Boston

Why the fixation on the men's room at Fenway, Danny Boy? I thought those revealing pictures were insensitive and disgusting, and can't be justified by a Mapplethorpian defense of their artistry.

It's obvious that Major League Baseball fans love the home run, because they voted Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire into the All-Star Game at Fenway Park as starters.

No doubt there is great anticipation of seeing four of the greatest sluggers in history take their hacks against the left-field wall known as the Green Monster. And perhaps they can go the other way, toward right field, and land a ball beyond the red seat that marks the longest homer in Fenway's illustrious history - a homer hit by none other than the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams, more than 50 years ago. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and baseball historian David Halberstam, the walk into the park often is as exciting as the game.

"I think walking up to Fenway is thrilling," Halberstam said in a new book published about Fenway. "The approach to it. The smells. You go to Fenway, and you revert to your childhood. You go to Fenway, and you think: 'Something wonderful is going to happen today.'"

In the book - entitled "Fenway, a biography in words and pictures," published this year - writer Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe and photographer Stan Grossfeld, an associated editor at the Globe, pay tribute to one of Major League Baseball's most storied parks. And, due to construction delays on Milwaukee's new stadium, Fenway will be in the national spotlight for perhaps the final time as it hosts its third All-Star Game.

You can't talk about Fenway without talking about the Green Monster, perhaps the most famous outfield wall in baseball history - a wall that Shaughnessy described in his book as a "New England monument, no less so than Bunker Hill Monument, the Old Man of the Mountain or Walden Pond."

The wall was built, Shaughnessy wrote, to keep balls in play. But more memorable are the balls that have sailed over it - home runs like the one hit in 1978 by Bucky Dent, whose pop fly in any other park cleared the Monster and gave the New York Yankees a victory over Boston in a one-game playoff to determine the division champion. And because the Monster is only 309 feet from home plate at the left-field foul pole, plenty of balls have been hit over it. It is the shortest fence of any major-league ballpark, and rules today stipulate that no wall in any park be closer than 325 feet from home plate.

But, as short as it is, at 37 feet high and capped by a 23-foot screen, the Green Monster can frustrate batters like McGwire and Canseco, who may be able to hit the ball far, but not high. It also can make opposing fielders look bad. Jim Palmer told Shaughnessy about the time Baltimore teammate Don Buford saw a ball skip through his legs, turned around to try and retrieve it and then watched the ball zoom through his legs once again after it caromed back off the wall.

It would be difficult to find another sports arena with a feature as famous as Fenway's Green Monster. Frightfully deceiving. Inviting even the most hapless amateur to step tp the plate and try to hit a ball over it.

"You hear a lot about it," Dent told Shaughnessy for the book. "But when you actually walk out there and see the Wall, you realize what an impact it has on you as a player."

Inside the wall is one of baseball's last hand-operated scoreboards that also adds to the allure of Fenway. And with the cozy dimensions of the park - the right-field pole is only 302 feet from home plate - runs could be going up on the board at a fast rate on Tuesday.

It could be the right-field wall that gets McGwire's, Sosa's, Canseco's or Griffey's attention - or, rather, what's beyond that wall. For, just as famous as the Green Monster is a seat in right field that's painted red - the lone red seat in a sea of green ones - that marks the spot where Ted Williams hit the longest measured home run in Fenway's 87-year history. Newspaper accounts at the time claimed that the 1946 blast traveled 450 feet. But the Red Sox measured the distance in the mid-1980s and got an official number of 502 feet.

"It's hard to believe anybody could hit a ball that far," former Boston player Mo Vaughn told Shaughnessy. "I know I've never even come close - not even in batting practice. I mean, it's not even down the line. It's in the gap. You can barely see that thing."

The Monster, the scoreboard, the red seat and the coziness of the park are just some of the features that make Fenway unique. Love it or hate it, the park always seems to evoke emotion, a lot of it captured in the book by Shaughnessy and Grossfeld, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer whose pictures in the book are as riveting as Shaughnessy's written words.

This book, and the equally wonderful FENWAY SAVED, are both perfect gift books for Boston fans and baseball lovers everywhere. Many people come to Boston and one of the first places they go is Fenway Park. It's the oldest park around and, like Wrigley Field in Chicago, it's the REAL THING! Almost unbelievably, the Red Sox plan to knock it down but they say they will be keeping parts of it as a memory.

What's the difference between the two books? FENWAY shows you the whole experience of going to a baseball game at Fenway Park, from the vendors to the fans and the game. The authors had access and got inside the wall and into the dressing room to take shots. They have more big name celebrities giving quotes. FENWAY SAVED, the other gift book, focuses more on the park itself is maybe a more serious one in that it provides more information and perspective and maybe a few more interesting stories along with a roughly equal number of excellent (but a bit less consistently so) photos. The better text balances out the slightly weaker photography. Don't get me wrong, though - the photography is very strong overall.

I give both books a full 5 stars. FENWAY SAVED costs five cents less.

After a very auspicious start, Spenser stumbles badly in this, the second of the series. Other than meeting Susan Silverman, who is not that much more than Brenda Loring with brains in this book, the story is an unappealing shaggy dog tale of a screwed up kid who may or may not be kidnapped, his goofy dad and his drunken, nymphomaniac mother. The resolution of the story is entirely regrettable. Even Parker must have thought so, because he basically re-did this plot in a masterly fashion in the later classic, "Early Autummn."

Don't read this as your first Spenser book; start with the first one and skip this one or save it for last. It's definitely not worth your time.

I'm a newbie and feeling good about getting started in the Spenser series. Spenser is a great human character, with nicely developed strengths and weaknesses, and a beautiful ability to downplay both in every conversation. He gets the job done no matter which obstacles his client throws in the way and finds something good in each person no matter how unpleasant they are. I like this guy.

This is Book 2, and Spenser is as feisty as ever. A couple comes to his office and says they never thought of using a Private Eye before; he's bored because he's heard it so many times. Turns out their kid has vanished, taking his guinea pig with him. This is in Smithfield, bastion of the rich up on the north shore. The local police chief is portly and doesn't like Spenser much. So what else is new?

One thing is new - Susan Silverman, the High School Guidance Counsellor. She's feisty and beautiful. Their meeting-scene is rather overdone, though. She drinks a lot, which is MUCH different from later stories. He tells of his nose-breaking and she likes his carving of the "Indian on the Horse" (in front of the MFA) which he did in the first book. She's sad that she's only a guidance counselor and can't really help people. I have a feeling that many guidance counselors out there would have some objection to her point of view. You can make a difference anywhere you are - if only you do your best.

Susan becomes a staple to the series, the love-partner of Spenser throughout the books, the one that brings sense to his sometimes frayed world. Unfortunately, at least in this book, she doesn't seem to be helping much. The story is extremely simplistic in dealing with the causes of child unhappiness and the ways in which it can be "fixed".

The story has a good dose of homosexual behavior, drugs and fetishes - all soon to be part of the Spenser trademark plotline. What is EXTREMELY interesting to me is that while the "later" Spenser is very much a hip guy with gay friends and easily defending gay rights, he most definitely did not start out that way. Some of the stereotypes shown here border on insulting.

There are other trends forming here. Alcoholic couple, the "artistic" wife is drooling all over Spenser. Also interesting is the repetition of tennis references (which I didn't think Spenser played), and his reference to the comfort food of the chop suey his mom used to make. His dead mom? State Cop Healey makes his first appearance here.

Despite in general being a huge fan of Spenser stories, I hated the ending, but read it and decide for yourself on that one.

Henry James's, "The Bostonians," is a simple, but increasingly entertaining love story set in the years soon after the end of the Civil War. Basil Ransom, a true Southern gentleman from Mississippi, has moved North (specifically, to New York City) to try and start a career away from the impoverished South of the Reconstruction days. Shortly after moving North, he pays a visit, at her behest, to the Boston house of his distant cousin, Olive Chancellor. Olive, a stalwart in the women's rights movement of the time, invites Basil to her home in order to offer help and assistance to her Southern cousin, but she also wishes to save him from the flawed ways he certainly must have taken on growing up in the South. Her self-seeking, ulterior motives fail miserably, of course.

It is through Olive that Basil Ransom meets Verena Tarrant, the young woman who has left her lower middle-class family to move in with and be molded by Olive. Verena has a tremendous speaking ability which caught Olive's (and the other women's (womyn's?) movement leaders') attention. But ultimately, Verena also catches Basil's attention... not for her feminist diatribes, but for her beauty and the passion of her speeches. Basil is instantly struck by Verena, and from this point onward the plot focuses as Basil attempts to seek out his love interest who is highly guarded by Olive, Verena's parents, and several others.

The dialogue between Olive and her friends with Basil Ransom, is a constant back and forth that is civil on the surface, but boiling with hostility underneath the social niceties. While Basil is always cool and focused as he tracks the object of his love, Olive Chancellor only becomes more paranoid as she sees that she is gradually losing her young charge... to a Southern Neanderthal. "The Bostonians" meanders through the first couple hundred pages with witty dialogue between the alien Basil and his new peers, but as his focus intensifies, so does the plot. James draws all this circling and stalking into a final, climactic scene that many will be cheering, but one that many modern-day feminists and their sympathizers will be cursing.

This is the high point of the Henry James middle period. I don't think any book so perfectly captures the spirit of a city than The Bostonians does. It's obvious that James is critical of the people of Boston, and has great fun with a great era (spirituality, free love, communal living, feminism, and seances in the post-Civil War America), yet at the same time, I think this is a great description (and a truthful one) of the home of the eban and the cod. The battle between Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom for the soul of the very confused spiritualist speaker Verena Tarrant (Ah, those Jamesian names again!)is not only powerfully doen, but I think this book has much more humor in it than Portrait of a Lady does. (Although, this does not diminish either work in the least.) I could speak all day about this book, and given a chance I will. But I urge you to take a chance on it. I was Massachusetts born and raised..but out in the Western end of the state, and we tend to feel Bostonians sometimes think a bit too well of themselves. Apparently, over 100 years ago, things were the same. There is so much more to this book, read it, and realize that we, at the beginning of a new millenium, are hardly as progressive or as innovative as we like to think we are.

Of course, the greatest irony of this book comes not within its pages, but when you visit the grave of the James family. Henry James ashes were interred in the ground on the family plot, and now and forever, the family plot looks not upon the city of New York, or the expanses of Europe, but rather, Henry James, for all eternity, is facing th city of Boston. e

When he says the "Bostonians" he means "the lesbians." I was pretty interested in the story of a Boston marriage, but it got increasingly mean-spirited toward the end, when the dashing right-wing Mississippian convinces the young woman to leave the older one and a full suffrage lecture-hall and run away with him-- she finds it seductive to be told she must have no will of her own.

I went looking for criticism of this book and found little in Gale, but two essays from 1990s by Wendy Lesser and Alison Lurie. Lesser argues against the feminist line that the book is a misogynist polemic; she responds that Olive (the lesbian) and Basil (the Mississippian) are both complex characters, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and sympathetic. (She quotes Hardwick that James is our best female novelist because his women are powerful and interesting.) Lurie looks at the novel as more about politics than gender: James came home from Europe and found he hated America; showed the South re-conquering the North in Basil's conquest of Verena.

I disagree with Lesser: Basil is shown as naive and occasionally weak but dashing and full-hearted -- I'm sure he is an idealized self-portrait of James. Olive is honest and principled but so bleak and unhappy that her love is purely destructive. Her strength lies less in her principles (Mrs. Birdseye after all is equally principled but utterly weak) than in her vaulting ambition. She reminds me of Dixon's Thaddeus Stevens in The Klansman -- passionate, scheming, perversely principled, but essentially evil. Both come from Milton's Satan, seen as a Yankee.

Which brings me to Lurie's version. I agree with her that the novel is about politics, but disagree that he was writing against America -- I think he was just writing against Boston. The hostility the novel met at the time stemmed from his nasty portrait of the old transcendalist Elizabeth Peabody (his minor character Mrs. Birdseye); this is a less irrelevant reaction than critics portray it, since she's a stand-in for everything he despises about his own Boston roots, a hatred which drives the novel. An equally weak but even more despicable character is Verena's father, a mystical fraud whose nomadic career has certain resemblances to James's father's -- resemblances strengthened if Verena is modeled on Alice James. The Boston reform tradition is alternately weak-minded and hard-edged, and basically loveless -- a spirit of drafty wet lecturehalls. Where Basil is hot-blooded -- he feels about Mississippi a tragic love he can't bear to speak of in conversation -- Olive's New England feeling is only cold philosophy.

How real is the political alternative which Basil represents? We see much less of him than of Olive; James knew Boston but not Mississippi. But I think James like some of his peers yearned for a certain reactionary romanticism which northern intellectuals associated with the South -- a Burkean spirit of cavaliers and kings. (Basil's name means "king," and his emerging career is writing political essays said to be hundreds of years out of date.) Basil's defeat of Olive to marry Verena -- he imagines his own seizure of her from the podium of Fanuiel Hall as a political assassination, with shades of John Wilkes Booth -- is clearly a re-conquest of the North by the old South. What he offers for an American future is less Enlightenment, more Middle Ages -- less rights, more responsiblities -- less cold charity, more warm friendship.

James/ Basil reminds me of Henry Adams in the "Education." On the one hand, Adams saw the warm (mildly homoerotic) friendship of exceptional men (modeled on himself and John Hay) as a strategy for national progress. On the other, Adams developed a similarly St. Gaudensian aesthetic of the medieval -- the cathedral against the dynamo. This was the first, aesteticist reaction of the northern elite to the soullessness of postbellum America, which we forget because it was replaced by Teddy Roosevelt's more muscular alternative.

'Little America' has three main story lines, each of which is engrossing and provides a lot of fodder for discussions. In other words, it's a great choice for a book club.

First is the 'Who's your daddy?' line, set in the present, in which Terry Hooper, the adult son of a former CIA operative, tries to find out what kind of person his father was. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? At first glance this appears to be the main story in the book but I think it serves more as a catalyst to keep the story going.

The second story line is the most fascinating and has the potential to generate a good deal of debate. Set in 1958, it revolves around the friendship that develops between the CIA operative and the young king of Kurash, the subject of his mission. Is it real or just part of his assignment? If it's real, which will win out, friendship or 'duty'? What impact will it have on the characters involved?

The third story line in 'Little America' became frighteningly relevant after what occurred when I was about halfway through it (Sept. 11). It looks at American foreign policy through the eyes of Allen and John Foster Dulles. It expresses almost as aptly as 'The Ugly American' how totally clueless we can be when it comes to seeing the world through the eyes of others. Bromell, in a novel based in the 1950s, provides insight into how we might best respond in the current crisis.

The mysteries at the heart of Little America will keep readers turning pages, but the melancholy soul of its narrator is what endures. By researching the fall and disappearance of a desert kingdom, Terry hopes to penetrate the iron curtain that separated him from the father he saw but never knew. In the process, he tries to claim some integrity for himself in a world of failed gestures, conflicted loyalties, and ambiguous circumstances. Henry Bromell has a wonderful feeling for the self-hatred that accompanies "the nostalgia of defeat." Arabs and Americans alike are portrayed with complexity and sympathy; nobody escapes scot-free. The plot is beautifully constructed but even more impressive is the grace with which Henry shifts from past to present narratives. There are several outstanding moments when the narrator's acuity of perception and depth of feeling mesh perfectly, as when Terry describes a girl playing tennis or when he is overwhelmed by forgiveness and love. The politics of the book are particularly timely - the shadows of Palestine and Iraq never entirely fade from the shifting sands of his narrative. The particularly heinous behavior of the Dulles brothers remind us forcefully of the arrogance that has so often accompanied American power. In the end, Terry's father relies more on patience, trust, and even love than he does on poisoned handkerchiefs and coded messages. Would that there were more like him! This is that rare book that satisfies on many fronts - political, literary, and emotional. Read it.

"Little America," an intriguing novel by Henry Bromell, is a book worth reading. An eclectic variety of the aspects of society and life are present in the storyline. From family and friendship to politics and government, this book nicely combines all of these elements in an intricately woven plot.
The leading character of the story is a history teacher named Terry Hooper. He lived an interesting life as a child since his father was a CIA station chief in the fictional country of Kurah, supposedly located in the Middle East. Upon reading a report on the assassination of the Kurah King by an American agent, Terry is interested in his father's involvement in this matter.
Hooper starts his investigative work with some questions for his father in regards to the work he performed as a CIA agent in Kurah. Piece by piece, he develops a blurry picture, but before he can fully decipher the story, he runs into a dead end- his father's lips are sealed in accordance with the oath he took as a CIA agent. Thereafter, different workers in the station, each with a unique voice, tell the remaining segments of the story. Despite many twists, turns and the alteration between current time and retrospect (as the characters tell what they know of Kurah), the story is nowhere from misleading. Transitions between speakers, though sometimes lengthy, are smooth and the overall theme and setting of the Middle East is never lost.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of this book is its standpoint on the life and family of a CIA agent. Most movies and novels stereotype CIA agents by making them mysterious, serious, and multi-faceted in terms of personality. Often, the child would report his father sneaking off during the night, not to return for days, with only "business" as a response to inquiries regarding what the odd excursion was for.
This was a book that I enjoyed reading and one that kept me hooked with its suspense. It gave me a new image of the Middle East, one quite different from what is commonly depicted by the media. I would recommend this book to anyone who wouldn't mind a little history.

I'm not going to bore you with another rendition of the plot of this book. Four other reviewers have done an excellent job. I will say that a reader should start at the beginning of this series to get the full enjoyment of this story. Fremont Jones is a wonderfully fleshed out character. Ms. Day is a wonderful and entertaining writer. She does a great job of characterization and plotting in her books. The author is also great at giving her books a good feel for the times. Weather it be, social, physical or emotional. The reader gets the added plus of comparing East and West Coast in this installment. Ms. Day is right, there is a vast difference between the two. May be next time Fremont can go to Southern California, once again there is a vast difference. It would be interesting to see Fremont's take on that one. The mystery in this installment is a good solid one. Who did what or did it happen at all? Then the why, Ms. Day as always does an excellent job of closing the plot and explaining the why of this story. Once again, I wholeheartedly recommend this book and series. One note to the previous reviewer, read "The Strange Files of Fremont Jones" to find out about the Fremont relation. One does not have to have children to have people related to them.

Boston is one of my favorite cities, and I visit it as often as possible. I was, therefore, very pleased that Fremont Jones decided to return to her native city to visit her ailing father in this latest installment of an excellent series of mysteries. The city itself is almost a character in the plot, and the author has done her homework quite well, for she has the geography of the streets down very well (I know, for I've walked many of them). She even stays at the Parker House, an elegant hotel in Fremont's day, and still an imposing one, where my wife and I stopped for a drink and some snacks one Saturday afternoon two months ago. The plot of the mystery is quite straight forward, and is solved expeditiously by our heroine at the end, as usual. It's a bittersweet book, for Fremont loses her beloved father, but does manage to attain justice, of a sort, at the conclusion. I await anxiously the next installment of her adventures.

Doubleday no longer intends to publish series mysteries, and because of this, Fremont Jones has met an untimely end. And because of contractual matters, Day can't take the series to another publisher. So, enjoy this one, folks -- it's the last in the series. It's a real shame!

I am an avid reader of works both for and against the Boston Movement (or International Churches of Christ). The ICC is one of the fastest growing movements in the world starting with only 30 in 1979 to over 200,000 today. Led by Kip McKean and the Los Angeles Church of Christ, it is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

This book exposes the trouble that legalism brings. Those who are seeking to save themselves and justify themselves before God (Romans 3:22-27) will find life a struggle. Freedom is just a word used in "Christian" language but seldom have I met ICC people who are truly free in Jesus (Gal. 5:1, 13).

This book will help you to see what is like to be a disciple in the International Churches of Christ. If you are in the movement, know someone who is, or you are just curious about the ICC, this book will be an eye opener at mind control and legalism. Jesus brings freedom from sin through His grace (Eph. 1:7; 2:8-10) but those in this book were introduced to religion of men (Mark 7:1-8).

If you are a true Christian than you will praise God for His mercy and grace when you are done with this book (Romans 4:5). If you are not a Christian, I would encourage you to read this along with the book of Romans and ask God to reveal His righteousness and salvation to you (Romans 10:4).

This is currently the best book out there about the International Churches of Christ. It has several sections, including case stories from a number of people who have been involved in the organization, and an explanation of Thought Reform techniques and a comparison to the ICC.

Highly recommended.

I'm so grateful for this book. It made me truly understand what happened to me as a "cult" member and that it wasn't my fault. I use it as a reference when I'm having hard times. It makes it really clear that the decision to leave was the best one I ever made. It's also an excellent source of information and advice for friends and family of "cult" members. The proof it there. This is a destructive and controlling group. I wish more people could read this book BEFORE they become victims. I will show this to everyone I can.

This book was a good read although quick. The writing style gets you to feel for the characters from the first three chapters. This will draw you in until the very last page. I think it could have been longer and a bit more complex. The author could have elaborated on each of the main characters in more depth. This book was entertaining.

I enjoyed the way the author let the readers enter the lives of these 3 strong women, how their lives intersected, and how a family was created. I particularly liked the way the author didn't title each chapter with a number, but used the names of the characters instead. I started the book and couldn't put it down. I can't wait to read the author's next book!

Of all the curses afflicting us, loneliness and lack of family are two of the most painful. They cause us to examine the nature of our selves, to catalogue our strengths and reflect on what could have been. Suzanne Matson's compassionate and true debut novel, "The Hunger Moon," explores the impact of isolation and family loss through the intertwined lives of three female protagonists. Despite their differences in class, age and experience, the three women discover meaning, vision and strength through their growing interdependence. This connectedness gives "The Hunger Moon" both its poignancy and urgency.

Renata is the most complicated of the three characters. A seemingly nondescript single mother of an endearing infant son, Renata has chosen to hit the road, leaving her child's father ignorant of his fatherhood. Renata discovers that her freeom is illusory; instead of liberating her, her eventual choice of Boston as her home finds her rootless, unmoored not only from her west-coast heritage, but without the comforting safety net of caring friends. While struggling with the practical aspects of economic survival and motherhood, Renata must also come to grips with the impact of her decision to remove her son Charlie from his unknown father, Bryan. In turn, she must question herself as to her convoluted, ill-defined feelings about love, commitment and marriage.

As she grapples with the moral dilemma her life choices has engendered, Renata slowly develops a relationship with the newly reclusive Eleanor, a successful jurist whose recent widow status has resulted in her literally stripping away the veneer of her past family life. Now living in a starkly barren apartment, Eleanor finds a delighted surprise in bonding with her freshly-discovered neighbor Renata.

Joining this mix is the conflicted June. Bulimic and ravaged by constant academic and artistic disappointments (she is a flop as a student and troubled by her lack of success as a dancer), June receives no solace from her parents -- a distant, indifferent father and a mother reeling from the pressures of compelled personal reinvention. June satisfies her hunger for connection through caretaking and babysitting, two services which reintroduce her to her own humanity.

It is the elemental reawakening -- to possibility, to hope, to humanity -- which invests "The Hunger Moon" with such dignity. Matson's sensitive exploration of the nature of family ties, the difficult choices women face in offering themselves to others in love and the impact of personal responsibility in times of emotional duress gives her writing an urgeny and an elegance rare in debut novels. The author interweaves her characters' lives with the same skill as she develops their distinct personalities.

"The Hunger Moon" satisfies as story and as fable. Eleanor, June and Renata develop qualities which sustain and broaden; their personal stories become illustrative of what we can become once we shed the restrictive walls which shut us off not only from others, but from our true inner selves.

I listened to the audio version. Joe Mantegna is great as usual.

This time Spencer gets involved with extra-marital affairs, creative bookkeeping, and an Enron type scandal.

As long as you maintain a light-hearted view of the details presented, the novel moves along nicely. However, if you have any financial background at all, the basic premise of the book falls apart.

I know it is very moralistic to keep Spencer on the straight and narrow. However, it has beceome very boring from a reader's standpoint. No matter how enticing the female counterparts are, Spencer skillfully avoids them. This is as exciting as watching paint dry.

This book is not nearly as good as last year's PotShot.

This is Parker's 31st Spenser novel. As you'd expect in a series this long, there have been high points and low points. 2 to 3 books back things had flattened out and Spenser was getting too predictable. That has changed.

In Bad Business Spenser is involved in tailing an executive at Kinergy--a company that might as well have just been called Enron and been done with it--after being hired by the executive's wife. it soon transpires lots of people are tailing lots of people at Kinergy. When the executive in Spenser's sights is killed, things get even more complicated.

After 31 novels Parker has a pretty full corral of stock characters to draw from. He's fairly sparing in this one. The focus here is more on the story.

The story's pretty good. It's more complex and suspenseful than has been the norm lately--more intricate and less predictable.

But the good news here is that Spenser himself is in very good form. Back is the wry, wisecracking, violent intellectual that has built this series into what it is. The re-energizing of Spenser is a welcome development.

Parker is also branching out a nit--from the purely noir conceptualization to a bit of homage of other great mystery writers. The ending is a group-room scene reminiscent of-and worthy of--a Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout.

All in all a very nice diversion and a very pleasant read.

I've always liked Parker's books, especially the Spenser and Jesse Stone novels. This was no exception. I love the witty banter and the strong loyal friendship between Spenser and Hawk. Parker never fails to turn out a good story full of strong characters, snappy dialogue, and his narrative is always vivid, even though he's not as wordy as some writers. The only thing about this book I didn't like is, I would have liked to have seen more of Hawk. I understand that such a character is more effective when used sparingly but a little more Hawk would have been an improvement I think. Still, it's a good tale and if you like Parker's novels, I can definitely recommend "Bad Business".
Parker is one of the best!

My experience is that I can easily classify most novels as "I loved it, what else has this guy written?", "Not bad, what's on television?", or "What a load of garbage, why did a tree have to die for this?" Sometimes they fall between these three levels, but it's usually clear where. Michael Downing has written a curious novel, Perfect Agreement, that I find very difficult to rate in this way. I could just take the average of my enjoyment on each page, but I don't think that would illustrate much. Since I have to put a star rating on the review, I'll give it a three, but I don't think that really says much.

There are actually three parts to Perfect Agreement, and I don't think they agree so well with each other. These are not three linearly placed sections, but rather an interspersed selection of passages. The first, and shortest, is the selection of grammar and spelling tips. This is a curious choice of material for a novel. The narrator, Mark, is a professor of spelling at a liberal arts college (he had a fancier title, but I've forgotten it). He teaches grammar and spelling and punctuation for the basic skills test that all students must pass. So it's not entirely bizarre that at the end of every chapter there is a page or two concerning spelling rules. This is, oddly enough, a rather pleasant thing. As I currently live in Germany and am forever apologizing for written English, it's surprising to remember that there actually are rules for figuring most of this stuff out (but in all the examples, he never once explains the difference between who and whom).

Besides these little asides, there are two stories. The first, and more interesting in my opinion, is his own. The narrator has been fired for refusing to pass a student even though she failed the test every time. He was, according to the administration and some colleagues, showing prejudgism to a poor, black working mother student (original spelling). Thus, he has to find a new job, deal with the politics of the situation, and handle his life. This really should have been the story, but it's given only about a third of the book space. One might think it is an afterthought.

The bulk of the book is about the Shakers, a religious cult that died out decades ago after two hundred years in America. The narrator's father had been a devoted student of the Shakers, even leaving his family to study them up close. So, throughout the book, he suddenly launches into commentary about the Shakers. For quite a while there is no clear reason why this happens. Eventually a story starts to develop around one Shaker woman, but frankly, I never cared about it. I also found it jarring that these narratives would just start with no break from the previous subject matter, whatever it might be. In the middle of the paragraph, Downing just starts writing on a new topic, Shaker related. I'm being a bit facetious here. For some reason, there are no paragraphs in the book. Other than the spelling tips section at the end of each chapter, there is exactly one paragraph per chapter. At first I failed to notice this, but it could explain why the jumps were so jarring. Downing's main character is a grammarian, so presumably Downing knows that paragraphs exist for a reason. Art may break the rules, but it can fall flat on its face in the attempt.

This could have been so much more. There are many good lines, and I found the narrator to be a pleasant commentator when he was focused on the present. Right at the start, he sets the tone by stating that his dismissal from the college made him a poster child for the sort of people who throw around the term "politically correct" to intimidate good people. His dealings with the college administration show us, the readers, a clever, witty, and fully principled guy. Downing's principal goal should have been keeping the story where it was most interesting, or at least transitioning it better. As it turned out, there was just too much stuff here that I did not care about to make this a memorable read.

Do you have difficulty spelling words such as "misspell" or "manageable" or is "managable?" The author offers a brief refresher note after each chapter about spelling, punctuation and diction rules we forget as adults. Downing's protagonist, Mark Sternum, is a punctilious college teacher of spelling and grammer who dares to flunk an African-American unwed mother for her inability to spell. The background issue here is the concern of college educators about today's political correctness on campuses which the author thinks humiliates professors into being overly sensitive in dealing with minority students. Eventually the student proposes to sue all the teachers who passed her because they were derelict in their duties, except to Sternum. The author interweaves the personal life story of Sternum with the Shakers who Downing believes are simply looked upon today as the makers of furniture and not who they really were and what they had contributed to our society. This is an interes

Perfect Agreement has something for everyone: humor, pathos, social commentary, stunning prose, grammar tips, and even a little history of sorts. In addition to all this, Downing is a captivating storyteller, and this novel intertwines the telling of two stories, one set in the past and one in the present. The present revolves around the career and relationships of Mark Sternum, a man who is remarkably likable, possibly because he is exceptionally devoid of self pity and self deception. Downing's images are so vivid that the reader not only visualizes the story but smells, tastes and feels the events as well. Usually, when I read "a really good piece of literature" I find an astute observation or an exceptionally tastey tidbit of prose which I copy out and save. In the case of Perfect Agreement, I couldn't begin to do this, as nearly every page contained at least one passage that I wanted to savour, copy or memorize. This reader hasn't been this excited about an author since she discovered Faulker twenty-seven years ago. The two authors' ability to sensitively see and juxtapose humor and pain is not dissimilar.

After reading The Poisonwood Bible and being so involved with the family in that novel, I thought Moira's Crossing would be along the same lines. While I really got into the book and couldn't put it down (it took me only 3 days to read this book in the little spare time I have), I felt like some of the characters were not developed enough so I didn't really feel anything for them. Plus, when I got to the end (and if it's a really good book, I want to get to the end as soon as possible and then when it's over, I'm sad it's over because I will miss the characters), all I thought was "huh?" And I must have missed the point somewhere -- what WAS Moira's Crossing?

Moira's Crossing is a perfectly written novel of the immigrant experience and the nature of family. The author so immediately involves you in the lives of the characters that you won't be able to put the book down.

Moira's Crossing left me in awe of Shea's lyrical prose and ability to draw out complicated emotions without overstating them. This book explores the complicated nature of sisterhood in a quiet, careful way. It does not hit the reader over the head with its statement. It is a sophisticated read, a powerful depiction of family troubles, and ultimately it is a book about redemption and resolution. Readers expecting an easy, obvious read will not necessarily find it here; readers looking for something more subtle (but more powerful)will love Moira's Crossing.