A brilliant real page turner of a book. Written with great pace, with plenty of fascinating detail, the book starts by letting us to get to know Lord Lucan, the man, and the lifestyle he led. It moves on to dramatically reconstruct the murder itself and Lucan's subsequent disappearance. The book particularly excells when it moves on to searching for Lucan and thories about his disappearance are throughly examined and then rejected. The impression I gained was of thorough detective work leading to one inevitable conclusion.

It is a great story- and a true story. I could not put this book down. I lent it to my Mum and she was equally impressed. If you are interested in the Lord Lucan story- this is a must read book.

Lucan is a book that spawned a short lived TV movie pilot and series that ran on the ABC network way back in the years 1977-78. Lucan was essentially about a boy lost in the wilds of Minnisota at a very young age who was raised by wolves. Found at age 10 years by hunters then captured by scientists he was forced back into human society. The buy named LUCAN by accident of him hearing a doctor say YOU CAN attempting to say YOU CAN it came out LUCAN which seemed as good a name as any other so it became his.

Well to make a long story short this book chronicles the first attempts of LUCAN to deal with being plunged into the politics and troubles of human society. Ok the idea is cool, the execution of the story a little hokey BUT, I am a severely disabled dude who was sort of forced out of himan society. For me LUCAN was like an inspiring empowering friend during my growing up. I like LUCAN was born and grew up on the outside of society and then was asked later to live within its rules. It was hard but LUCAN was my inspiration. I learned a lot about living in society from LUCAN. More than anything I learned it was worth trying to live in human society because of LUCAN. I will always owe a debt I can never repay to the writer of the book LUCAN and Kevin Brophy who played LUCAN on the 1977-78 TV series for lighting my path to my current great job and place in society.

Just in case you are wondering. Did I ever make it in society. Yes after 40 years of learning how to live in society at age 42 I have a job with the government as a software engineer. I am still a bit wild, certainly I am the strangest thing in the building where I work. I still have lots of minor issues but, its funny how I am well loved where I work dispite all the many things that make me way different. LUCAN was 20 years old in the TV movie in 1977 I was 18. I like thinking that somewhere in government LUCAN did well as I did and its working and making lots of money to live well. Hey its a disabled thing. Anyway buy the book its not the greatest writing but the story is filled with meaning and insights into the fight to live in this human society when your disability psychological makeup brain damage upbringing or other challenges make you so radically different from society you are forced to grow up outside it. Then only as you become an adult and must fend for yourself in human society are you asked to cope with the demands of life in the same human society you grew up outside of. This is the real message of LUCAN... Buy It NOW!

Lucan, the author of the full-throated but incomplete epic the "Civil War", certainly deserves a spot next to the great Latin poets Ovid, Horace, and Virgil, whose epic works mark the pinnacle eloquence and intelligence of Latin verse. The epic was written during the reign of Nero in the first century AD, and it is characterized by its vehement condemnation of civil war and imperialistic sentiments--this possibly caused Lucan's later fall out of Nero's favor. The primary characters in the epic are Julius Caesar, who is portrayed as a destructive warmonger, and Pompey (Magnus), who is described as ambitious and over his prime. The vivid descriptions of the wars in this work are exciting and at the same time sobering since Lucan's narrative never fails to reveal those attributes of civil war which invoke the most disturbing of feelings. For all this, Lucan's "Civil War" is recommended, and also because the Oxford World Classics always present reliable translations, and this particular edition retains Lucan's charming and long-winded verse that courses so smoothly through the hearts and minds reader's who are fortunate enough to come into contact with it.

If I had known it was another translation of Lucan, I would not have ordered it, BUT I would have made a mistake. This work has a better translation for the modern reader, and lots of good supporting information. Some of the comparisons I made with other versions make me wish I had this ten years ago. The notes are worth the price of the book!