P.I. Rosco Polycrates is marrying crossword editor Belle Graham. Before their marriage, a homeless man is found dead with a crossword puzzle under him. He was hit in the head with a stone and has dog food in his pocket. The police think he had turned to eating dog food. Rosco knows him and that he had a puppy.

Sara, a matriarch in the community, asks Rosco to begin looking for the puppy. Then a homeless woman is found dead also with a crossword puzzle under her. They try to find the connection between the two.

Rosco goes missing. Belle starts receiving anonymous crossword puzzles with clues. Lieutenant Al Lever, Rosco's former partner, tries to keep Belle safe and find Rosco. But, Belle keeps alluding him as she is trying to follow the clues and find Rosco herself. She is constantly reminded to not include the police. There are many twists before you get to the end.

This is a very enjoyable series. I enjoy trying to complete the crosswords even though I am not very good at them. There are always clues in them. I like when Belle tries to complete the crosswords and gives some of the crossword answers in the book.

The characters are very believable and well developed. Rosco is believable as a P.I. He used to be a detective so he has connections in the police department. I like the character Carlyle who is the medical examiner. He and Rosco do not get along but he likes Belle.

Recently we vacationed in New England so I like books set in New England. I feel the plot is very well developed and the setting is very realistic.

I highly recommend this book and the whole series.

Although her father, renowned anthropologist Theodore A. Graham, didn't show up for his daughter's wedding to P.I. Rosco Polycrates, he is on his way to visit them now. When Belle arrives at the Newcastle, Massachusetts train station her father is nowhere to be found. It is only later that she learns he died aboard the train apparently of a heart attack.

When she goes down to Florida to close down her father's condo, she meets an assistant she never knew he had. That assistant is later killed in a hit and run accident but by that time Belle and Roscoe think the deaths were planned hits. There are discrepancies in Theodore's records, a notebook of his has gone missing, and somebody in Mexico is sending them crossword puzzles that imply the professor and his assistant were murdered.

A Nero Blanc mystery is always fun to read because of the two protagonists who are so much in love that they leave the audience feeling clean and refreshed. The story line itself is complex, entertaining and thoroughly thought-provoking, a mystery lover's delight as well as a crossword puzzle fan's pleasure. This book, in fact this series, is highly recommended.

Harriet Klausner

Once again Richard Wheeler thrusts us into the turbulant world of Mountain man, Barnaby Skye and his two Indian wives, Victoria and Mary only this time the story takes a more familiar twist. All's not well in the Skye household and change for the worse and better is afoot.
Victoria has had enough and leaves the morose Skye and like the other books in this series that's only the beginning of an epic adventure.
There's enough action and adventure for any man while offering something substantial for the ladies as well. This book's about salvaging their lives and expectations and finding some scarred redemption in the hard fought process.
Wheeler tells a good story. You won't be disappointed.

Richard Wheeler, who has created some of the most memorable characters in all the literature of the American West, has outdone himself--and everybody else--with Barnaby Skye, Rocky Mountain trapper, guide and adventurer and late of His Majesty's Royal Navy. In Skye, Wheeler has outdone Frederick Manfred and Vardis Fisher and giving us a mountain man to remember. There are a dozen novels in the Skye series--beginning with SUN RIVER in 1989--so the reader who has yet to discover this Horatio Hornblower of the early West has an enviable treat in store. And, thankfully, DARK PASSAGE is not the last in the series.

Within this book's 331 pages are the first three of five novels in H.E. Bates' "Pop Larkin" series: The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, and When the Green Woods Laugh. For anyone looking for a light, sunny, happy, warm-hearted, gently-humourous book, I just cannot recommend this one highly enough. In fact, it's one of the few books that can easily be read and reread again.

The novels are set in rural England of the 1950s and centre around Pop and Ma Larkin (actually they're not married, but somehow it just never seems to matter) and their brood of six (make that seven) children. The world in which they live can only be described as a pastoral paradise. Although we get an inkling that the Larkin's farm is, in reality, rather like a junkyard, the novels are a testament to that old saying that life is 90% attitute and 10% circumstance. We see the farm and its surroundings and inhabitants largely through Pop's rose-coloured perspective. As a result, we escape into a world of fragrant golden buttercups and bluebells, into fields of plump, ripe strawberries, and into a kitchen that endlessly emits the heavenly, mouthwatering aromas of Ma's rich, delectable country meals.

Pop is quite a character, and his sunny, carefree disposition and overwhelming generosity, together with his acute focus on the sensory delights of his surroundings, imbue the book with a sense of warmth and beauty that one seldom finds in novels. Pop and Ma take life as they find it and people as they find them, and they never seem to let anything rattle them. Though it's never spelled out, one gets the feeling that life is simply too short a journey to spend it focussing on the bumps one incurs along the way.

I discovered this lovely series through watching the wonderful dramatisation starring David Jason (as Sidney "Pop" Larkin) and Catherine Zeta Jones (as his daughter Mariette), which I also highly recommend. Whether or not you've seen the dramatisation, if you're looking for a cheery, thoroughly relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable read, you'll enjoy this sweet book. In short, it's absolutely "perfick"!

Within this book's 331 pages are the first three of five novels in H.E. Bates' "Pop Larkin" series: The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, and When the Green Woods Laugh. For anyone looking for a light, sunny, happy, warm-hearted, gently-humourous book, I just cannot recommend this one highly enough. In fact, it's one of the few books that can easily be read and reread again.

The novels are set in rural England of the 1950s and centre around Pop and Ma Larkin (actually they're not married, but somehow it just never seems to matter) and their brood of six (make that seven) children. The world in which they live can only be described as a pastoral paradise. Although we get an inkling that the Larkin's farm is, in reality, rather like a junkyard, the novels are a testament to that old saying that life is 90% attitute and 10% circumstance. We see the farm and its surroundings and inhabitants largely through Pop's rose-coloured perspective. As a result, we escape into a world of fragrant golden buttercups and bluebells, into fields of plump, ripe strawberries, and into a kitchen that endlessly emits the heavenly, mouthwatering aromas of Ma's rich and flavourful country meals.

Pop is quite a character, and his sunny, carefree disposition and overwhelming generosity, together with his acute focus on the sensory delights of his surroundings, imbue the book with a sense of warmth and beauty that one seldom finds in novels. Pop and Ma (who, by the way, is tremendously overweight) take life as they find it and people as they find them, and they never seem to let anything rattle them. Though it's never spelled out, one gets the feeling that life is simply too short a journey to spend it focussing on the bumps one incurs along the way.

I discovered this lovely series through watching the wonderful dramatisation starring David Jason (as Sidney "Pop" Larkin) and Catherine Zeta Jones (as his daughter Mariette), which I also highly recommend (and which is available, at the time of writing, on video and DVD). Whether or not you've seen the dramatisation, if you're looking for a cheery, thoroughly relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable read, you'll enjoy this sweet book. It's well worth ferretting out a copy. In short, it's absolutely "perfick"!

P.I. Harry Stoner is a fine addition to the literary tradition of Phillip Marlowe, Travis McGee and Lew Archer. He inhabits the street of Cincinnati like a second skin. This story is one of the better ones in the series and it is also one of the darker ones. Stoner's adventures are nevr pretty, but they are well worth the ride for fans of P.I. fiction.

Jonathin Valin is one of the legitimate heirs of Ross MacDonald and detective Harry Stoner is very much in the mold of Lew Archer. Stoner rides the streets on Cincinnati in his Pinto, looking for runaways, armed with nothing but his righteous indignation and his Colt Gold Cup revolver.

Harry's been hired by Mildred Segal to find her 14 year old daughter, Robbie, who has run away from their placid suburban home. Harry, who grew up in just such a place, knows all too well why kids flee Eastlawn Drive & mothers like Mildred. But then, while looking for Robbie's boyfriend Booby Caldwell, he finds the boy's corpse & suddenly, Robbie's disappearance looks more ominous.

He backtracks the kids to a local guitar god/guru named Theo Clinger and a degenerate socialite, Irene Croft. But Croft is protected by a gangster, albeit a hyper-polite one, and Clinger has a Manson family style farm in Kentucky with armed guards. So getting Robbie back is not going to be easy.

Valin hits all the right notes here & with similes like this one, the farm was "a fenced in field with a lumpy dirt access road cutting through it like a keloid scar", you know you're in the hands of a pro. Personally, I believe that this is the best of the modern private eye series.

GRADE: A

Allana was my high school journalism teacher when she taught at Fort Worth Paschal High School in 1971 so I think you ought to buy several copies of this book.

One of those rare books that is a good mystery and a good novel. Not a 'cozy' but basically traditional. Reminds me of Sue Grafton. Complex characters, fascinating background (Te-Mex border)but still a good read. Ending a bit weird. My first exposure to this author, and I will definitely read the others in this series.

I have read all four Jack Prester mystery books You feel like you are right in the park with him.

Jack Prestor, National Parks Special Agent, is sent to Death Valley to investigate the murder of an accountant. The accountant had been investigating the disappearance of funds from the park. Ev Brant is sent in to continue the investigation where the accountant left off. Before they've even been there 24 hours, another body is found buried at the sceen of the murder. With an attacker trying to stop them from leaving the valley alive, they continue investigating, hoping to find the killer before he or she gets them. To make matters worse, a group of aging Hell's Angles have taken over the park, and Jack is caught in the crossfire between the park rangers and the bikers. It seems that the park will errupt in violence before Jack can even solve his first mystery. This is a good mystery that kept me guessing until the last minute. The clues and red herrings are everywhere. Not to give anything away, but I didn't even interrpret all the clues correctly. Yet, everything fit together perfectly in the end. I highly recommend this exelent book.

In THE DETECTIVE IS DEAD, Bill James writes again of the thinline between cop and criminal. When a judge lets two killers walkfree, Ives decides the police need to take matters into his ownhands. The results aren't pretty although they are occasionallyhysterically funny and always disturbing.

Mark Lane, the chief, isnoble, believes in doing right, and is a figure of fun for his deputyIves. The criminals believe Ives is dirty--that he is making moneyfrom the very drug lords they are seeking to become--and the reader isnever quite sure if they are right. Harpur is more practical,interested in solving crimes and locking up criminals but lackingeither Lane's nobility or Ives' brutal thrust.

This is policeprocedural with a twist. There is never any doubt about thecriminal--there are plenty of those and much of the story is told fromtheir point of view. Some of them will succeed in their dreams ofbecoming the next drug lord, others will fall. Ives knows he can'tarrest them all and so, by default, becomes something of akingmaker. Watching him work, interact with Lane, Harpur, and thecriminals, makes the novel fascinating.

Each of the Harpur and Ivesmysteries can be read independently without losing much although theydo form a continuous and enjoyable series.

A police procedural from the master of the genre. Hard edged narrative, terse dialogue. Bleak, cynical plot and characters expressed in an almost poetic style. The story is compelling and the characters unforgettable.

If you have only read the first three of the series you must keep going. This book continues the saga of Jim, Brian,Daffyd, Giles, Secoh, Carolinus and more. The ending of this book over takes all the others in the series. If you can't find this book here keep looking becuase it is well worth it. This has the only ending in which it is possible to guess and makes realistic sense. This is the one book that really involves every charater in a major role and has a most impressive ending. Read this book if you liked any of the other at all.

This Book I felt was one of the best books'. Before I tell You about about how I felt how the book was, I would first like to give you a breif Summary of this book. It is about This person by the name of Sir James Eckert, Baron de bois de Malencontri et Riverroak. In this book It was About these seaserpents who wanted two kill the Dragons on england ( Also Sir James Who Has The Power to turn into a dragon at the wave of a hand ). These Searpents were not all that were in this book, No there Was Things like a giant Squid Who wanted to take controle of all the magickians in this world, And a BIG Freindly Seadevil by the name of Rrrnlf. Anyway These magickians were all over the world but one of the most renoun and best loved as a freind by jim is Carolinus. Carolinus Is one of three AAA+ Magickians in this magical domain. He is jim's mentour and advisor as a junior magickian. Now enough about the book before I tell you everything ( I geuss you will have to just read the book for yourself!!!) This book ( One of seven in a series ) is to me one of the best books that I have ever read. It contains More Magickians,Dragons,Kinghts in armour and a 1000 things Than any other book that you have ever read. It has a very intriging plot to this story. What I find is that gordan trie to enter in a few jokes here and there that I believe help perkin up a good book. Thats all that I have to say, and if your intreseted in these types of books here are the names of them. 1. The dragon and the George 2. The dragon Knight 3. The dragon on the boarder 4. The dragon at war 5. The dragon, the earl, and the troll 6. The dragon and The djjin( last word might be wrong!) 7. The dragon And the Gnarly King. These fine books you can find Right here on Amazon.com

"Dreadful Lemon Sky," MacDonald's 13th in the Travis McGee series, is vintage McGee. I would put it right up there with the best of them, "Green Ripper" and "Bright Orange Shroud." It boggles my mind that MacDonald could write the abominable loser "Turquoise Lament" in 1973, and turn around and write this sparkling gem in 1974.

Carrie, a blast from the past, pays McGee a surprise visit aboard the Busted Flush with a suitcase full of suspicious money. She asks him to keep it safe for her, keep a $10,000 "fee," and if she does not return for it in two weeks, send it to her sister. Two weeks later and no Carrie; McGee goes out to earn his fee. Carrie has died in a car "accident." McGee mounts his white horse and vows vengeance for the lady. He finds drugs, danger, more action than even he bargained for, and meets a load of fascinating (if not righteous) characters. He discovers an all too happy singles only apartment complex apparently fueled by marijuana and presided over by a Big Daddy who is the benevolent landlord. A mysterious newly widowed Cindy Birdsong plays his Bond girl role, if somewhat diffidently. The locale is all Florida, purely Florida.

"Dreadful Lemon Sky" is superbly plotted with a surprising number of twists and turns for a MacDonald book. The character vignettes are sharp and right on the money. This is a Travis McGee not to be missed.

This happened to be the first novel of the Travis McGee series I read, back in the 80's, and I was instantly hooked. I grew up in Florida, and McDonald, as every reader familiar with Florida notices, knew the state intimately and paints that strange place with a master's touch. Travis McGee is probably the most perfectly realized character in series fiction, but what really grabbed me about this novel was the ultra-frightening villain. In fact, I think McDonald's greatest talent was the invention and development of his horrifying bad guys.

All of Donachie's books are great! They are totally exiting and the main characters are rounded and charming. I always keep up all night to finish them. I have one criticism, however:What s really lacking is a map of a ship or a naval glossary because it is frustrating to have to skip over all the naval descriptions because you cannot understand them without background knowledge.

An excellent story , carrying on with the two main characters written in David's earlier books. I don't understand why this author is not so widely read or freely avaiable from WH Smith etc. David, hopefully writes one book per year, I am eagerly awaiting his next puiblication

I would recommend any of his books, The Devils Own Luck, The Drying Trade, both these books I picked up as a twin set for the ridiculous price of £2.99, that started the journey off, followed by A Hanging Matter, a Scent of Betrayal and his last book, A Bag Of Bones. As an ex sailor, it brought back a lot of memories about where our great naval traditions sprung from and how everyday usage of words came into the English language from sailors.

It is also a good " detective " story leaving you guessing right up to the conclusion. Well done David, BUT PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU ARE WRITING AGAIN