While the threat posed to modern society by religious fundamentalism has been underscored by the events of September 11, "The Tailor-King" reminds us that suicidal craziness is not limited to some extreme readers of the Koran. This book is about the Anabaptist Kingdom that appeared in the prosperous North German city of Muenster in 1534-35, with disastrous results for everyone involved. A century later, from 1618-48, the Thirty Years' War would be the ultimate expression of European Christian religious and political madness and it is ironic that the treaty that ended it, the Peace of Westphalia, was signed in the City Hall in Muenster, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity on the continent.

Muenster is a solid, bourgeois kind of place and in the 16th Century it seemed equally so. An important trading centre, it showed its considerable wealth in its merchants'mansions and warehouses, its churches and impressive cathedral. The beginning of the Reformation saw the city split into Catholic and Lutheran interests, but it continued to function until a group of Anabaptists, regarded as heretics for their insistence on adult baptism, gradually seized control of the town. Eventually they drove out the majority of other believers and the ranks of Muenster swelled with Anabaptists from other areas, particularly Holland. A charismatic leader, a former baker named Jan Matthias, was one of these. He had been called to Muenster by Jan van Leyden, another Dutch Anabaptist, and a group led by a wealthy local merchant. Together they declared war on the local Prince-Bishop and were rewarded with a siege of their fortified town. Deemed heretics by pretty well everyone, Catholic and Lutheran, the Anabaptists were determined to hold out, seize the countryside and establish a New Kingdom of Zion.

Anthony Arthur describes the Company of Christ as starting off as a well-disciplined, effective organization and he gives us some background on the Anabaptist movement, which was divided into pacificists (Mennonites and similar groups) and the militants. As the siege wears on, the Company of Christ takes some strange directions. From a city council, it moves to a Council of Elders and then to essentially a religious dictatorship.. Property is to be held only in common, criticism is rewarded with summary death. All the church towers are destroyed. Jan Matthias challenges the Bishop's army to single combat, with foreseeable results, and Jan van Leyden takes over. He now makes polygamy obligatory and arranges to crown himself King. The people starve, when their leaders are not personally murdering them, and those who try to leave are killed by the Bishop's soldiers outside. The whole thing comes crashing down when the Anabaptists are betrayed and the city taken. Jan van Leyden and the other most senior leaders are tortured to death and their corpses put on display in cages that are still to be seen on St. Lambert's Church in Muenster. Interestingly, the cages are original, but the church itself is not.

This book is only 244 pages, but although Mr. Arthur has looked at many sources it is clear that he has had to make an effort to flesh the book out. There are some diversions into Freud and theories that the Company of Christ was a sort of proto-Nazi organization and a long digression into the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. I doubt that the Anabaptists were particularly Nazi-like, but exhibited many of the characteristics of a totalitarian system, more similar to Chinese Communism in its most irrational phases. And irrational it truly was-reading this book, one cannot reconcile the good burghers of Northern Germany, with their dull but solid reputation, with this lot of passionate crazies. It is a fascinating story even though one senses the whole time that it can only end one way. Of particular note is the enthusiasm with which people are put to death, often in very imaginative and quite unpleasant ways, and by both sides. The Anabaptists, as they roll onwards into madness and calamity, are treated by the author with more sympathy than the Establishment figures opposing them. Receiving particular scorn is the Prince-Bishop, Franz von Waldeck, who is portrayed as incompetent, venal and luckless.

It may seem strange to us today that adult baptism, with its element of free will, could be the subject of such rage between Christians but one need only look at the fine points argued by religious fanatics today with deadly passion to understand that the more things change, the less they do.

This is a good, original story of radicals in the Reformation movement taking a town over and transforming it into a theocracy.
Munster had a uneasy alliance of Catholics and Lutherians who tolerated each other. The radical Anabaptists took over the town
and forced Catholics and moderate elements to leave the city. The Prince Bishop which ruled Munster opposed them. Two Jans
transformed the city into a Nazi like state. I agree with the review that the final chapter was a stretch in how it related to modern movements. Arthur wanted to say that history repeats itself. The final chapter could have been cut down. Also in the beginning, more focus could have been given the Anabaptist beliefs. A good short read.

The Tailor King is a masterful account of what happened both inside and outside the ancient walls of sixteenth-century Munster when Protestant religious fervor transformed otherwise intelligent and rational men into irrational creatures capable of unbelievable brutality. Readers beware - the graphic descriptions and concrete imagery bring the sixteenth-century fully alive. The characters in this book could easily populate a wide-screen, action-filled film. The author's meticulous research and gift for storytelling combine to create a rare pairing of erudition and page-turning readability. Like the narrator who seizes the wedding guest in Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner," the author seizes the reader's attention and does not let go. His calm journalistic voice only heightens the "you are there" quality of the book. And his occasional strokes of subtle dry wit surprise and delight. This is living history at its engrossing best. The carefully annotated illustrations, culled from archives and museums in Germany, highlight events in the story and are a unique bonus. A well told story from first page to last!

As others have noted, this book is particularly helpful when trying to understand Flaubert and his other works. The popularly read Madame Bovary in particular features a character, Homais, who continually tries to impose his own ideas about religeon on people who aren't even interested in listening... it is interesting to see, though, where views similar to Homais' come out in the Temptation of St. Anthony.

The work itself is written like a play, though to do this on stage would be an interesting feat. It would perhaps better take the form of film, such as Bunuel's Simon in the Desert.

For those interested in getting in to studying early Christian movements following the death of Christ, although this will hardly serve as a textbook, Flaubert seems to have had a broad repetoir of little known (today, at least) historical facts and facets that will help point an aspiring student in the right direction.

Though hardly light reading, and probably of little appeal to those who do not have an interest in either Flaubert, French literature, or religeon, the trials and tribulations Antony is subjected to through one night of temptation will be at the least entertaining, if not enlightening, to a few.

This is a work that should not be neglected by those interested in Flaubert or by lovers of French Literature. It's format resembles an old-fashioned cyclorama, which was basically a revolving canvas, portraying various interpretive images to an audience that would be seated in the middle of a room. Or it may recall the same period's "magic lantern" which would produce a similar effect, projecting a series of images on a flat wall, the precursor of modern cinema.

Flaubert ushered in an entirely new sensibility to the world of letters. He reinvented the concept of the literary artist as word-and world shaper. The word is the world and vice-versa. No writer ever engaged in such a Herculean struggle to shape every word, every sentence, every image, every assonance or consonance to perfectly conform to his intention.

Flaubert engaged in a kind of ascetisism his entire adult life, which is hardly news, but is central to an understanding of this work and to his attraction towards St. Anthony for a protagonist. Flaubert was for many years a kind of hermit in his study at Croisset, where he retired to his study to read books and write novels. He had contact with his mother and adopted niece and wrote letters to a mistress (Louise Collet, and later to George Sand) along with a few male friends. He would make brief sojourns into Paris, but for the most part, stayed to himself in his provincial hideaway. What he dreamt of there, besides his most famous works (Madame Bovary and L'Education Sentimentale) were reveries such as this novel and Salammbo, another book set in the Near-East and equally evocative in terms of his treatment of that region's sensual and Byzantine richness.

"The Temptation" sparkles with some of Flaubert's most carefully and lovingly constructed imagery. It is the author's own homage to the fertility of his imagination. He never fathered a child literally that we know of, but this work and Salammbo were his ways of saying that he was fertile in all other respects. Each passing personage or creature is a seed sewn by this father of imagery.

One of the most senseless and ill-informed utterances in the annals of criticism is Proust's comment that Flaubert never created one memorable metaphor. Flaubert's entire cannon is one vast metaphor. They are evident in every sentence and every passage of every novel he ever wrote. This is particularly true in this work, as any informed reader will no doubt conclude after reading it.

One other area of recommendation extends to students of Gnosticism. Flaubert encapsulates much of the central theories of the early Gnostic Fathers and Apostles in a few well-delineated characterisations and brush strokes. I would also recommend the Penguin edition, edited and translated by Kitty Mrosovsky, for her introduction and notes. The only drawback I have with her is that she portrays Henry James as denigrating Flaubert's work, where in fact he generally effusively praises it. To those who can read it in its original text, I can only say I envy you and wish I were there.

This is a startling and brilliant piece of prose poetry that deserves to be more widely read; just don't expect anything like his more conventional novels. Indeed, don't read it expecting a novel at all; it reads more like a cross between modernist poetry and Medieval vision literature.

One of his lesser known works, Shakespeare's Trojan play is also one of his most intriguing. Not quite a burlesque, 'Troilus and Cressida''s lurches in tone, from farce to historical drama to romance to tragedy, and its blurring of these modes, explains why generations of critics and audiences have found it so unsatisfying, and why today it can seem so modern. Its disenchanted tone, its interest in the baser human instincts underlying (classical) heroism look forward to such 20th century works as Giraudoux's 'The Trojan War Will Not Take Place' or Terry Jones' 'Chaucer's Knight'; the aristocratic ideals of Love and War, inextricably linked in this play, are debased by the merchant-class language of exchange, trade, food, possesion - the passionate affair at its centre is organised by the man who gave his name to pimps, Pandarus, and is more concerned with immediate sexual gratification than anything transcendental. The Siege of Troy sequences are full of the elaborately formal rhetoric we expect from Shakespeare's history plays, but well-wrought diplomacy masks ignoble trickery; the great heroes Ajax and Achilles are petulant egotists, the latter preferring the company of his catamite to combat; the actual war sequences, when they finally come, are a breathless farce of exits and entrances. There are a lot of words in this play, but very few deeds.

Paris, Prince of Troy, has abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. Led by the latter's brother Agamemnon, and his Machiavellian advisors Ulysses and Nestor, the Greeks besiege Troy, demanding the return of Helen. However, Achilles' dissatisfaction at the generals' endless politicking has spread discontent in the ranks. Within Troy, war takes a distinct second place to matters of the heart. While Paris wallows in luxury with his prize, his youngest brother Troilus uses Pandarus as a go-between to arrange a night of love with his niece, Cressida. When one of the Trojan leaders is taken prisoner by the Greeks, the ransom price is Cressida.

There is only one character in 'Troilus' who can be said to be at all noble and not self-interested, the eldest Trojan prince Hector, who, despite his odd interpreation of the quality 'honour', detests a meaningless war, and tries to spare as many of his enemies' lives as he can. He is clearly an anachronism, however, and his ignoble slaughter at the hands of a brutal gang suggests what price chivalry. Perhaps the most recognisable character is Thirsitis, the most savagely cynical of his great Fools. Imagine Falstaff without the redeeming lovability - he divests heroes and events of their false values, satirises motivations, abuses his dim-witted 'betters' and tries to preserve his life at any cost. Written in between 'Hamlet' and 'All's Well That Ends Well', 'Troilus' bears all the marks of Shakespeare's mid-period: the contrapuntal structure, the dense figures, the audacious neologisms, and the intitially deferred, accelerated action. If some of the diplomacy scenes are too efective in their parodic pastiche of classical rhetoric, and slow things down, Act 5 is an amazing dramatic rush, crowning the play's disenchantment with love (with an extraordinarily creepy three-way spaying of an infidelity) and war.

The New Penguin Shakespeare is the most accessible and user-friendly edition for students and the general reader (although it does need updating). Unlike the Oxford or Arden series, which offer unwieldy introductions (yawning with irrelevant conjecture about dates and sources) and unusable notes (clotted with tedious pedantry more concerned with fighting previous commentators than elucidating Shakespeare), the Penguin's format offers a clear Introduction dealing with the play and its contexts, an appendix 'An Account of the Text', and functional endnotes that gloss unfamiliar words and difficult passages. The Introduction is untainted by fashions in Critical Theory, but is particularly good at explaining the role of Time ('When time is old and hath forgot itself...And blind oblivion swallowed cities up'), the shifting structure, the multiple viewpoints in presenting characters, and Shakespeare's use of different literary and linguistic registers.

Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespear`s many romances, and, like most of his romances, is a tragedy. Since time immemorial, Shakespears` works have been used as plays, literature and (least often) just casual reading. While Troilus and Cressida is one of the less known plays, it is no less a good one. It is based in Troy(as the name might imply)during the much renowned Trojan War. The valiant Troilus, son of the Trojan king is enamoured of Cressida, also of Troy. Meanwhile, the Greek hosts have laid siege to the city, and the warrior Achilles refuses to fight, encouraging further interaction between the two sides. Cressida, however, is the daughter of a Greek sympathizer(if that is the correct word)and may not be able to honour her commitment to the Trojan prince...

I think this is one os Shakespeare's most underrated plays, probably because of all the uncouth characters. Based on Chaucer's rendition of the story, T and C are Trojan lovers, and she is then traded to the Greeks in exchange for captive soldiers. Aside from this, the women of Troy are wanton and lustful, and the men are prowess driven. If you can deal with this, you will really enjoy Shakespeare's ability to wrap this into all kinds of twists and turns. It delivers a mixture of satire, comedy, romance, tragedy, and a semi-historical (in that people at the time probably believed the Trojan War really happened). Interestingly, this mixture of laughs and tragedy is reminiscent of war novels I have read about Vietnam. The romantic dimensions give this play its edge, and somehow WS manages to make it plausible in spite of all the killing and deceit going on at the same time.

I note that the first reviewer is Daniel Byrd, a colleague that Dr Cox works with at times.

I cannot agree with Dr Byrd's view. I found this book to be impossible to read. It is highly mathematical, poorly laid out, written in a very heavy, formal style and focuses entirely on human health risk, which is not apparent from the book title.

I also know that some of the analyses that were performed in the book, and models Dr Cox created, have turned out to be extremely dubious, if not simply wrong.

I am afraid that I cannot recommend this book at all.

The book covers all essential stages of quantitative risk analysis, from identifying risk sources to calculating rational decisions under risk. Though it announces health risks as its main target, the methods and techniques are equally applicable to other areas, e.g. finance and engineering.

The book is well written using a clear and rigorous style. However, it is not an easy-reading. A reader is supposed to be closely familiar with basic concepts of calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics, and differential equations. Reading the book with pen and paper would bring much more than just glancing through. The resulting benefits worth these efforts.

The book is best for deep studying of risk analysis, and as a handbook for skilled professionals. I would also recommend it to everyone wishing to gain clear understanding of quantitative decision-making under risk.

This book is essential to all serious users of risk assessment and management. It is accessible, well written and has many examples that illustrate the issues discussed. Dr. Cox's book spans from cancer model to decision and game theory. Its broad coverage and depth make the book an essential companion to those who must account for uncertainty and variability when assessing the potential outcomes of alternative choices. Because the book consider the single decision makers, as well as situations characterized by several decisionmakers, it is of much importance to current debates having to do with uncertain causation in health and environmental decisionmaking. I now look forward to a text on ecological risk assessment by this Author because this area of risk assessment requires a unifying framework, much like he has done for human health.

The activites in this book are enjoyable for children to perform, but there is very little science taught.

My daughter very much enjoys performing the activities listed, however, I need to heavily supplement the material and description given in order to provide any scientific explaination of what she is doing. Additionally, the scientific method is completely missing from the 'experiments.' The simple activites are prsented in a "do it and observe" form, with no specific idea or result which is tested by the activity.

A good book for entertaining activities, but not for teaching science.

I have got both these books (The first one being 365 Simple Science Experiments with everyday materials) for my kids (aged 8-12) and they find the experiments extremely fun and interesting because they don't need much adult intervention when trying them out , it helped them at school by providing them with a good background of practical science; the kind you encounter everyday but take for granted. It is written for kids, not for adults who then have to explain it to kids. The book covers many scientific concepts to do with physics, time, nature and space.

I loved it! The experiments are so much fun! They were interesting and fascinating! A *Must* for any scientific youngster.

Unfortunately I wasn't really keen on this title. I found the time setting the most interesting factor. The only other title I have read by Mr. Price is The Alamut Ambush & this was average fare. The 44 Vintage unfortunately was not a good one. Below average for it's type.

Although this book was the 6th in this series, it actually predates the preceeding books in timeframe. The introduction of the key series characters of Dr. Audley & Col. (then Cpl) Butler during the final push of WWII is great for the reader who already has some familiarity with other titles, but the new reader may find it a less than compelling read. Try one of the other books, then come back to this one and you'll appreciate the depth of character and involved plot.

Introduces Audley and Butler, key figures who appear in most later Anthony Price cold war novels of intellectual espionage. From the nearly one-sided armor warfare in the bocage of Normandy through the south of France, a fast moving boo

While this book is good, it is a typical action James Bond wannabe. it has badly developed characters and a textbook action ending.

You need to read Kill and Tell first by Linda Howard, but this book can stand on it's own. I couldn't put the book down. It is fantastic. John Medina is a charter you are left wondering about from Kill and tell, but In All The Queens Men you find him. You grow to love him and find him very sexy and you hope that Neima is a very interesting Charter. Neima and her husband Dallas are on a unsantioned mission for the CIA. when Dallas is killed. The story moves quickly. I would read this book again and I will as soon as I can get the book Kill and Tell back from my mother and read that one again first. This book is very good you come to fall in love with the charters and you are cheering for them. I am a real Linda Howard fan. I love most all of what she has written. I think she is a very good author.

I don't know what the previous reviewer was reviewing, it was not Evelyn Anthony's classic novel about Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers. Anthony is a well established name in historical fiction, and this book is one I read many years ago. I was fascinated by the richness of the story of Elizabeth as Queen and as woman, and her relationships with the great names of her day,who loved, hated, supported, and conspired against her. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a good Elizabeth I novel.

This history of Rock and Roll comes from Rolling Stone, one of the biggest and longest-lasting names in Rock reporting and coverage. It is truly a mixed bag, ranging anywhere from great historical content to outright howlers.

First, the book does an excellent job of covering the entirety of rock history and drawing out its influences and evolutions. It does a wonderful job of covering the different local scenes and how they were integrated in with the whole of rock music. Whole chapters are generally rewarded to the most influential bands, and not just those that sold more album.

However, the book suffers a number of strong drawbacks. First, as many pointed out, the book is clearly slanted toward the Rolling Stone perspective. Artists such as Billy Joel, who have not had good relations with the magazine, have been omitted. Several others, such as Bob Seger, were also given no treatment. There is also a bit of redundent content, such as giving the Beatles two whole chapters and then devoting a third (British Invasion) to a primarily Beatles-related topic. Also, there are separate chapters on Motown and Stevie Wonder.

Secondly, the book is often skewed toward the "pop" scene when it comments on more current acts. Rolling Stone has been getting even worse about this in its magazine. One particular example that stands out is in the heavy metal section. My edition was published in 1991 and the writer heaps load and loads of praise upon such hair-metal acts as Motley Crue, Poison, Ratt and Warrant. Other, more talented but less popular metal acts, such as Metallica, are put down and summarily dismissed. However, we all know that if this were to have been written 5 years later, Rolling Stone would be worshipping Metallica and praising them for destroying such hair-bands. RS makes the mistake of "going with the flow" one too many times.

Overall - nice book, but with some obvious problems.

Rolling Stone has been around reporting on rock music for nearly 35 years. That longevity only earns them stripes, but not exactly the monker of expert.

RS editors - in all fairness like most journalists - have an agenda, and accuracy and fairness in rock isn't exactly one of them. One writer (below) asked why Billy Joel was snubbed. Simple; RS and Joel have publically feuded for years so as far as RS is concerned, one of rock's greatest acts (and an inductee to the Rock Hall of Fame) doesn't exist. In the rock world according to Jann Wenner, there is no greater act in rock history than the Rolling Stones. They're certainly a bellweather act in rock history, but not "the greatest"...but that's how RS sees it, and apparently so should history.

So take what they say with a grain of salt, enjoy it for what it is (their fave-raves, as valid as the Listmania right here on Amazon) - cuz after all, it's only rock and roll.

I am fond of The Rolling Stone series. This is history of Most important artists, and for me every important for the rock&roll music can be found in this book. (And much more than I expected at this low price). I am big music fan and this is real thing for my library. Strongly recommended.

I don't know about you, but a mystery is supposed to mystify. Part of the fun is not knowing "Whodunit" until close to the end of the story (the closer, the better).

In my opinion, if the writer can't prevent us from guessing who the guilty one is until close to the end, then he/she has failed in the foremost goal of a mystery novelist.

In this novel, I figured out the "key" to the story (and therefore whodunit) less than half-way through. Since I wanted to be surprised--fooled even--I kept hoping I was wrong.

I wasn't.

If this is a typical Rendell, I may not read any of her others.

When plain, unattractive Rhoda Comfrey is found stabbed to death in a field outside Kingsmarkham, it's business as usual for Chief Inspector Wexford and his hilariously prudish sidekick, Burden. This convoluted case is even more frustrating than usual, however; virtually no one, aside from an indifferent relative, seems to remember the victim, and Wexford finds himself going around in circles in his desperate search for even the slightest of leads. His only clue is a man named Grenville West, who proves as elusive and enigmatic as Rhoda Comfrey herself.

The most intriguing mystery here, aside from whodunit, is the truth about Rhoda Comfrey's double life. Wexford arrives at his solution through the same combination of wit, intuition, and instinct (as opposed to straightforward, by-the-book detection) he displays in all his cases. True to form, Ruth Rendell delivers a positively stunning twist at the end, and of course, it caught me totally off guard. Unfortunately, the surprise revelation has practically zero emotional resonance. It's easy to admire Rendell's typically first-rate plotting, but her manipulations here lack the psychological dimension of her best work. And say what you will, but I didn't buy the killer's motive for a minute. A corpse should have a reason for being a corpse; even Agatha Christie understood that.

I almost always love Rendell's spare, understated prose, but for some reason, this book is neither as sharply written nor as witty as it should be. There's surprisingly little of the narrative tension and momentum so evident in SHAKE HANDS FOREVER (still, for my money, the best Inspector Wexford mystery). Instead, A SLEEPING LIFE has the same slack pace and implausible character motivation so evident in SOME LIE AND SOME DIE (still, for my money, the worst Inspector Wexford mystery).

Not a bad book--Rendell is practically incapable of that--but far from being the great one it should have been.

Rendell is a difficult writer to pin down; while, working as she does within the mystery/crime genre, her books inhabit different areas of that particular literary country. The Wexford series has always been best classified as police procedural, while the othe books are more psychological, plotted less closely along conventional crime novel lines. Within the Wexford series, Rendell has of late been injecting a lot of social commentary into her books and the plotting - Rendell fans must admit that her puzzles are easier to figure out than most - has fallen off. Her best crafted Wexford mysteries (as opposed to "novels" or "literature," which came a bit later) were from the 1970s (here, 1978). Rendell's best, most prominent characteristics are all here; the emphasis on psychological makeup and motive, the ability to draw characters and relationships with only a few lines of dialogue or interior monologue, the presence of details that few other writers put to such good use in delineating said characters, the use of dead ends, mistakes, and wrong assumptions and guesses by Wexford in the exposition. While Rendell is outstanding at what she does, not all crime fiction fans like her stuff. One would do worse than to begin here to find out where you stand. If you like this, moving on to other Wexford books, or the darker, non-series classics like "A Dark-Adapted Eye" is only a small step. If not, forget it.

Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana are two high powered and intense lawyers who have had a rocky relationship over the years. They take a break from their busy schedules to spend a few days in a beautiful inn on a secluded island in the Florida Keys. This is the setting for Barbara Parker's latest suspense novel, "Suspicion of Madness."

Connor and Quintana are guests at a place called The Buttonwood Inn. The proprietors of the inn, Martin and Teri Greenwald, have invited Gail and Anthony to be their guests in return for Anthony's legal assistance. Teri has a son, Billy, from a former marriage, and her son is a suspect in a murder case. The Greenwalds are hoping that Anthony can help prove Billy's innocence.

Gail and Anthony meet an assortment of odd characters during this trip. They include Martin's overbearing sister, Lois, a strange former actress named Joan Sinclair, who acts like Gloria Swanson from "Sunset Boulevard," a disreputable and conniving attorney, and a creepy handyman. All of these people are together on this isolated island when a ferocious storm hits. Naturally, dead bodies begin to pile up and it soon becomes apparent that a madman is on the loose.

Parker's usual crisp writing style is nowhere in sight this time around. At almost 370 pages, the book meanders along its slow path, and very little happens during large portions of the novel. The dialogue is forced and unconvincing and the plot is contrived and silly. Even the chemistry between Connor and Quintana cannot save "Suspicion of Madness" from being a below average and rather dull thriller.

of this particular episode in the ongoing series of Connor/Quintana mysteries by Barbara Parker. True to form, Parker keeps the action localized to Florida -- this time by setting her crime/investigation in the Florida Keys. I'm not sure why Anthony and Gail thought they'd be able to have a romantic getaway given what Anthony knew about his prospective client; the stepson of a wealthy hotel owner that Anthony has defended before. This time, the client, Billy Fadden, has graduated from suspected arson to murder. There isn't a lot of evidence against Billy, but he has confessed to the murder of a young lady he'd been romantically involved with.

Parker tries to keep the reader guessing with a variety of potential suspects, but too many of them have "over the top" personalities. There's an aging film star (Sunset Boulevard) holed up in a decrepit mansion, a strange and moody handyman, the sister of the hotel owner - who fantasizes a love life with a local real estate lawyer (stalking him), etc., etc. There's a storm in the keys, and the result is that we get a lot of descriptions of going back and forth from the hotel to the various places that Anthony & Gail are investigating the crime (I guess that's to get a sense of how difficult it can be to get around in the Keys).

We also get the ongoing debate about whether Gail and Anthony will marry -- this time they both fret endlessly about getting the marriage license. As she did in her last book, Parker seems to be taking the tack of letting Gail's investigative talents outweigh Anthony's own, because of his tendency to jump to conclusions, and minimize small clues. This is one more schism she is building in the relationship; not sure it is a good one.

All in all, getting through the book was kind of a labor of love; even the climax that unmasks the identity of the real killer was way over the top for me. I enjoy the series and will continue with it, but this was definitely a setback in terms of how far afield Parker was willing to go to get a change of pace. Anthony and Gail belong in courtrooms, or with legal puzzles that are more realistic to the types of law they practice.

I look forward to each book in the Connor/ Quintana series by Barbara Parker and I'm never disappointed. In this episode Anthony Quintana is called upon once again by the wealthy parents of a former client, Billy Fadden, who has become the primary suspect in the gruesome death of an employee at the posh Florida Keys resort that they own. When Quintana arrives at the resort with Gail Connors his fiance and sometimes cohort, they learn that Billy has attempted suicide after confessing to the police. The lovers weekend they had planned is quickly disappearing while suspects are just as quickly multiplying. Parker masterfully establishes each charachter as a plausible suspect with both motive and opportunity. Connor and Quintana investigate an aging horror film star, a stuttering handyman, a lovelorn sister, the ne'er do well father, two suspicious attorneys and Billy. Despite the obstacles in their path the relationship between Gail and Anthony continues to sizzle as they try to solve the mystery and maybe tie the knot. The tension and intrigue never flag as this tale races to its climax. My only regret is that I finished it too quickly and have too long to wait for the next book.