ezloan

And we, the reader, know who has it. There are a lot of voices in this novel, but Sloan segues well, moving among thugs, illegal domestics, nasty rich folk, cops and criminals, mouthy kids, angry parents, worried parents, grieving parents and bystanders. Darkly humorous, with a hard edge and street-smarts, softened by deft characterizations and quirky writing, this is a mixed bag that works.

Terri, keep up the good work... we can't wait for your next book.

Inspector Sloan, accompanying his wife Margaret to a prenatal examination, is rescued by Dr. Dabbe, who is about to perform an autopsy on Beatrice Wansdyke, 59-year-old chemistry teacher at a girls' school. She supposedly died of diabetes, which wouldn't interest the Berebury force, and with a quarter of a million pounds in the bank, which interests them very much. Where could she get that kind of money - legally or illegally? The bank surely isn't saying, and the police force isn't familiar with her, except for Crosby, who was sent out when she reported a lost dog a few days ago.

Her nephew George, a director of the plastics company where Miss Wansdyke did research when away from teaching, hasn't been told why the coroner ordered a post-mortem, but he's too wise in the ways of legal authority to protest. Her niece Briony, now free to quit her nurse's training and marry whenever she likes, is worried over something - her brother Nicholas, the family black sheep. Dabbe's autopsy reveals that Miss Wansdyke did indeed die of diabetes - but that doesn't mean it wasn't murder. Especially when Crosby finds the dog with its throat cut in Miss Wansdyke's back garden...

Sloan is less than keen about this case, since his wife's obstetrician is engaged to one of the suspects, and their first child is due to be born any minute. (Yes, that thread finally reaches a conclusion in this book, having started in _Slight Mourning_). The suspects cover the social spectrum, from rough-living Nicholas and his druggie friends to company director George Wansdyke and his fanatical partner Malcolm Darnley - the nature-loving bane of Traffic Division, who protests the cutting of any tree for any roadwork in the county. A good novel as well as a good mystery, as usual.

Photos of the effects and pitfalls you may encounter give the instructions much more clarity than most of the books on the subject.

The book is truely useful and lives up to the subtitle "a Practical Guide"

Everything you can do to a wall is probably covered here. There are entire sections on faux wood techniques as well as malachite, lapis, marble, tortoise shell, and granite. Sections on stenciling, gilding, glazing, and antiquing are included.

For some reason, I loved reading and looking through this book. Unfortunately, and this is probably my fault, I am not inclined to try any of this.

It looks like way too much work and too much time for the result. This could be because there are just so many faux wall & surface treatments being shown in interiors I may just be tired of the whole thing.

But, if you're interested and want to know how to get started, what tools you'll need, and what the final results will look like, this book covers it well.

Just to get your juices flowing...here are just a few of the finishes discussed... Marbling Finishes...many Lapis Malachite....done in examples never seen before! Many woods Agate Granite Tortoiseshell Trompe-l'Oiel----and she makes it look easy! Metallics Guilding Distressing and I have not even touched the surface!

Move over books...another book is coming on the shelves!

The Crown vs. Lucy Mirabel Durmast wouldn't have been any of Sloan's business, if it weren't for two things: Trevor Porritt of Calleford Division suffering permanent brain damage after being hit by a burglar, and Lucy's determination to stand mute to everyone, not even engaging a defense counsel. Sloan inherits Porritt's caseload, and Lucy's refusal to speak, let alone plead, causes enough agitation among the forces of the law that Sloan and Crosby are instructed to go over the ground again and find out what's going on.

The victim, Kenneth Carline, was a young structural engineer for Durmast's, the civil engineering firm run by Lucy's father; he crashed his car after lunch with Lucy, due to being poisoned. (Bill Durmast is out of the country overseeing the building of a new Dhlasan capital city in Africa, and neither the British envoy nor Durmast's second-in-command back home are about to mess up the contract by spilling the beans.) The police, as it happens, know Durmast's quite well; not only did they build the Palshaw tunnel, which helped out Traffic Division, but the tunnel opening ceremony was a disaster: a gang of protesters for the nearby nuclear waste disposal plant used it to get a big banner photographed instead of the tunnel behind the banner.

Lucy isn't saying anything to anyone, but Sloan and Crosby manage to find a lot of things that don't quite tie up: anti-nuclear leaflets in Carline's car; a college friendship between Carline and one of the princes of Dhlasa, who's now missing; the lack of evidence of any personal attachment between Lucy and Carline (who had just announced his engagement to someone else); the mystery of how the demonstrators got at the tunnel access via a gate that should have been locked. Then someone else connected with the case is murdered, and the one person who couldn't have done it is Lucy, in prison for contempt of court while awaiting the resumption of her trial for murder. (She couldn't get bail anyway, since she wasn't speaking and therefore hadn't asked for it.)

But if she didn't poison Carline in the chili con carne at lunch, who could have within the pathologist's time limit? Especially since he must have been nearly flying to get his car from lunch at her father's house, where he was picking up blueprints, to the official closing of the tunnel contract at Palshaw at 2 o'clock - even though he never made it.

Excellent character development, as always; while Lucy won't talk, we are told part of the story from her point of view. Her best friend Cecilia seems like a good, loyal ally, with her own life as both an artist in pottery, a mother of twin infant sons, and the wife of John Allsworthy, of the manor house at Braffle Episcopi. And there's the angle of international intrigue, as the hunt for Prince Aturu ensues while the Berebury CID tries to decide whether the Mgongwala contract had anything to do with Carline's death.

I recommend the unabridged audio recording by Robin Bailey to anyone who's interested; he's a great narrator, and his recordings of various adventures of Inspector Sloan have all been excellent.

The University of Calleshire at the beginning of the fall term is a mass of discontent, among students and professors alike. The students' Direct Action Committee is incensed that Malcolm Humbert was expelled - and they want to use him as an excuse for a sit-in, to lure the University administrators into suing Humbert for trespass. The few sitters-out are grousing about their holiday jobs - particularly the ecology students, who had a massive amount of holiday work. As for the faculty, Hilda Linnaker (English literature) is melancholy that her magnum opus on Jane Austen is nearly finished, marking her upcoming retirement, Bernard Watkinson (History) is grumpy about putting up with female students, while Simon Mautby (ecology) is in one of his usual volcanic outbursts over the unavailability of good lab help to look after his animals so he can get away.

The administrators' determination not to get the police involved with the upcoming sit-in is matched only by Superintendent Leeyes' resolution not to entangle the Berebury force in it. Unfortunately, Sloan and Crosby are called out to investigate a burglary - Colin Ellison, rising star in ecology, suffered the loss of his holiday essay and notes, together with the trashing of his room, the day before it was due. And on the day itself - the first night of the sit-in - another young ecologist, Henry Moleyns, is found stabbed, very professionally, leaving only the mysterious last words "twenty-six minutes".

Are the theft and the murder connected? Why would anyone kill a penniless ecology student, fresh back from a bicycle tour of Europe? Why did Moleyns have a falling out with the committee and refuse to go near the sit-in - what happened to him over the summer, and where did he go? Then a second murder takes place, suggesting a possible motive - but for whom?

And what does "twenty-six minutes" *mean*, anyway?

This story is both a completely fair puzzle, and a very good story. As a subordinate thread in the narrative, we're kept up to date on Sloan's private life - he and his wife are expecting their first child, and it's affecting his brain. :) The child's birth occurs in _Some Die Eloquent_, if you're interested. Crosby, his assistant, gets a little respect for something other than driving, for once, as he unearths some interesting evidence, and lack thereof, while searching various rooms at the university.

Another thoroughly enjoyable classic British mystery from Catherine Aird. In this, the eighth in her Inspector Sloan series, we have red herrings galore as well as the usual goodly quantity of clues. While it might seem a bit dated to some, involving sit-ins, etc., in fact it holds up quite well. Aird gives both sides (dons [professors, to you Yanks] & students) a sympathetic hearing - there is no condescending tone or false liberality - just people being people and interesting ones, at th at.

I can recommend this completely and again wish that more of her books were in print. If you enjoy Ellis Peter's series of George Felse mysteries - you'll like these.

Well worth a read to look back at where we were, consider where we've come to, and where we might be going.

It is not only interesting and instructive to read about how technology has developed during the past century, but it also makes us evaluate how technology affects us and, to some extent, defines the way we think and do things today.

I particularly liked the idea of having several short articles (1 to 4 pages each) written by a large variety of people. This structure lets you read several articles in a row and pick up your reading after several days, without loosing the overall picture.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing a little more on how technology has developed through the eyes of both people who worked on it and people who lived the inmediate consecuences of it. I think it is a excellent source for analysis for people in the area of Philosophy of Science.