed as servants to courtiers and nobles in order to learn the ropes of oligarchy. Privacy was rare. Beds were built to handle 6-8 adults and work tables often tripled as dining boards and sleeping platforms. Rybczynski artfully traces the development of the modern household, decor and furnishing, to enable a deep understanding of why we live as we do, what works and what doesn't. As an architect he reserves some of his harshest criticism for his fellows, and neatly shoots down such icons as Le Corbusier and Wright who were too hung on their brilliance to notice that things weren't working. (As I reported in my review of Stewart Brand's excellent HOW BUILDINGS LEARN, Viking, 1994, most -- if not all -- of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses leaked, badly. HOME reports that they didn't work as living quarters either.) This author's highest praise falls to the women who invented household engineering in the late 1800s, stepping into the architectural void, inventing home economics, and shaping the modern home to suit the needs of a servantless woman charged with housekeeping and child rearing. Catherine E. Beecher and Ellen Richards come in for particular commendation. Modern furniture also falls under the author's verbal axe. Designed for style instead of comfort, he describes its advent as a foolish embrace of creativity above function, and offers the detailed research in France under the Louises (Louies?), which erupted as Chippendale and Hepplewhite designs: templates which carefully noted dimensions and proportions that actually fit a human body and allowed for the constant movement necessary to ongoing comfort. The only modern chairs which come near to the standard set in those classic designs are found in the best mechanical chairs, made to be adjusted to the user's body and to flex with movement. (More often to be found in office furniture than in a home.) Altogether an illuminating look at the circumstances of our lives. For this reviewer, who spent 20 years inventing an "alternative" house from scratch, it is greatly amusing to learn that I have spent a lot of hours reinventing wheels rounded out a hundred years ago. Talk about being forced to repeat history one has failed to learn! Been there. And so it goes.

Home is an articulate, rapid reading book about the developements leading to the current concept of "home". Tying history, architecture, sociology and technology together the emerging concept of home and comfort developes in clear visualizations.
After reading this book I now appreciate the evolution of the contradictory outlooks over time and how they affect our current drives in creating our personal living spaces.

Witold Rybczynski's Home: A Short History Of An Idea, is an historical and informational text following the devlopment of the concept of home and discusses the psychological effects of different types of dwellings and personal space, architecture, and society. Home is a well-structured and planned tracing of society's development of the concepts of home and comfort and relates to today's audiences with a new perspective on where and how they live. One of Mr. Rybczynski's strengths as a writer is his conversational writing style and the flow of the organization of his main ideas.
Home instantly dives into the development of society's ideas of comfort and home with an almost staggering jump into a strong comparison and analysis of the four style lines of the Ralph Lauren collection. Mr. Rybczynski highlights the different aspects of the setting that Lauren creates to entice the public and the different props he uses to create this feeling of home. Home utilizes the time line approach, begining in the medieval era, to explain Ralph Lauren's heightend understanding of the public's ideas of comfort. Mr. Rybczynski also examines the work of Le Corbusier and relates the modernist movement with current modern trends.
Mr. Rybczynski's book remeinds architects and interior designers that even in today's society it is easy to get caught up in what is in style or what would make a statement rather than what is comfertable for occupants to inhabit. I recommend Mr. Rybczynski's book to anyone who would appreciate seeing their home in a whole new way.

So, I am predisposed to like Rybczynski -- his biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, "A Clearing in the Distance," is one of my favorites.

Sure enough, I liked "Home" as well. It describes the invention of the concepts of "home" and "comfort" and "domesticity." Those are not things I ever thought of as having been invented; but if Rybczynski is right, they were, and relatively recently at that.

Worth noting: My favorite chapter was the one on the Netherlands in the 1600s -- a really, really interesting society, it turns out, for a lot of different reasons.

Also: The book has lots of interesting notes on the history of furniture, especially the chair.

Finally: Above all this is a book that makes you look at familiar surroundings with new eyes.

This was as good an effort as Martha Grimes has made.

I did not like this book. It seemed like something a high school student would have written. Several other reviewers mentioned that they like the characters. I found them boring. I much prefer the characters in Elizabeth Peters series of Amelia Peabody mysteries about Egypt, or the Rumpole series by John Mortimer.

This is the first Martha Grimes novel. It features Richard Jury and Melrose Plant and the pub: The Man With a Load of Mischief. The book is wonderful. Martha Grimes has a rather unique style of writing, which is all the more improbable since she is an American specializing in the British Mystery Genre.

Her Jury/Plant series, with books all named after British Pubs, makes for excellent reading. Although all of her books are excellent, she first introduced us to the town of Long Piddleton in this novel.

We are introduced to the denizens of this town after a murder occurs at a local pub. Jury, along with his dutiful sidekick, Sgt. Wiggins, responds to the town and the investigation begins.

The mystery is excellent and the novel stands on its own. The fact that this is the start of a spectacular series, makes this a must read. This is one of a very few books that I can re-read again and again.

Enjoy!

Luckily for me, this was my first Martha Grimes book so i was introduced to the characters from the very begining.

This author has great character development and while the murder and the murder investigation is very well written it plays second fiddle to the lifes of the people in Long Pudd, Scotland yard, and Jury's Appartment building.

Throughout the series you will find that Jury has the worst luck with women. Either they are dying, dying to kill themselves, or about to be jailed when they finally hook up with him.

Melrose Plant is handsome, titled and rich and is a perfect Robin to Jury's Batman.

Betwixt the two you know they will solve the case, it may be after another 5 or 10 people are dead, but they will get the one.

One thing about Martha Grimes' Mysteries is she never gives you all the answers. She always leaves you asking, no begging for more. Maybe that's why this series is so popular.

WE WANT MORE JURY.

This is the first of the Inspector Jury mysteries. My own debut with the series was one of the most recent books, Winds of Change. I enjoyed that greatly, but I found the large cast of characters a bit of a strain on the memory, so I next chose the first of all, expecting to be introduced to the main characters in a systematic way. To some extent I have been, but Ms Grimes doesn't really do systematic introductions. Jury, Melrose Plant and the others ease their way on to the scene rather than make any highlighted entrance. However with another volume in the series behind me I was better attuned to what to expect, and I coped better with the extensive character-list this time.

One thing that helped was that so many people in this story are murdered that there are fewer to keep tabs on as the book progresses. Indeed unless I'm mistaken the author herself loses count of exactly how many. Another intriguing feature is that the story has actually two heroes, Jury himself and the elegant aristocratic dilettante Melrose Plant, formerly Viscount this and Baron that before he resigned his titles out of boredom. Otherwise the style is a rather brilliant pastiche of the traditional English whodunit, as practised most famously by Agatha Christie. American spelling is used (vise, gray, fiber, checkbook) but otherwise it would be hard to tell that the author was not another English Rose herself, except for an oddly nonchalant attitude to geography that I had also noticed in Winds of Change - she appears to think that Northamptonshire, which is in the south Midlands, is somewhere in northern England. Like Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle she has a penchant for bachelors as making the best detectives, although there is one solitary reference, never elaborated, to some one called Maggie who haunts Jury's memory, and I have to hope that this was someone who had formed part of his personal life and not the prime minister at the time of the book's creation.

The book is light reading, but there are one or two good phrases and more than one or two striking perceptions that suggest to me that Grimes has depths to her that may be more apparent in her other kinds of fiction. The story-line is a genuine page-turner, I found, and the final denouement is an excellent specimen of the over-the-top genre, more familiar these days from detective series on television than from Christie and her generation. The atmosphere evokes the picture-postcard kind of English village, still without ethnic minorities or cut-price housing developments, that Christie's Miss Marple would have recognised, and the place-names are at least a brave attempt at English nomenclature. As far as the dialogue goes, Grimes seems to me to have a very good ear indeed, to the extent that even Plant's American whodunit-writing aunt talks in the general English manner, despite her difficulties with some people's names.

This is a more straightforward detective story than the much more recent Winds of Change. The narrative is all focused on the plot-line without diverging into the deeper recesses of Jury's or anyone else's personality and deeper thoughts, although there are a few displays of erudition just to give a distinctive feel to it all. I'd say that a genuine distinctiveness is what I like best about Martha Grimes, so far as I have got to know her by this stage, and it appears likely that she values this quality herself, to judge from the scorn heaped on the derivative efforts of one author in the course of the story. Her large following do not need me to tell them what to look for or what to admire, but for newcomers like myself I would say start at the beginning - with this book. Apart from anything else, I found myself admiring the adeptness with which this American writer has captured a particularly English type of style without affectation or artificiality. If you like this sort of thing, you should find this a fine example of the sort of thing you like.

This book was first published in 1999 and as I recently read it, I was curious to know to what extent its core concepts remain relevant to leadership development and brand management in a global business world that has changed so much since then. My conclusion? If anything, they are even more relevant now than they were almost a decade ago. However, I should note that in the recently published Leadership Brand, co-authored by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, a few of the core concepts are developed in much greater depth. (FYI, Ulrich and Smallwood are co-authors of Leadership Brand.) For those who have not read the more recently published book, the co-authors of Results-Based Leadership suggest that it describes "the distinct results that leaders deliver to their firm. Both attributes and results go into a complete leadership brand, and this brand offers significant advantages to a firm. In fact, creating a leadership brand for their organization should become a key challenges for all leaders. Without results, leadership brand becomes generic; with results, leadership brands become specific, distinctive, and add value."

In Chapter 1, Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Smallwood explain how to connect leadership attributes to results. In this context, I am reminded of what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton have to say about what they characterize as a "knowing-doing gap." They assert (and I agree) that many executives know what must be done but, for whatever reasons, are unable to achieve the desired results. Hence the importance of the material in the first chapter. Four key points:

1. Effective leaders produce results.

2. One of the most important results is the development of other leaders.

Note: Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, commits at least 20% of his time to mentoring GE's middle managers.

3. All organizations need a process in place that produces such leaders.

4. Leaders are needed at all levels and within all areas of the given enterprise.

Then in Chapters 2-8, the co-authors respond to questions such as these:

How to define desired results?
How to achieve desired employee results by investing in human capital?
How achieve organization results by creating capabilities?
How to achieve customer results by building firm equity?
How to achieve investor results by building shareholder value?
How to become a results-based leader?
How do results-based leaders build others who are also results-based?

The sequence of "how tos" correctly indicates that after Ulrich, Zenger, and Small identify the "what" of results-based leadership, they devote almost all of their attention to its "how." What they offer is a framework for what can become a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective game plan but it would be a fool's errand to attempt to build into that plan all of the information, suggestions, and recommendations that the co-authors provide. The core principles of results-based leadership should guide and inform the preparation and implementation of a plan that is most appropriate for each reader's own organization but not dictate the specifics of that plan.

I especially appreciate their use of various reader-friendly devices that include hundreds of checklists, graphic figures, bold face, and real-world examples. Obviously, these devices focus the reader's attention on key points but also facilitate, indeed accelerate periodic reviews of those points later. I also commend them on the "Notes" section that includes a number of enlightening annotations that accompany many of the citations.

Just as Edison correctly reminds us that "vision without execution is hallucination," Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Small remind us that that one result - if not THE most important result - of great leadership is that it produces other great leaders. Then and only then can desired results involving associates, customers, and investors be achieved and then sustained. Those who read this book learn what they need to know to become a results-driven leader, but it is then up to them to act upon that knowledge, once they decide what the desired results are. Hence the importance of sound judgment to make the right calls. As Peter Drucker expressed it so well in 1963, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

While I found this book to be excellent in both concept and substance, I have nothing to add to what other reviewers have said about those aspects of the book, so will say only that it is also enjoyable reading. I am always grateful to those who possess the not insignificant ability to make learning enjoyable.

Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger and Norm Smallwood's book is really a broadside against the "cult of personality" that rules so much of the current thinking about what makes leaders great. Amazingly, even in the pragmatic world of business, personality attributes - such as the "vision thing" - often dominate conversations about what you need to become a great leader. But great leaders are great because they achieve great results. The authors seek a balanced approach that recognizes the importance of both strong executive skills and bottom-line success. They provide questionnaires, charts and exercises. We strongly recommend this book to managers and aspiring leaders who are looking for a practical approach.

Many leadership books today trumpet two-minute techniques, fads, and processes to do everything but the job at hand. Ulrich, Zenger and Smallwood describe how the "attributes" that other management books fancy are nothing unless they are attached to one of four types of results: Employee, Customer, Organization or Shareholder.

Beyond stating the obvious, they also go into depth on identifying the attributes that really matter, versus those that just sound right. They then delve into what it means to be a results focused leader, and a leader that builds other leaders.

Although the book is only five years old, some of the examples (Enron and Lucent) may seem dated, as the companies have falled out of favor. Since it was written in 1999, that is forgivable. The key ideas and concepts still hold strong. This is a worthy addition to any leadership library or reading list.

Together with Kotter's "Leading Change" and Fogg's "Implementing Your Strategic Plan," this is one of the best books ever written on leadership and strategy implementation. Contrary to what an earlier reviewer stated, this book only mention's Enron on two pages (out of 234). And, in each instance, is very specific about what can be learned from the ill-fated company (this book is far from a "cheerleading session" for Enron). Instead, the book focuses on the mechanics of leadership and strategy implementation. As a strategy consultant, I find myself recommending this book to clients again and again. I believe it should be a part of any serious manager's business library -- particularly if you are a senior manager. Overall grade: A/A+.