Windsor Books

I haven't even finished the last 50 or so pages of this book and I'm already on Amazon ordering the next two by Annie Hawes.

Her powers of description are incredible, leading me to look up all the locales she writes about on the internet and plan trips in my head. Ms. Hawes' description of the mundane - from gourmet Italian meals to weeding her garden - never cease to interest me.

A truly enjoyable read, with or without knowledge of Italy.

Annie Hawes writes in a slow, laid-back style that is evocative of the Ligurian lifestyle that she lives. It took me a while to settle down and read this book, but when I did, I found myself escaping to the author's descriptions of pruning olive trees, dancing at village fiestas, and her encounters with eccentric locals. I'll definitely read this again.

A great read. Witty, engrossing account of Annie & sister's unplanned purchase of a rundown farmhouse in Liguria on the Italian Riviera, and their (mis)adventures and interactions with the locals. Very funny, affectionately sly observations of human nature and the idiosyncrasies and highlights of Italian village life, olives and the love of good food. And interesting information about local olive farming and wine making and food. I just loved it!

This book was one of those novels that makes you wish you were: A) courageous enough to drop everything and move to a foreign country, B) arrogant enough to think that, just maybe, you'll manage to learn all of the ancient farming techniques that have been passed down for generations, and C) intelligent enought to enjoy every minute of the work-to-the-bone lifestyle you've just chosen. That being said, I am none of these things, yet. Reading this book takes that pressure off, though, and lets you into a world you may never experience otherwise. This isn't the glamourous riviera of the movies, and this isn't an over-glorified triumph of the earth either, its just a lovely novel that you will want to devour as if it were a fresh piece of foccacia dripping with... of course... ligurian olive oil.

This book is late golden-age, and it's a good one. Crispin gives us a look at 50's British film and the people that worked in the industry. There are lots of surprises in store in this book. This is the first time I've read a book featuring criminologist Gervaise Fen. In this book an unexplained suicide of a young girl sets Fen and Inspector Humbleby on the trail of a particularly crafty murderer who is leaving enough bodies around to fill frequent hearses. This is an intelligently written book, and it certainly kept me turning pages. I enjoyed the setting (late 40's London) as well.

If I had to rank my favorite British mystery authors who produced their best work in the 1930s through the 1950s, my list would look like this:

(1) Edmund Crispin a.k.a. Bruce Montgomery (2) Michael Innes a.k.a. John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (3) Dorothy Sayers (4) Margery Allingham (5) Michael Innes a.k.a. John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (with a drop in rank for his mysteries that went off the surreal deep-end).

Out of my Fab Four Brits, Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin have the most in common. They were both of Scots-Irish background, both wrote their mysteries under pseudonyms while teaching at college, and both were educated at Oxford -- Oriel College and St. John's College, respectively. They both wrote highly literate mysteries with frequent allusions to the classics (nine out of ten of which go zooming right over my head). Michael Innes has his detective, Sir John Appleby poke fun at this high-brow type of murder fiction in "Death at the Chase":

"That's why detective stories are of no interest to policemen. Their villains remain far too consistently cerebral."

Expect that even the most vicious murderer in an Edmund Crispin mystery will quote Dryden or Shakespeare at the drop of a garrote. "Frequent Hearses" is a fertile setting for this type of classical badinage, since its plot involves the making of a film based on the biography of Alexander Pope. Gervase Fen, Oxford don of English Language and Literature, and amateur detective extraordinaire is hired by the film company as a story consultant, and he is plagued throughout the book by a Scotland Yard detective who is an amateur classics scholar. Fen wants to discuss the murder. Chief Inspector Humbleby wants to talk about the Brontes and Dr. Johnson. Neither man will admit to a less than perfect understanding of either his profession or his hobby, and both despise amateurs. Their encounters keep "Frequent Hearses" sparkling along right up until its final page. ...All of Crispin's characters are carefully (one might say 'crisply') developed, and distinguished for the reader by a quirk or eccentric manner of speech (sometimes Crispin overplays the eccentricity at the expense of realism, especially with his main protagonist-- I do wish Fen would stop expostulating, "Oh, my fur and whiskers!"). Physical description is sketchy. If one of Crispin's characters walked past you in the street, you probably wouldn't recognize him. However, if you were to overhear his conversation with the postman---

And I don't mean to imply that "Frequent Hearses" is all dialogue and no action...

The mystery surrounding the murderer's identity and motivation is as cleverly convoluted as the maze, and it is equally as hard to get to its heart. The author's red herrings are logically constructed and I always go snapping after them, even after a second or third reading... Crispin himself wrote and published at least one film script and composed music for several films, so "Frequent Hearses" is told with the knowledge of a movie industry insider...

If you like vintage British mysteries with a 'classical education' and haven't yet discovered the 'Professor Fen' novels, then you're in for a treat... Here are all eleven of the Fen mysteries, in case you jump into 'Frequent Hearses' and want to keep going:

The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), Holy Disorder (1945), The Moving Toyshop (1946), Swan Song (1947), Love Lies Bleeding (1948), Buried for Pleasure (1948), Frequent Hearses (1950), The Long Divorce (1952), Beware of the Trains (1953), Glimpses of the Moon (1978), Fen Country (1979) - short stories

Gervase Fen is a Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford and an amateur detective who is advising a film company about a movie being made in Long Fulton, near London. Inspector Humbleby of New Scotland Yard visits the movie location while investigating the suicide of a young actress, Gloria Scott, who has jumped off Waterloo Bridge. Although her stage name is known, Gloria's real identity is a mystery and someone removes all identity marks from the personal belongings in her room.

Humbleby and Fen fall again into the easy working relationship they had begun during a previous case in 1947. FREQUENT HEARSES is an entertaining detective novel.

Edmund Crispin(Robert Montgomery) wrote a seriesof novels featuring Gervase Fen, amateur detective extrodinaire, whose full-time job was teaching classical literature to students at Oxford. Gervase always has the time to to be a "consultant" to the police force when murders occur. This time it is the murder of a series of individuals who had wronged a young lady to the point where she kills herself. In the process of solving the case, alolng with the classical-minded police chief, aptly named Humbleby, the reader is introduced to various eccengtric characters, very well-defined. Gervase makes classical allusions throughojut the novel, which are a delight. The book iks at once funny,literate, but also a mujrdr mystery. You will not guess the villain. TGhe book has a surprising ending, which you won't see coming. Mr. Crispin is similar to Agatha Christie in that he doesn't "pull any rabbits out of the hat"; the clues are there and if you can recognise them you'll solve he mystery. But, as with Ms. Christie you won't. This is a delightful book, which has as its 'set', so to speak the filming of a movie about Alexander Pope, of all people. Anyone knowledgeable about the life of Pope will see that the hilarity begins right there. A wonderful relief from the grisly novels of the likes of Patterson, P.D. James, and their elk. A good book to read in the country, outside under a fragrant tree, Finally,did you know that mazez aren't that difficult to get out of? Read this wonderful novel and you'll find out why.

This book is the best one in the collection

This is the first in a trilogy that is, perhaps, the best of modern political fiction. The reader can't help but be riveted by the lead character, even hoping for his sinister plots to succeed. Even having seen the BBC television version, I loved the book. It's a great read.

This book is drier than the wonderful BBC series starring Ian Richardson. But because Michael Dobbs spent years as a journalist covering British politics, plot points that are simplified or glossed over in the series are explained in more detail. So I feel like I understand what went on in the TV series more, but it's not as much fun. The book went through some significant changes on the way to the teleplay adaptation.

Michael Dobbs has created a masterful fictional world of intrigue. His Francis Urquhart is the embodiement of the an eel like politician. A fast paced political thriller, where you just can't help but love the villian. With its intricate plot twists and extraordinary cast of characters, you owe it to yourself to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride that is Francis Urquhart.

This is the second in the Inspector Felse series. Unfortunately Ellis Peters has written pages that are full of descriptions of emotional trauma and "angst" of the protagonists as well as waxing lyrical with metaphysical insights. There is no doubt that characters need to be 3-dimensional, as well as scenes and situations to have reality and flavour, but Ellis Peters seems to have over-done it. Readers can skim through some of the more esoteric paragraphs without losing the thread. Despite this, the book does have suspense, a good plot and enough action to hook in the reader and, of course, a surprise ending. Having read it, I don't really want to read it again.

I like romances, I like mysteries, I like the combination of the two. This is both mystery and romance, light on the romance, even light on the mystery until you're drawn in and trapped. Ellis Peters's description and prose move the story along unobtrusively yet with no stalls. A touch above the usual.

Ellis Peters was a great storyteller, and this book is a fine example of her wonderful work. The story is about a missing cellist from an English traveling orchestra. The cellist has been missing for 13 years, but events happen that bring his story to the forefront. The story is set in the Austrian Alps, and George Felse and his wonderful wife Bunty are there trying to figure out a mystery. This old disappearance seems to be linked to some modern day crimes, and George wants to follow the thread until he uncovers the long-hidden secret. The book is packed with action, and it will keep you guessing until the end. Ms. Peters knew how to pace a plot to keep her readers quickly turning the pages. Her characterizations are also flawless. If you love the Brother Cadfael series like I do, I suggest that you read the George Felse series as well.

Across the heath to war I fare
The great green heath so broad and bare
For there, where the splendid trumpets blare and thunder
There is my house, my house the green turf under.

Such is the closing stanza of Maggie Tressider's personal translation of "Where the Splendid Trumpets Blow", made when she first began learning her concert repetoire. Contraltos, as her friend and colleague Tom Lovell is wont to say in his more sour moods, are liable to find themselves expected to sing a lot of Mahler.

Sharing the driving en route to a concert in Liverpool, Maggie hits a patch of slick clay at forty, and the last thing she's aware of is her own voice, lamenting "My God, what have I done, I've killed Tom." Even upon awakening in the Royal Hospital in Comerbourne after nearly dying in surgery, and being assured that Tom escaped with only a mild concussion, Maggie is filled with a foreboding shaken loose by the shock of the accident. Her surgeon, a great admirer of her music, persuades her to confide in him, as one artist to another who wishes to keep his work from being wasted. She's haunted by the feeling, too foggy to be quite a memory, that at some time, she failed someone so badly that he died.

Her surgeon (meaning to tactfully steer her onto a therapist's couch), suggests, "Suppose someone else, someone who makes a job of that kind of thing, took over the stone-turning for you?" And Maggie grasps the idea with both hands - and gets him to put her in touch with a good private detective.

Enter Francis Killian, a battered Korean War veteran, who mostly takes on impersonal investigations involving lots of paper: research for writers, tracing witnesses, searching records for lost details. Noting that Maggie always speaks of her victim as 'he', Francis begins combing through her past for the great turning points of her life, and looking for any young men she might have associated with before immersing herself completely in her concert career. Her serious study began with Dr. Paul Fredericks; as one of his star pupils, she accompanied some of his twice-yearly European tours ('Freddy's Circus'). And on her last such trip, there was one difference: Bernarda Eliot Felse, rather than Freddy's sister, served as chaperone.

Enter Bunty Felse and her husband Inspector George Felse. Bunty had noticed a change in Maggie on the trip, turning her back on everything in life but music. And one troublesome young cellist, Robert 'Robin' Aylwin, walked out on the Circus in Austria - left the hotel, the Goldener Hirsch, and never returned. A hotel in a little town at the exact center of a lot of illegal activity along several borders, including another of George's missing person cases. And George, as a professional stone-turner who *hates* loose ends, suggests a little vacation, to see if Francis flips over the right stone to answer everyone's questions.

Did Maggie have anything to do with Robin's fate? Or could he himself have flipped over the wrong rock one summer night, and turned up something deadly?

Bunty has a larger role in this volume than in some of the cases set earlier in the Felse marriage. Their son, Dominic 'and his Tossa' are away in Yugoslavia (possibly _The Piper on the Mountain_) and don't enter into the story. Maggie Tressider, the woman with an archangel's voice whose face carries more force than any photograph can convey, dominates the story, however. After her ranks Francis, who's being forced to feel again after so much digging through her emotional history, looking for someone who could have made her feel so guilty. The supporting players are also very well drawn: surgeon Gilbert Rice; Friedl, an otherwise beautiful woman cursed with a harelip, one of the family who runs the hotel; and who can forget the platoons of drunken Austrian wedding guests infesting the hotel late in the story, getting in *everyone's* way as a search is undertaken. :)

Captured the essence of the Catholic/Protestant conflict. The reader empathises with the Irish people but can still appreciate and applaud the actions taken by the British security forces. The use of a strong central female character in the initiation of an inexperienced male operative in this arena is at the heart of this book. Their interactions, and his own internal battle in justifying the cold, calculated acts committed in the name of God and country serve to introduce two unforgettable characters. The icing on the cake is the blending of history with the present in the introduction of, and frequent allusions to, a historical character who seems to come alive in another central character who is the protagonist of the "dynamic duo".

If you're into the real macoy of what it feels like to live undercover, where everything and anything you say and do may give you away, this is the book for you. Always sharply focussed and with enough suspense to stop you putting the book down before you've turned the last page. The only down side is the lack of a sequal!

Gerald Seymour's novels have transported us to so many places festering with suppurating animosities: the Balkans, Afghanistan, Kurdish Iraq, Italy, the old U.S.S.R., Lebanon, South Africa. In THE JOURNEYMAN TAILOR, we're off to one of the most intractable of Gordian knots, Northern Ireland.

Jon Jo Donnelly, a legend in his own time, is an IRA assassin on undercover assignment in the heart of England with his sniper rifle and cache of explosives. Back in Donnelly's Ulster home town, Song Bird is a British Security Service (MI5) informant embedded in the IRA infrastructure. Gary "Bren" Brennard, a newbie to MI5, is rushed over in short order to Northern Ireland to help run Song Bird after his predecessor's cover is blown.

Jon Jo is killing at will in Britain's hinterland. The PM wants his head on a platter yesterday. MI5's plan is to lure Donnelly back to his farm and family, at which time he can be isolated by Song Bird for elimination by Her Majesty's forces.

The focus of this thriller isn't Jon Jo, Song Bird or Bren. Rather, it's young Cathy Parker, ruefully characterized as "a slip of a thing" by the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, whose ears have been burned by Parker's no-compromise lecture on Song Bird's importance. Cathy is Bren's boss on the ground and the informer's recruiter and chief handler.

In Seymour's other novels that I've read, the primary protagonist's motives are revealed. In Parker's case, we learn little of her background other than she's the renegade daughter of affluent English parents. In the now, she's red-haired, 5 foot 4 inches tall, weighs 8 stone 3 pounds, obsessively driven by her job, idolized by her male peers, backed to the max by her superiors, and affectionately regarded by MI5's otherwise bitter rivals in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Special Air Services. An alpha female that draws males like moths to light. Will Bren's wings get singed?

Since Seymour doesn't repeat a main character in other novels, it's unlikely we're to meet Cathy again. A pity, since, to me at least, she's proved to be one of the author's most engaging creations. Parker aside, however, this riveting book continue's the author's tradition of giving the reader a (presumably) realistic insight into the minds and hearts of the ordinary people who fight the gritty conflicts in the grotty corners of the civilized world where there are no winners and losers - only survivors. This is good stuff - the best of the genre on pulp fiction shelves.

Most books written about the IRA sacrifice any notion of relism to the agenda of the author-the IRA become dim-witted psychopaths stalked by noble and idealistic British agents- so it was a welcome relief to find this dark, factualy-based story set in one of the most intriguing areas of Ireland, East-Tyrone. The IRA Volunteers in the book are certainly violent,but they are also profoundly human, Seymour puts their frailties on display and paints them as victims of the conflict rather than its villains. In one revealing passage he describes the 100-year history of one IRA family and asks "where was escape? Escape was impossible." In contrast it's hard to be sympathetic with the young British agent who seems a vain, shallow careerist( In a droll scene in a later book we see that Brennard has become a pencil-pushing beaurocrat with MI6). The book's main flaw is its blind adherence to the conventions of the modern thriller, with plucky Brennard making the lucky shot against his adversary, a far more sympathetic IRA man. Also jarring is the fact that Seymour gives the impression of not having spent much time in Altmore, the setting for the novel. Physical descriptions are sparse and although Seymours' character descriptions are spot on, he has no idea of how people from Tyrone actually speak- he simply props the word "feckin'" in every second sentance and hopes for the best. The author might have benefitted from a little more time walking the roads of Altmore, like Brennard in the book he has tried to assimilate the nature of the place from the reading room in a library, like his character he fails.

Jumping the Queue is a British expression meaning to commit suicide, to push to the head of the line for Death. Wesley's heroine Matilda is in her early fifties and as the book opens she is in the process of tidying herself out of life: cleaning the house, disposing of her pet gander, and ensuring that her four children will find very little evidence of her inner and outer existence. She has planned a final picnic that will culminate in a handful of tablets washed down with Beaujolais, followed by a swim towards the tide that will carry her off.

But her plans are spoiled, first by the unexpected presence on the beach of a group of young people and then, later, by a chance encounter with a man on the run from the police - a Matricide. Wesley brings the two characters together and they begin a dance of mutual and self exploration. As with the best mystery novels, nothing is quite what it seems. Wesley has a talent for pithy dialog, concise description, and amusing juxtapositions. Most of all she has an all-inclusive view of how life can unfold in the interstices and how even the most odd things can be accepted and integrated into one's daily routine, though not without cost.

Matilda is a resourceful woman who has lived her entire life with the mental trick of forgetting, or at least pushing into the furthest recesses of her mind, inconvenient truths. As she approaches death - only temporarily thwarted by her attachment to the Matricide Hugh Warner - she rediscovers the hidden and buried parts of her life. Yet though this could be a bitter book it is in fact surprisingly life-affirming. As she talks about her discovery of her husband's infidelity with their daughter, Matilda also acknowledges that she enjoyed the opportunity to experience at second-hand the new sexual techniques her husband was being taught in the course of the affair. Much as Dickens or Shakespeare can paint characters with dubious back-stories who nevertheless gain our sympathy and often respect, so Wesley leads us to admire Matilda even as we come to understand the price she has paid for her strategy of wilfull forgetfulness.

In the end, of course, things fall away and Matilda, alone at the end, consumates her suicide as originally planned. And the mastery of Wesley's writing is such that we feel both saddened by and accepting of her final decision. For anyone who enjoys contemporary (or nearly so, given that the book was originally written over two decades ago) literature, this little book is a brief yet lasting pleasure and is far better than the novels Wesley went on to write, which sadly ended up being popular at the expense of being interesting.

I read this about ten years ago and loved it. It's funny in a mad way all the way through (or at least that's how I remember it) except for the ending which really did upset me - in a forgiving kind of way.

Easy read, great plot and highly recommended.

The marvelous Mary Wesley passed away a few weeks ago. She was 90. She did not begin publishing until she reached her 70's. She wrote witty social comedy with depth and tenderness and could spin a wicked plot. This was her first novel. I had the pleasure of discovering her when Arts & Entertainment, a TV station, broadcast "Harnessing Peacocks," which was my favorite of her novels. I binged on her work in the 90's, reading one after another. Now that she's gone, I shall reread them all.

Jumping the Queue is an unusually crafted story that begins with Matilda Poliport's attempt to end her life thwarted by timing, a non-event which sets the tone for the whole tale. Mary Wesley describes Matilda's environs with exquisite word pictures: her cottage, her neighbors, town. When matricide Hugh Warner stumbles into Matilda's life, things take an interesting turn, and they keep turning that way till the end. Jumping the Queue is an extraordinary story whose ending surprised me, and I'm hard to fool.

As with most of Jack Higgins' works, we really enjoyed this book.

Shipment was timely. Packaging was neat, firm, and in
excellent condition, well taped. In general. just good shipping practices.

When the brillance of an author explodes off of the first page, you hesitate for a moment and ask if you have the courage to continue. Simple understanding of the complex twists that surround this emotional joy ride of black comedy and unrelenting action will get you only so far. You have to let these characters entrench themselves in your mind. The grace with which a.k.a. Higgins writes, skips across every page into a dizzying aray of unbridaled passion and furious battles and schemes that would leave John Woo hacking in the back row. Don't read this masterpiece as a favor to yourself, just read as a signal to every other author to step up to the raised plate.

An easy read. Breezed through it in no time but lacked the usual in depth personal look that I am use to. Great action and interesting plot. Some of the dialoge seemed forced and out of place. This is the second book I have read by Higgins and am just as pleased with the story line in this book as with the one in the other. Overall I'd recomend this book to someone looking for a good, fast moving, light read.

Besides being an author, Barbara Pym worked with the International African Institute in London, where she worked closely with anthropologists, who turn up with great frequency in her novels. In LESS THAN ANGELS she turns her attention almost completely over to a group of anthropology students and professors and their aides working at an unnamed university in London; the result is one of her very best novels, and certainly her funniest. As frequently happens with Pym's works, there is no clear protagonist in this work; almost everyone engages our sympathies but very differently. Most of the characters seem to be in orbit in one way or another around Tom Mallow, a charismatic son of privilege who has left his landed family to work on his dissertation, and Professor Felix Mainwaring, a distinguished anthropology professor who has managed to charm a wealthy widow into giving his department the promise of quite a lot of money. Most of the novel is superficially about the competition among various women in Tom's life for his romantic attentions, and that among the students to get one of the fellowships Professor Mainwaring dangles before them, but really it's a kind of anthropological study in itself of a very highly educated and polite group of people who seem on their way out as a dominant social force in London. (The novel is filled with references to its nineteenth-century antecedents in Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, and also shows us at odd moments the potential for the great social changes unleashed in London in the twentieth century in the form of non-European immigrants and of enthusiasts for alternative political ideologies such as international communism.)

Pym's exceptionally dry humor is quite evident throughout, and I genuinely laughed out loud at several sections (particularly at the weekend retreat Professor Mainwaring arranges for his fellowship applicants at his country estate, which has one of the funniest outcomes in fiction I can remember). What might be more subtle is the author's extraordinary craft at manipulating her characters and her situations. This is one of the most deftly constructed novels I've read in quite some time.

"Less Than Angels" is full of classic Pym characters: the eccentric, Alaric Lydgate, who sits in the evenings with an African mask on and wishes it were permissable to wear it out in public; Rhoda Wellcome and Mabel Swan, sisters, Rhoda given to peering at the neighbors from behind lace curtains; Catherine Oliphant, a writer and spinster, but with a twist she is living, unmarried with; Tom Mallow, one of many anthropologists in the story. Readers of "Excellent Women" will enjoy the reappearance of Esther Clovis and the references to Everard and Mildred Bone. The men in this story have more character development than in previous Pym novels. They are shown to be real people not so different form their feminine counterparts. There is competition in this story, a three-way competition for Tom Mallow's love, and a four-way competition for the Foresight grants, for the study of anthropolgy. The competitions mirror each other in subtle ways. Catherine is one of Pym's most endearing characters. You really yearn for her to find happiness. This is one of my favorites.

As usual, Pym has managed to achieve that peculiar sweet/sour tone which works so well in her novels. In Less Than Angels, a group of anthropologists find that competition on different levels leads them into new combinations of relationships and ideas. Whether it comes down to affairs of the heart or academic achievement, things are not as they seem and people have unexpected depths. Less Than Angels is particularly nice as it seems in large part to be about the ability of characters to change, even given the constrained and mannered world in which they live.

While reading, I enjoyed this book as much as I have enjoyed any Pym that I have read. However, I noticed when I sat down to write this review that it didn't stay with me as clearly or for as long as some of the others. If you haven't read Pym before, I would begin with The Sweet Dove Died or Excellent Women. These to are, to my mind, her best works. However, if you are already a fan of Pym, you will find nothing to disappoint you in Less Than Angels.

Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen. I think that the similarities lie in the two authors' portrayal of characters.

In Austen's world, and a century later in Pym's, the women had comparatively little to do. They have lunch or dinner with friends, attend parties or volunteer at church. But even so, they have great amounts of time left over for introspection. Therein lies the beauty of both authors' stories. Who else could make such ordinary, uneventful lives seem interesting, even gripping?

Pym treats her characters with a gentle humor, making even their foibles seem genuinely endearing. While reading "Less Than Angels," I cared what happened to level headed Catherine and flighty Phoebe, two single women in love with the same man. Her characters are people I would like to know. Together we'd drink tea and have a pleasant chat, whiling away a rainy afternoon.

Aird's mysteries are so short and so to the point, that when you reach the end of her book, you are going to say "I want more" like Oliver Twist. Unlike some writers who continue to write when there is nothing more to be said, Aird knows how to get to the heart of the matter without wasting words or space. And she does it with a large dollop of humor.

In this book it is obvious that Britain is having its own problems with illegal drugs, and in this one mystery Aird manages to say a few things and demonstrate the awfulness of the toll that drugs take on individuals and on society, that absolutely tear at your heart. Similar to what I told my kids and continue to tell those I teach, you cannot take the chance of trying a drug 'just this once' because you cannot know if you have an addictive personality. With some drugs, it only takes that once, and many people never find their way out of this horrible lair...

I've looked up to britain for years because of the way they handle law and police work for the most part. It breaks my heart that they too must deal with this modern day epidemic.

Poor Sloan. He has a curmudgeon for a boss, and gets stuck continually with Crosby who sounds like a poster boy for most boys (and men) between 15 and 25, who are enamored of beautiful cars and speeds. Crosby never gets to go as fast as he wants to, and Sloan probably steps out of his car after their arrival with a desire to kiss the ground and wobbly knees after dealing with Crosby's driving.

Someone made the mistake of opening a sarcophagus in order to replace the original occupant with a more recently deceased girl who happened to know a bit too much. The sentence passed on the murderer did not come from the courts but happened much more quickly...and his punishment was very fitting considering. Why do wealthy people, always seem to need more wealth no matter what means they have to take to get it?

I got two more Aird books to read...can't wait.

Karen Sadler

Ms. Aird's writing is superb in all of her books, and this one is no exception. I love correct English grammar and spelling and Ms. Aird is superlative at this, and she does it all with a dry wit and careful characterizations. I'm almost getting to the end of all her books, and I'm certainly sad about that. Ms. Aird is like no one out there. She is a little like a modern day Agatha Christie, but she's far funnier, her writing actually has more clever twists in it that most of the golden age detective writers. If you enjoy fine writing and clever plots, I suggest that you begin to read all Ms. Aird's books. You will totally enjoy them. In this book we see an intelligent look at the modern day drug scene. In her inimitable way, Ms. Aird captures this slice of humanity with a very sure hand. A body of a young girl turns up in a 2000 year old sarcophagus that is supposed to hold an Egyptian mummy. The girl is much fresher than 2000 years (in fact the corpse is about a week old when she is found.) Tracking this killer leads Sloan and Crosby into the drug world and they take a crash course on drug smuggling and money laundering. What a treat!

Aird always has ingeniously plotted crimes and very good characterization, and this is no exception. Her humor is dry, understated and one of the reasons I liked to read her as a teenager. Many of her titles are a play on words, like "Little Knell" and "A Religious Body." Hadn't read her in years, then I inherited my mother's paperbacks of just about all her books. I read them all one right after the other they held up to a second and third reading really well. Which leads me to the quibble...she's given a character name that shouldn't be here. Oh well. He's still the same sort he was in Last Respects. Obviously a solid English name and doesn't spoil the story a bit.

Aird's a little like Agatha Christie as a writer about crime in the English village. She's a better writer than Christie, thourh. She is better with characterization--her characters behave more like real people. Christie tended to write rather flat, cartoonish, if easily identifiable characters--sometimes her villians often seem a bit two-dimensonal and overdramatized, her heroines (particularly in some of the earlier ones) oversentimentalized. I don't reread Christie unless I NEED a book and there's nothing else.

Partly I guess it's the passing of years and changes in writing technique. I enjoyed some Christies in elementary and junior high school but don't think I would have "gotten" as much of the humor in Aird back then. Christie was good with puzzles, of course, and was very productive over her career. And her estate has managed her "brand" wonderfully.

Aird's writing overall is more complete and more complex. The tags that identify her characters seem more naturally woven into the story (Sloan's roses, Crosby's driving, Leyes' attempts to use material from some evening class or other in possibly apposite reasoning). Her puzzles are satisfying without being too outrageous or silly and she does get a lot of good sharp jabs at human nature. Recommended.

The Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan (Seedy to his friends) books are probably some of the cleverest police procedural British mysteries around. Written with minimal violence, this is a very well written series that revolves around the very dry and droll exchanges between Sloan (a very precise and methodical man) and the many uniquely eccentric people he frequently works with -- from his long winded and quotation loving boss, Superintendent Leeyes to his very young and rather dim car-mad underling, Detective Constable Crosby. This latest Sloan mystery involves a missing mummy, a murdered young woman, and drugs.

It all starts when the coroner receiving an anonymous tip that a body has been moved within his jurisdiction of East Calleshire, but without his knowledge or consent, and the coroner wants the police to investigate. It turns out that the body concerned is that of a mummy that has been bequeathed to the local Calleshire museum by the now dead Colonel Caversham. Sloan is a little annoyed. He has just received a warning from the customs and excise people to be on the lookout for increased crime since they had just removed about 4 kilos of heroin from circulation, and Sloan would rather spend his time trying to nab the ringleader of this local drug ring than chasing after a mummy. However when the sarcophagus is opened they find the body of a young woman who looks as if she's been dead for less than a week instead of the expected mummy. The curator of the museum is aghast -- where is the mummy? But for Sloan the questions are very different: who is the murdered woman? And who tipped off the coroner about the body? Sloan will have to sift through much before he can finally arrive at the conclusion of this very perplexing mystery.

The great thing about Catherine Aird's Sloan novels is that there are no extraneous characters or plot lines. Everything has a significance, so that if you pay close attention you can actaully solve the mystery along with Sloan. This makes Aird's books perfect brain teasers. This entire series is clever, amusing and entirely engaging. "Little Knell" definitely makes for a very good read.

The Longest Tunnel, by Alan Burgess, was well worth reading. I found the book difficult to put down. His book is a well rounded story of the escape, its escapers, and the aftermath. Paul Brickhill's book, The Great Escape, goes into more detail of building the tunnel on a daily basis, but Burgess's book gives you a better overall look at what happened. Early in the book, there are a few chapters devoted to some of the major players; and it makes the book read somewhat disjointedly. Nevertheless, once one is past these short biographies, the book makes for compelling reading - especially his writing regarding the Gestapo pursuit and murder of the "terror flyers". Definitely a companion piece to Brickhill's book.

Reviews each aspect of the escape thoroughly from The Big X to the Compasss Makers. Also the descrbing of essential characters to the escape is superb! Burgess writes the book in such a way you almost become the character, feeling his pain and excitement. Joy and sadness. The Longest Tunnel is the best!

Ever see a movie that was great and then find out it was based on real events? I remember "The Great Escape" as one of those movies when I was a kid. So when I found "The Longest Tunnel" I had to buy it to see which parts I remembered about the movie really happened. In addition to the engineering effort in building the tunnel, this book is a great background reference on the POW's and their captors. Surprisingly, the events portrayed in the movie were fairly accurate. (Not the Steve McQueen bit with the motorcycle, though). Drawn from interviews of the survivors, camp and official military records, we get to see the follow up story of what happened after hostilities ended. Dedicated to the fifty who were murdered for their daring escape attempt, the story continues with the Allied forces investigative efforts to track down those responsible. The now famous defense of "just following orders" did not protect those in the chain of command

I learned about "The Great Escape" the way a lot of people did, I think: I watched the movie. While it's an entertaining film and one of my favorite WW II movies, when I discovered the events were true I knew I had to find out more. First I read Paul Brickhill's book on which the film is based and came away even more satisfied. Along the way I read "The Wooden Horse," which tells of ANOTHER escape attempt that happened at about the same time as the one depicted in Brickhill's book and the film.

While these offered a myriad of details regarding the escape itself and the events leading up to it, "The Longest Tunnel" instead concentrates more on the days after the breakout, the Gestapo reaction, the horrifying aftermath, and finally the search for justice as those who murdered The Fifty are hunted down. This is what drew me to this book, and now my sojurn into this fascinating chapter of WW II history is complete. If you can find this book, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.