Pay particular attention to "Releve", the story contributed by Patricia Wallace and her daughter. This story introduces us to Sydney Bryant, the private eye that Pat Wallace has featured in a terrific series for adults. The titles in the series include "Deadly Devotion" and "Blood Lies".

Other outstanding stories include those by Wendy Hornsby, Scott Turow, Stuart Kaminsky, and Sharyn McCrumb (and their collaborators). This is a book that parents can read and enjoy with their children. It might inspire them to collaborate on some mystery stories of their own!

I look forward to reading the companion volume, "Great Writers and Kids Write Spooky Stories". I

"When you think of a mystery, what comes to mind? A dark secret? An unsolved crime? A curious detective hunting for clues?"

The only mystery, the only secret, the only crime is how this anthology could be so easily overlooked. "Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories" (1996) is a collection of stories written by some of today's greatest mystery authors in collaboration with their children and grandchildren. Jonathan Kellerman, Sharyn McCrumb, and Scott Turow are three of the thirteen award-winning writers that create wonderous whodunits with their offspring, ages 6 to adult.

While written at about the junior high/ middle school level, this complilation is enjoyable to all. The stories are five to several pages. Some are written with the child as the amateur detective, some are written as a type of psychological thriller.

The introduction serves as a "mini-lesson" on mystery writing. And, each story features a short personal introduction by the adult and child writing team on what it was like to collaborate on their included story. Other contributors include Barbara D'Amato, Ed Gorman, Stuart Kaminsky, Elizabeth Engstrom, and many others.

This book has the unique ability to be educational as well as entertaining. Those that enjoy this book may also enjoy the first volume as well: "Great Writers and Kids Write Spooky Stories" (1995).

But it's also a great collection of essays from baseball writers including George Will and Peter Gammons, and local writers sharing memories of the team and the long years of waiting in the cold and fog for a world championship that still hasn't come. Those essays are some of the best parts of the book, moving and nostalgic in the best sense.

The body text, that tracks the long road from New York through Candlestick to the drama of building a new ballpark without the safety net of public money, then chronicles the great 2000 season, is little more than acceptable, but in a coffee table book what you want is gorgeous photographs and insightful vignettes, and "Splash Hit" has that in aces.

A little disappointing was that the book did not have much on the Polo Grounds, Seals Stadium, and Candlestick Park. Even though the Giants no longer play at the old parks, their history is indelibly intertwined with the newer ball park and they deserved more space.

This belongs on any Giants fan's coffee table, especially if they have visited the park.

In her last essay "Chickenhead Envy" she acknowledges that "strongblackwomen" and "chickenheads" may have the same wants and desires but the roads they take to achieve them are different, creativing a dividing line coated with animosity.

Morgan calls herself a STRONGBLACKWOMAN in remission, saying she doesn't not want to be lauded for her success through struggle. Eliminating struggle from a black woman's life does not make her any less of a woman.

I recommend this book to women and men, black and white, young and old. If you have a desire to understand today's young African American woman, Morgan's blunt, in-your-face writing will give you an look instead the mind of one who is such.

This book is truly an insightful and elegant attempt to explain the complexity of black womanism (most black women reject feminism, which places gender at the center of an experience, and place race/gender/class at the center, and understand these things mix). She discusses the disgust "strongblackwomen" have for "chickenheads", whose conservative philosophy of using their bodies as a shortcut to monetary and sexual achievement hurts other black women, as we are accused of the same manipulative behavior. She also articulates what most educated black women have thought, over and over again, as we confront black women and men who want our (middle class black women's and black men's)help, but who then criticize us down for being responsible, disciplined, educated, and successful. She also deals with white racism, and how irresponsible people use it to tear down responsible black women.

Redtwister's review denigrates her solutions as simplistic and symptomatic of her status as a middle class black women. He calls them "bootstrap" and "Nation of Islam." This reveals his lack of experience with the non-academic black community, and especially with the black inner city. He recommends a class analysis that leads to governmental solutions that just are not going to happen, and does not understand that this work is conscious at all times of "reality" and feasiblity. He does not understand that middle class black men and women are the key to fighting problems in the black community, for they understand the reality, and are the only ones who can fashion realistic solutions from experience. For too long the old jibe about middle class self help and education being oppressive has been used to silence the black middle class from effective discussion and influence. Her discussion of solutions is strong, feasible, and most importantly realistic and proven. Middle class black America has been hard at work at the business of saving poor black America for decades. Morgan's list of solutions not only has a history of common sense and success behind it, but also comes from the one group who has successfully escaped the ghetto.

I recommend this book, and hope that the people who it is aimed at (non-academic black women finding their way in the world) read it. Every teenage girl who worships at the House of Lil' Kim and Destiny's Child needs to read this. The true problems with "chickenheads" (the materialism, the refusal to do things the right way, the view of their bodies and sex as cheap ways to manipulate men and gain material goods) hurts other black women as some black men (commercial gangsta rappers) attempt to pin these behaviors on all black women. The chickenheads don't understand that eventually, age and gravity means you need a brain. Too many are left hard and poor at 30, and alone. But these women will not read this book. Too bad.