Marion Havelaar has combined the essential elements of an outstanding history volume. He provides excellent photography (black and white), a well written chronology, and appendices with the details of individual aircraft, missions, and crews. This is not one of those "coffee table" books. It is packed with information and it is both excellent reading and study data. There are 264 pages in this volume and Mr. Havelaar has established a detailed history from a personal, statistical and photographic perspective which make this not only informative but also a very interesting book to read. This is a must-have book for any serious fan of World War 2 bombing operations, but specifically for the famous 91st Bomb Group in WW2.

Basicly, this book is an account by Marion Mainwaring about the research she did to write it. She goes to the south of France, she reads some old letters, she talks to some people who knew Morton Fullerton late in life. Etc. etc. Along the way she gives a somewhat confused account of the slanging match she got into with Wharton's official biographer (about how she did all the research for his book but got no credit, blah blah blah). All of it's pretty tiring and you get the feeling that Mainwaring is desperately trying to pad out an already thin book.
Having said that, Fullerton led a fascinating life, something straight out of a Henry James novel. To anyone interested in Edith Wharton or even about expatriate life in early 20th century Europe, this book is a must read.

This is both the story of Elizabeth Wharton's cad of a lover, and the earnest researcher exploited and spurned by the Scholar in the Field, who she won't even deign to name! Hot stuff, to those who care about such things.

The scholar-cad dismissed her earlier cries de coeur as attempts to elicit publicity for this work, but you have to have read the LRB review to know this.

Literary hearts are broken all around. If you understand this for what it is, it's one of the best books ever, but a bit of an objet trouvee, if you know what I mean.

I greatly enjoyed this book after I realized it was not a quick read of connecting the dots/facts and racing to a conclusion. The joy of this book is that it offers the reader the chance to join Mainwaring as she roams through Paris seeking out the truths of rogue M. Fullerton's life. I loved the descriptions of Paris, the street scenes and the old buildings with their old bureacrats serving as gatekeepers to the dusty stacks of information in the registries of births, deaths and marriages. In her quest for the facts she encounters characters ranging from counts to charwomen and her style, humor and voice make me feel there with her, mulling the facts and planning the next step in the detective work.If you need a vacation from your life, read this book. I now open it to any page and just dive in and quickly become captivated again. Mainwaring is an artist in her impeccable choice of words. Enjoy the process of her quest, indulge yourself and you will find that you will forget about the mundane matters of your life. An instant vacation, what a relief!

Virginia Woolf said that all women together should let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn - for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds - well, within the Rover, her sexual politics are personified through the character of Angelica Bianca : and it makes for an intriguing read! Brandishing swords, embracing rape and finding their own individual identities in a society that veiwed women as second class subject, this remained the most frequently performed play right up until 1800!

I began this book believing that William Randolph Hearst's granddaughter Patricia Hearst would be able to provide some insight into her grandfather's life and character, as well as her family's idea of what happened to Thomas Ince. However, Ms. Hearst opened the book with a disclaimer that her grandfather was not much discussed by her family, and that with his having died before her birth, she could only speculate along with everyone else about what Mr. Hearst was like, and about what happened to Tom Ince.

In addition to having boring fictional characters and an uninteresting, unresolved plot line, this poorly-written book was filled with fictional, inaccurate stereotypes of actual people that are no longer alive to defend themselves. Were any of the real people Ms. Hearst wrote about still living today, she would have been liable to lawsuits for slander. Hearst and her co-author paint Marion Davies as a mean, conniving, stupid, ill-mannered floozy who was with Hearst strictly for his money. Every other reference I have ever read about Miss Davies spoke of her generosity and kindness, her fun-loving nature, and her deep admiration for Hearst. None of that appears in this novel. Ms. Hearst doesn't spare her grandfather an ugly treatment either; nor is she at all kind in describing the movie stars that filled San Simeon with gaiety, laughter, and good-natured hijinks. In addition to gratuitously trashing the reputations of the well-known people in this novel, Ms. Hearst and her co-author also get wrong the few well-established facts concerning Tom Ince's death.

Read Marion Davies' own book, "The Times We Had," or any of the numerous biographies of stars of the early motion picture days to get a picture of what Hearst and Davies were really like, and the facts and rumors that circulated after Tom Ince's death. Even the speculative movie "The Cat's Meow" will provide a somewhat more accurate view of the people and circumstances involved.

I hate this book. The writing style and flow of thoughts the authors composed were fragmented. Annoying characters like Marion the dipstick, made reading torturous especially since she's on like every page - "OOhh daddy poo!", talking in her damn baby drivel. The heroine, Catha Burke was soo bland. She never affected me in any kind of way so having to read about her as she pursued the investigation was a bore. This book doesn't resolve some of the main reasons for reading the story, like who killed Thomas Ince, and is mostly flashbacks of boring snobbish parties with a lost heroine going nowhere.

As a speculative story on the alleged events surrounding film producer Thomas Ince's death in 1924, it greatly disappoints, offering no clear or conclusive hypothesis and relying heavily on sleazy innuendo. It is rather sloppy on historical detail (e.g. Greta Garbo did not arrive in the U.S. until 1925, John Barrymore was in London rehearsing for Hamlet at the time of the alleged events.) What makes MURDER AT SAN SIMEON truly reprehensible, however, is its trivialization of the silent film era. Fascinating performers like Charlie Chaplin and John Gilbert are reduced to tabloid fodder. Poor Marion Davies comes off the worst here; Hearst and Biddle's hatchet job of her almost makes Welles's mockery of her in CITIZEN KANE seem complimentary. In order to fully appreciate and understand silent movies, watch films like THE GOLD RUSH and SHOW PEOPLE instead.