Mordecai polishes his translations of Chinese poetry, moves the junk & households of other Californians, and stays on various back porches & Big Sur getaways finding love and friendship in the 1970's of our memories. Along the way, we ourselves grow to love and appreciate the joys of these marginal characters, the heirs of Steinbeck's Mack and the boys of CANNERY ROW. A magical book!

Mordecai is a zen/bohemian who interacts with the entire social structure of the Big Sur and Monterey area through the moving and hauling business that he runs along with his irrepressible sidekick Buck. Between them they get into more trouble than his good luck (melanoia- the opposite of paranoia))can stand. A comic look at both the bohemian and yuppie foibles of the early 1970s.

Before I joined the ACCA (foundation stage) studies in the Singapore Variant Legal framework paper, I really do not have any idea about it. It was because I was being transferred to the Legal framework due to a miscommunication by the school therefore I go about scouting for necessary enhancement in Law. Fortunately, I found this book which is on U.K. Company Law but all the cases cited are really comprehensive. I am really grateful! Next monday I will be sitting for the examinations and really hope that the books I bought will help me in my attempt.

There's so much wrong with this book.

It's way too long - 756 pages of text. The author, Keith Walker, seems intent on sparing no detail, however insignificant, of Burton Abbott's trial in Alameda County for the 1955 slaying of Stephanie Bryant, whose corpse was found in an unmarked grave in Trinity County, and of the details surrounding the murder itself. Some of the more important details of the case get lost in the mish-mosh that Walker concocts, and I lost track of many of the names, dates, and places long before I finished the book.

756 pages is a more appropriate length for an encyclopedia, instead of a true-life tale of forensics/ courtroom drama. But Walker provides us with virtually no sources for any of the facts that he sets forth, and if he had, this presumably would have stretched the book out interminably further.

Without sources, we're forced to take the author's story at face value, and this is impossible in every instance because the author often "cheats" and sets forward as fact that which is clearly unknowable. The most glaring example of this is that he often does take us into the mind of the accused, Burton Abbott. The mind is that of an innocent man who is truly startled at all of the developments in the case against him, and because we see this early on in the book, a tone is set from there. Yet one need not bemoan the absence of a bibliography or source index to KNOW that the author could not possibly know what was in the mind of the accused.

The absence of source materials and the "mind-reading" device could only be acceptable if the author had intended to write a work of fiction based on the true facts of the Abbott/Bryant matter, but, as reflected in the Library of Congress/ISBN catalog reference, he appears to be passing this off as a "true crime" non-fiction book.

The book also dwells overly loud and long on the travails of Elsie Abbott, the aggrieved mother of the wrongly-accused. The slow tortuous route that she travels while awaiting her son's vindication is obviously part of this story, but to behold it as frequently as Walker imposes it on us is just too painful. Also, there is an air of unrealism about the way in which Elsie repeatedly shifts back and forth from maudlin grieving mother to whip-sharp Sherlockian detective with her own encyclopedic knowledge of the facts surrounding the case, and I suspect that Walker is using Elsie as a mouthpiece with which to describe his own impressions.

This raises the question of what exactly Walker's motivations are. I do not recognize Golden Door Press, the publisher, or any of Walker's other works described in the beginning, but I suspect that Walker's intention, at least in part, was to write an anti-death penalty book. There is an allusion to the anti-death penalty movement that was in existence in California in the 1950's. And while none of the "bleeding heart" arguments against the death penalty have ever convinced me, this book does highlight the only sensible argument against capital punishment that has ever been raised: the horrible possibility that it will cause a fatal and irreversible miscarriage of justice.

This book has caused me to revise my impression of another book on the same subject: "Shallow Grave in Trinity County" by Harry Farrell, which reads like a brief for the prosecution and made me wonder exactly why the jury deliberated for as long as it did. For all of its flaws, "A Trail of Corn" raises issues that remain inexplicably ignored or insufficiently addressed by "Shallow Grave", which was published later. These include the issue of whether Burton Abbott's slight build and sickly physical condition would have enabled him to overpower a resisting victim and ascend a steep hillside. Unless Stephanie was "walked" up the hillside while still alive, her murderer would have had to either carry or drag her corpse up the slope as well.

Some intriguing physical evidence that Stephanie was actually buried in Marin County before being unearthed and re-buried in Trinity (a notion pooh-poohed by Farrell and incompatible with the timetable justifying Burton's guilt) is alluded to in this book. The notion that the criminal justice system is often "rigged" to favor the prosecution, that prosecutors themselves distort or disdain exculpatory evidence in order to score a "win" (and the political plums that accompany that win), and that judges hold prosecutors and defense attorneys to dual standards of conduct is less incredible to this reviewer, in his new capacity of public defender, than it once might have been.

Notwithstanding the book's length, the ending does somewhat repay reading. Elsie's (Walker's?) revelation of the candidate for alternative murder suspect is as plausible and startling in its denouement as the end of Perry Mason rerun.

Do the state of California and the county of Alameda have innocent blood on their hands? Hey, Abbott!

The mid-fifties murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Bryant in Berkeley, California, fascinated me at the time -- I was also 12 and had been born in Berkeley. From newspapers of the time, I simply did not believe Burton Abbott could have committed the crime. This well-researched book finally provides some other possibilities and brings that early case back into the limelight. Very much worth a read.

A truly unbelievable book !!! This case has always fascinated me. Keith Walker does an amazing job of exploring the truths of this case, and leaves the reader amazed. Not to mention an inside look at our deplorabel justice system in the 1950's.

Keith Abbott was a friend and, as much as anyone could be, a confidant of the late neo-beat author, Richard Brautigan. This is one of surprisingly few biographical and/or critical works on this unique American writer. Lately there seems to be a mini-renaissance of interest in Brautigan's work. Internet sites, notably Jen Leibhart's, " The Brautigan Pages" will provide the interested surfer with contacts of other aficionados. This writer has received e-mail from Finland and Germany where Brautigan's work is becoming known (again?). I know of only two other works dedicated exclusively tothis author, Terence Malley's "Richard Brautigan", a 1972 publication in Warner's "Writers for the Seventies" series and Marc Chenetier's 1983 more inclusive "Richard Brautigan". The Abbott book is far more personal and, for thiswriter, more interesting. It is the only work that makes a serious effort at a biographical approach to this enigmatic writer. It may be some time before Brautigan's significance as a man of letters can be agreed upon but the recent resurgence of interest suggests that he will not fall into obscurity. By the way you can e-mail Jen Leibhart at jen@cnct.com. So until some enterprising writer attempts a true literary biography Keith Abbott's book will fill this unjust gap in American letters.