Sea Lord and Killer's Wake are one and the same book published under two diferent titles. Great book but no need to buy both.

Now in its second revision, That Day: Searching The Past To Unveil The Future Day Of The Lord by Norma Cain Peters is an iconoclastic counter to the traditional view in Christian literature of the pre-tribulation rapture. Exhorting readers to look more closely at the word of God, beware God's anger, and shun the jeering lures of Satan, That Day is a profound, and highly recommended theological challenge to the sleepy, status quo contentment of most Christian communities today with respect to the prophesied End Times events.

Dorothy Sayers, a.k.a. Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming, one of the first women to ever be granted a degree from Oxford University, created one of the leading figures in, and indeed in so doing helped to create the genre of, the British mystery novels. Lord Peter Wimsey, an elegant, refined London-based aristocrat with a taste for books and a penchant for the piano, is again here the leading figure, in Unnatural Death, also published as The Dawson Pedigree.

Wimsey is an old Etonian, Balliol Oxford (of course), served with distinction in His Majesty's forces during the War (this book having been written in 1927, I shall leave it to your good services to deduce which War), who resides both town and country somewhat fashionably, and takes great pride in the ancient family history (by the time one gets to be the fifteenth Duke of anything, the family can be easily considered ancient). Wimsey has a vocation as criminologist, not out of necessity, surely, and not by training either (for such training did not formally exist, but, as an Oxford Arts man, he was trained for most anything intellectual, or at least, that is what an Oxford Arts man would tell you). An interesting addition to the beginning of the book is a short biographical sketch of the fictional Wimsey by his equally-fictional uncle.

All of this, of course, is but preamble to the latest mystery to come calling upon Lord Wimsey. There are the requisite features: a dead woman, Agatha Dawson, wealthy and having left a will that might not be a will, but rather a sham (a delirious woman whose nurse insists that there was no possible way of having made a will during the last month, yet oddly there is a document, complete with a witness who claims that dear old Agatha Dawson wanted nothing to do with the signing -- ah, the plot thickens here).

Of course, to most of the world, Wimsey is, well, following a whimsey of his own. The woman was after all elderly and in poor health; surely his investigations are misplaced. The doctor (not the one who tended Miss Dawson's death, to be sure, but an earlier doctor, suspicious of Dawson's sole heir, her niece) was accused of having blackened the name of Miss Whittaker, the niece, unnecessarily, particularly as no evidence of mischief had been uncovered. Wimsey with the assistance of Inspector Parker are able to rectify the situation vis-a-vis the doctor, but there is still the mystery.

Then, more death. This time the maid. To lose one woman may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two women... (well, you can fill in the rest yourself).

Of course I won't spoil it for you; perhaps my tag-team reviewers will do that for you, but I sincerely hope not. Suffice it to say, Wimsey proves himself a consummate actor in which the truth comes out (in London, and in style!).

One of the glories of Sayers work is the intricacies of her plots. She tends to get a huge number of people involved (the number of people who seemed to have trouped through the ill woman's bedchamber is in itself surprising, given the era) each with subplots and agenda that nonetheless get neatly resolved in the end. Sayers' development of character (even of the already dead ones!) is done with style and subtlety; while Wimsey is developed over several novels, one doesn't feel him a stranger by reading this one alone. The other characters fit their parts admirably (had Sayers not been a writer, she may well have made a good career as a casting director in Hollywood), in physical and personality attributes.

Her descriptions of the milieu, both in town (London) and in the country (the village and surroundings, in this case, of Hampshire, are interesting reading. Sayers is very much the cosmopolitan, and somewhat condescending toward the countryfolk. However, that is not a heavy element, and perhaps can be written off to her attempt to make Wimsey even more the worldly character he turns out to be over the course of her novels.

In all, an excellent read, a great diversion, and well worth musing over while sipping tea on a Regency-style sofa in one's dressing gown.

The Visual Culture Of Wales: Imaging The Nation is a superb history of the art of Wales presented by the knowledgeable art historian Peter Lord. The identification of Welsh nationhood is inseparably intertwined with the rise of an identifiable visual culture beginning with the emergence of portraiture in the Tudor period, through the landscape movement of the 18th Century, the artisan portrait painting and the national movement in art of the 19th Century, to the modernism of the 20th Century. Lord analysis the interaction of private patronage and international aesthetic fashions, defining Welshness through visual imagery. Also highly recommended is the companion volume, The Visual Culture Of Wales: Industrial Society which presents a comprehensive and informative survey of the imaging of the Welsh nation in the modern period. The Visual Culture Of Wales: Imaging The Nation is an impressive, scholarly, and seminal work of art history and also strongly recommended for student of Welsh history and culture.

"'Now I want you to fake an answer.'
'Fake one?'
'Right. We're in a roomful of people, say, and several of 'em probably know more...than you do, but you're being billed as the resident expert...so somebody asks you, uh, "Mr. Doyle, to what extent, in your opinion, was Wordsworth influenced by the philosophy expressed in the verse plays of, I don't know, Sir Arky Malarkey?" Quick!'
Doyle cocked an eyebrow. 'Well, it's a mistake, I think, to try to simplify Malarkey's work that way; several philosophies emerge as one traces the maturing of his thought...'"
- Darrow interviewing Doyle for a job in _The Anubis Gates_, by Tim Powers

For some strange reason the above passage comes to mind when reading _The Wimsey Family_, the 1976 work resulting from Giles' collected correspondence between himself, Dorothy L. Sayers (the famed chronicler of the amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey), and a few other parties who 'discovered' much hitherto unpublished history.

It all began in February 1936, when Scott-Giles - a heraldic expert bearing the title Fitzalan Pursuivant of Arms Extraordinary - wrote to Sayers about the Wimsey coat of arms, the blazon being included as part of the Who's Who-style boilerplate prefacing several editions of various Lord Peter novels. (A blazon is the formal description of a coat of arms, not necessarily including a picture; Scott-Giles has translated it into pictorial form in the book before you, along with other 'reproductions' of relevant pictorial bits of Wimsey family history.) Scott-Giles soberly noted that the elements of the blazon seemed to be of great antiquity, and the Saracen supporters of the shield hinted at a Crusading ancestor, so perhaps Sayers ought to clarify that the coat of arms is only by chance so expressive of Lord Peter's bent for investigation.

This led to a lively correspondence between Sayers, Scott-Giles, and a couple of Sayers' close friends, each 'discovering' more and more facts about the family history. Scott-Giles tended to concentrate on the medieval members of the family, and Sayers herself on the Tudor era. (Sayers' friend Helen Simpson, to whom we owe various drawings of Bredon Hall, the family seat, appears to have unearthed the 18th century marriage between the then-Lord St. George, heir to the title, and a hosier's widow, which caused something of a scandal.) They published various essays and even a pamphlet in the 1930s for interested parties, and some of the fruits of their joint efforts went into the final segment of _Busman's Honeymoon_ when Sayers adapted the original play, cowritten with one of her fellow 'researchers', into a novel.

Scott-Giles, assembling this material in the 1970s, notes that he has generally avoided discussing any Wimseys whose history hadn't 'turned up' in Sayers' lifetime. He did, however, address an apparent discrepancy raised by a fellow expert, noting that Lord Peter's older brother, being described as 'a peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland' in Sayers' canon implies that the title was created after 2 July 1800, but that the dukes (formerly earls) of Denver trace back far enough to properly be described as 'peers of England'. Scott-Giles deftly fielded this by digging up a Duke with an only daughter who married into a distant branch of the family after the heir-presumptive died at Waterloo.

And so on. Betwixt and between them, the original contributors managed to skate past several awkward points, among them the fact that for a considerable period in Tudor times, there weren't *any* dukes in England. In fact, exactly one duke - Denver - survived with his honours intact, having the family gift for withdrawing to the family seat and/or being stricken with diplomatic illness in a crisis.

Each part of the coat of arms turns out to have a story, starting with the original device of 3 silver plates on a black background. (A lord of Normandy, being eaten out of house and home by three hulking sons, presented them with three empty platters that they were henceforth to fill by their own efforts, with a strong hint that joining the Conqueror's army would be a capital idea.) How the device changed to three mice, with a domestic cat as crest, is a Crusading story illustrating the Wimsey strain of cleverness - the family for centuries has come in 2 flavors, mostly stolid like Lord Peter's elder brother Gerald, but occasionally breaking out in high-strung brilliance like Lord Peter himself.

All in all, if you like the bits of family history included in the Wimseys' visit to Duke's Denver at the end of _Busman's Honeymoon_, here's more of the same, in more detail. You could get some of it out of Barbara Reynolds' edited collections of Sayers' letters, but those volumes only contain Sayers' part of the correspondence, not the intervening material from Scott-Giles, Helen Simpson, and Muriel St-Clare Byrne (those last two names grace the dedication of _Busman's Honeymoon_, of course).

Dorothy L. Sayers remains the finest of the early 20th century mystery writers: unusually erudite, she earned one of the first english degrees awarded to a woman at Oxford University. Eclectic enough to have written a definitive translation of Dante's Divina Comedia, her detective novels are shot through with quotations from a who's who of english literature.

Sayers loved language and her characters display this love with brilliance. In this novel, her favorite sleuth, the curiously human Lord Peter Wimsey, engages himself for the first time with Harriet Vane, whom he discovers on trial for her life for murdering her lover. Convinced at once of her innocence, he sets out to prove it. A hung jury gives him the opportunity, and Sayer's great skill in plotting brings Miss Vane out of prison, but unfortunately for Wimsey not (yet) into his arms. He has, of course, become hopelessly besotted with her.

Some reviewers describe Harriet Vane as unlikable -- there's little douibt that Sayers put much of her own sometimes awkward personality into Harriet. However, she is a genuinely interesting and surprisingly real character, and without question an early feminist.

The book is entirely satisfying in its own right, with particularly telling passages about spiritualism (an obsession of the time). Sayers' Miss Climpson, another fascinating character, a spinster who aids Wimsey in his detective work and philanthropy, uses spiritualism to elicit the motive for the murder and ultimately the responsible party.

It is also noteworthy for introducing the series of novels about Wimsey and Harriet Vane that includes Have His Carcase (the least satisfying), Gaudy Night (the first great feminist novel of the 20th century) and Busman's Honeymoon. Jill Paton Walsh, no mean novelist herself, completed a Sayers manuscript much more recently for Thrones and Dominations, a competent additional chapter in Peter and Harriet's lives.

Sayers was an extraordinary woman and an extraordinary writer -- in Wimsey and Harriet Vane, she connected her ideal man (Wimsey) with her alter ego, (Harriet). Strong Poison is the start of a sequence of highly intelligent, beautifully written novels that happen to be mysteries.

Harriet Vane, an author of mysteries, is on trial for the murder of her former lover. Amateur detective and wealthy nobleman, Lord Peter Whimsey attends the trial and becomes convinced of that the defendant is innocent. During the trial Lord Peter becomes infatuated with Harriet, not because of her appearance but because of her intelligence, poise and personality. A hung jury gives Lord Peter time to search for the real killer.

Agatha Christie may have a slight edge over Dorothy Sayers in the creation of plots and puzzles, but Ms. Sayers has the edge in the use of language and in the creation of vivid characters. Lord Peter is a delightful detective. His romance with Harriet Vane continues through four wonderful books which should be read in sequence. If you like good writing, mystery and romance, you will love this series of books.

Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey books are diverting detective fiction, set in a 20s and 30s England in which an aristocrat who is much less silly than he sometimes pretends to be goes about solving well-thought-out literary puzzle mysteries. As the saying goes, if Lord Peter did not exist, we would have to invent him.

Strong Poison marks the introduction of Ms. Sayers' love interest for Lord Peter, Harriet Vane. Ms. Vane, a curious mix of 19th Century ideas and 20s era feminism, is a mystery writer (and, in this volume, accused murderess) in her own right.

Apparently, some of those folks they call "purists" took a dislike to Ms. Vane, much preferring Lord Peter to be assisted only by his Jeeves-like gentleman's gentleman, Bunter. In fact, Sayers' Harriet Vane is a thorough delight.

This book is the first of a set of subplots in a love story notable for the fact that its heroine is frequently described as "not pretty", the affair is one of the head as well as heart, and the enchanting quirkiness of the couple makes the chase a bit winding but the result inevitable.

Is the plot a bit of whimsy? Absolutely. But, after all, it is Lord Peter Wimsey, and that makes it all come out right.

If you've not read this, I strongly recommend. If you have read this, take a good afternoon, and return to the Wimsey/Vane world.

This book is just essential for those who have been dabbling in claymation and not quite sure how to take get it right. For example my younger daughter never knew that there were wire frames inside and howled with laughter when she realised. For younger children who have been using clay at primary/junior school and want to use this format to make a short animation film it was perfect. Any more information would have been too much. However I would recommend that an 'advanced' book is projected right away as one does begin to seek new challenges with this format. Still Excellent.

This book provides an insight into animation, allowing an early start with advanced techniques. A must have if just to look how they did their great films.

This is a great book for anyone interested in 3D animation. There is alot about the history of animation with clay and puppets. Included is info on cameras, lighting, sets, and how to build characters in clay. Learn about movement of characters and see great pictures of Wallace and Gromit being built as well as other short films. Get "Chicken Run Hatching the Movie" book too. You'll love it.

When I first read this book, I was in high school. Having encountered the phenomenon of change ringing in Groves Dictionary of Music and read that "The Nine Tailors" was a novel which involved it, I assumed at first that something so old and specialized would be long out of print and unavailable. Imagine my delight when I found that the local college library had it! Presumably unable to borrow it, I felt very daring smuggling it into the 24-hour reading room and leaving it on a coat rack so that I could read it even when the library was closed. It was exciting again to discover later that it was actually in print and I could buy it for myself. This I have had to do several times over the years, because my copies keep disappearing-- probably loaned to friends.

The continued availability of a novel on such an esoteric subject can only be testimony to the "the worth of the work" (one of Sayers's telling phrases in another of her books). It is, indeed, not as readily available as some of her other Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I have read most of them, believe that this is the best, and wouldn't be surprised if the author agreed. Yet many times I have noticed bookstores having several of the others in stock, but not The Nine Tailors. This has to be a sad commentary on the reluctance of many readers, even of mysteries, to venture into a quaint, abstruse subculture foreign to their own environments. Yet, happily, the real connoisseurs of the genre, who knowingly demand it even on special order, are numerous enough to keep it in print.

This is the kind of book to take up cozily by the fire, or while snuggled unter the quilts, in wintertime as the snow falls and the wind whistles outside; for such is the weather on a bleak New Year's Eve in its first scenes. The circumstances are important-- so intricately crafted is the novel that almost everything is important. Lord Peter and his valet, driving through the fens between the world wars, meet with an automobile mishap compelling them to venture forth on foot. Soon they encounter the vicar and other salt-of-the-earth folk in the nearest village, and circumstances draw them quickly into the life of this close-knit community of good, solid, honest people unanimous in the love of the mighty, exquisite old church which is their heritage from a long-dissolved medieval monastery.

Places like this really used to exist frequently in rural England. To read of them now, when they are so rare, is to meditate on what we have lost as time marches on. Although I doubt that Sayers was writing in this mode, the nostalgia which the book provokes in a reader today can be very poignant. But, beyond nostalgia, we can imbibe a gentle, abiding "wonder and delight" in these humble villagers' experience of their faith, and what it has wrought among them, which badly needs to be recovered in much of Christendom today. Fictional entertainment though it may be, if this book inspires and helps readers more than half a century later to recover this in their own lives, we can be certain that the author would be highly gratified. I would venture to guess, in fact, that this was her larger purpose, devout Anglo-Catholic that she was, in writing it.

Unlike some of her Lord Peter mysteries, this novel can be read by itself, and it is a delight. About a murder done in an old church in the English countryside, you will learn more about the ringing of church bells than you thought possible. Lord Peter is at the top of his form, literate, intelligent, and a thinker beyond being just a mystery novel detective. None of the characters are one or two dimensional, and each of them is developed fully and delightfully. When it comes to mystery fiction, you can't do much better than Sayers...which may be one reason her novels appeared on PBS' MASTERPIECE THEATRE rather than MYSTERY! They are indeed, masterpieces

The 1934 Dorothy L. Sayers mystery titled "The Nine Tailors" is not about the garment industry. Instead it centers on the venerable tradition of "change ringing" still practiced in England in which a given number of church bells or "tellers" are rung in every possible combination. So nine of them would have to be rung in (what we call in math class) "9 factorial" or 362,880 different combinations. You can figure out how long that would take at one peal per second.

Well the combinations do play a part in the solution of a particularly involved plot concerning jewelry stolen considerably in the past, a freshly dug grave with the wrong body in it, a flood, a snowstorm, and a villageful of really interesting characters, one of whom might be a thief, another a murderer, and so on. However, I am not reviewing the book itself but a marvelously effective complete reading of it by Lord Peter Wimsey himself, which is to say character actor Ian Carmichael who played Wimsey so well on the television series (now available on both VHS and DVD from Acorn Media). Here is the novel, complete on 6 cassettes, from Audio Partners, which is increasing their catalogue of complete mystery recordings very quickly indeed.

Of course, Carmichael is the perfect Wimsey; but he is also very good at every other voice needed to make this an excellent reading. Some books-on-tape readers merely use their own voices throughout; and success depends on how interesting and appropriate that single voice is. Like David Suchet on the companion Poirot readings, Carmichael makes his reading into a full dramatization.

Highly recommended for those who love a really intricate mystery read by a terrific actor.

I first read Drug Lord, the Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin, two years ago and was amazed by the amount of information the author was able to pack into the narrative without bogging it down. For me, it was like a journey through the looking glass, stepping into the distorted realities of a Mexico run by a perverse and frightening political system. I ended up sympathizing with Pablo Acosta, wishing he would save himself by giving up to the Americans. His misdeeds as a border drug trafficker were eclipsed by the ruthless system of government that exploited him. After reading Drug Lord, the stories I read about Mexico in the newspapers made so much more sense. I read the book again recently and was taken this time by the mature, vigorous and sometimes passionate prose. Some of the chapters are in fact brilliant short stories. It took a great deal of courage for an American journalist to explore this border underworld. Perhaps because of the dangers, no other American journalist that I know of has dared to repeat his noteworthy accomplishment. His work is a classic.

Drug Lord is a pleasure to read even though its message is quite disturbing. Terrence Pappa's journalistic talents are obvious; by focusing primarily on the biography of the Mexican drug lord, Pablo Acosta, rather than directly on the issue of drug smuggling, he immediately engages the reader's interest. Acosta is a fascinating character, reminiscent in some ways of Chicago's Al Capone. However, there is one huge difference: Pappa provides convincing evidence that even most powerful drug lords, such as Acosta, are only pawns in a drug trade that involves the highest levels of the Mexico's ruling party including the brother of the former President and possibly even former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, himself. The rampant corruption in the PRI - the political party that has ruled Mexico over 70 years - illustrates how difficult it will be for Mexico to get its social and economic house in order. This means that we can expect the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs (and they are related) will end no time soon.

I felt like I was reading fiction, it is hard to belive this is real life for these people. Mexican drug lord, Pablo Acosta, is a fascinating character, ruthless and violent but still only a pawn in the drug wars. the real show is run by the highest levels of the Mexico's ruling party including possibly former President Carlos Salinas de Gortar. The book illustrates how difficult it will be for Mexico to get its social and economic house in order as long as the PRI is in power.

I also recomend: "A Touirist in the Yucatan" for a fictionalized account of the drug wars.

Dorothy L. Sayers writes many non-fiction books however among her best is the Lord Peter Wimsey series. I came to this series sort of though the back door. My first taste was the BBC productions with Petherbridge as Lord Peter that can now be found on DVD ASIN: B000062XDX. So I read all of Dorothy's books containing the relationship of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Now it is time to go through the whole series.

Lord Peter returns from Corsica. To find his older brother the Duke of Denver practically accused of murder. What is worse is his brother is not talking. So it is up to Peter to find out what happened and clear his brother.
In the process he puts his foot in it and practically gets all his relatives and friends accused. As with all Sayers' stories nothing is simple there are overlapping plots and foolish deeds, as if Peter can not figure them out. On the side we learn a little about English society and ballistics.

This particular media is the cassette edition with Ian Carmichael. There is a version with Petherbridge but it is abbreviated and you need to hear every word to make the magic of the mystery work. Ian does speak rather fast and once in a while you get the detective mixed up with Peter. So I suggest you also read the book. However the tape has the advantage of inflection and is also desirable for the morning commute.

The entire Denver clan's good name is at stake when Lord Peter Wimsey's older brother is accused of murdering their sister's fiancee one fine October night. The task is made no easier since Lord Peter is on vacation at the time and since he returns to find the pig-headed Duke providing very little assistance to his own defense. Sayers does a fine job of balancing family tensions, differing testimony, and various attempts at hiding the truth in this entertaining second novel in the Wimsey series. The multi-layered motivations of her characters and the several sharp and plausible twists in the plot keep the pages turning.

Sayers' writing is always textured and witty, and her Riddlesdale Lodge is just the type of country house an Anglophile mystery reader will enjoy spending a few days. After three Wimsey mysteries I am undeniably hooked, but will spread out my reading of the other eight or nine so as to savor them over a long period.

Acclaimed for his portrayals of Lord Peter Wimsey on BBC, Ian Carmichael is the ideal voice for this story. As the London Daily Express put it he plays Wimsey so perfectly that "Sayers might have created Wimsey just so Carmichael could portray him."

Dorothy Sayers (1893 - 1957) is surely one of the most popular mystery writers of all time. Today, some years after her death, her stories continue to be widely read. With "Clouds of Witness" her protagonist Lord Peter Wimsey is called upon to investigate the death of his sister's fiancé. At least it may have been a fragrant departure as the recently murdered was found dead among the chrysanthemums, sartorially perfect in dinner jacket and slippers.

Most shocking is the fact that Sir Peter's brother, the Duke of Denver, stands accused. Surely that cannot be so. Sir Peter begins his own investigation in order to save his brother.

As is often the case, Sayers creates a surprising courtroom scene and Carmichael reads it with gusto.

- Gail Cooke