Pat and Reiko form an equal partnership in this story. Eric Farnham returns to the Monterey Peninsula after a three year absence. Eric has a background as an enforcer for the mob but he is now interested in finding the missing fortune of the deceased queen of Northern California rackets, Felicia Montalvo. For that reason he hires Pat and Reiko. There are a lot of pleasures in reading this series, but probably one of the most enjoyable is watching the developing relationship between Reiko and Pat.

I rated this book 4-stars because I thought it was very entertaining. I was a graduate student in physics in 1974 when the J/psi particle was discovered. This book gave me more insight into the events that lead to its discovery -- a history that I really enjoyed.

For those who are looking for detailed physics, they won't find it here. Dr. Riordan describes various experiments at different facilities but does not provide enough background for those not familiar with particle physics.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book as one person's account of the events leading us to where we are today in the standard model. This book is well written and easy to read.

The Tales Of king Arthur is a great book. It is a action paked book. It gives from the begging of King Arthurs life to the end. It is one of the best books I'v ever read. It has great details. The book also has storys of the voyages of his men. It even has the story of the Round Table. The chapters are divided exactly the why they should be. They are very percice. They tell some storys that arn't ever told. It is a book that talks mainly about the Folk hero. Also about how he helps the U.K. come back to life. I would highly recomend that childern from the ages of 10 to 14 should read this book. Specily if you like a book that is action paked. This is one of the best books I'v ever read and I would think that you would also like this Book. Tales of king Arthur.

...

Pat's friend, Sally Morse, lands a speaking part in a play at Carmel's Forest Theater. Benjy Noble, the author of the play and winner of a Pulitzer Prize the previous year, is found stabbed to death on the Forest Theater stage. Pat and Reiko are hired to investigate the murder. Pat is an engaging figure full of self-deprecating humor but tough enough to keep moving until he solves the case. When Pat stumbles, Reiko is often there to save him. Reiko is a tiny spitfire with great instincts. This book is well worth reading.

Although normally I thrive on Bill Myers books this one didn't hold the same interest as the others usually do. It was an interesting plot but the ending wasn't quite right. Although as a Christian, I support the belief that prayer and faith can get you through anything, the story simply didn't appeal to me.

The Forbidden Doors series has been one I normally enjoy. However, it usually incorporates things a little more realistic than fighting off vampires in Transylvania. This book is very basic as vampire stories go. There's no intense suspense or drama, except for very near the end. It's on an easy reading level, but I doubt it would appeal to the 9-12 age range.

I disagree with many parts of Bill Meyers's work. His constant stressing that only Christians can be trusted becomes radical. Christians are never bad guys in his books, and I dislike the prejudice.

It's worth checking out, but I'd recommend Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the Fearless series over Forbidden Doors.

This was a great book! I loved all the stories in this series,but this story is the one most likely to happen.

This is the second "Finbar's Hotel," collection edited by Bolger, and this one is given over to seven Irish women writers: Maeve Binchy, Clare Boylan, Emma Donoghue, Anne Haverty, Eilis Ni Dhibhne, Kate O'Riordan and Deirdre Purcell. As in the first one (which had only two women, Anne Enright and Jennifer Johnston), each writer is given a "room" of the hotel, and creates a guest and a story to explain their presence at the hotel. And as in the first one, the writer of each story is not identified. One has to wonder at the point of such cleverness, as it is a directly impedes any attempt on the reader's part to discover a new writer to seek out in the future. For example, say I find two of the seven stories to be amazing, what am I to do? Buy one book by each of the seven writers and read all seven to figure out whose writing it was that I liked? Since there's no real purpose to keeping the authors secret (other than editorial conceit), why do it?

The strongest stories reside in rooms 101 and 106, which contain stories that revolve around marital infidelity, but have gentle reversals. Room 104 also concerns infidelity, but in this case, to God-and is much less interesting. Rooms 102, 103, 105 and the penthouse all contain guests coming from abroad and their stories all revolve around encounters with their past. Room 105, which concerns a mother meeting her son for the first time is perhaps the best of them, although the penthouse story is worth reading for the ending if nothing else. One sort of odd running thread is the clumsy mocking of Americans that appears in each story, which is in contrast the generally gentle tone of the collection. All in the all, the collection is inoffensive, but not quite as strong as the original Finbar's Hotel.

I bought this book because I saw Maeve Binchey's name on it. As much as I love her writing, I have not read much Irish fiction, and this looked like a fun book.

The book is a set of short stories that have inter-connecting characters in the stories. Each chapter was written by a different author, and I had fun trying to figure out who wrote which chapter. The story itself was light and fun, but not as much as I had hoped.

I enjoyed reading Ladies Night at Finbar's hotel, and would highly recommend it as a vacation or beach read. Nothing too deep to get lost in.

This book us a follow-up to Finbar's Hotel where 6 Irish writers wrote short stories about a decrepit but lively Dublin hotel Ladies Night is all Irish female writers, with the unique female perspective on many issues related to women: pregnancy, artificial insemination, old loves who have done you wrong, youth and aging, sexual jealousy. Although the topics can be dark, the writing is tight, witty and stylish so you can appreciate the humor even if you are crying over a piteous situation, hoping it will all turn out all right in the end. But does it? Read each story and see!

Riordan has created an interesting and original character in Tres Navarre, and I will trust other reviewers' claims that the local color--an important part of any private eye series--is right on the money; however, I find it difficult to believe that this book and its predecessor, Big Red Tequila, won awards for anything. The plots, as other reviewers have noted, are suspect at best, fouled by loose ends that never really get resolved. Many of the secondary characters blur together. Often Tres's motivation is difficult to fathom. And the dialogue is the weakest part of the series (if Ralph, Tres's Hispanic sidekick, said "vato" one more time, I was prepared to douse my paperback copy in gasoline and set it afire). Did this novel really enjoy the attention of a professional editor? I've read much better--how are these "awards" determined, anyway?

In this second book in Rick Riordan's Tres Navarre series, PI-in-training Tres gets off to a bad start when the person he is tailing dies before his eyes (murder? suicide?). From there, our hero finds himself pulled into the worlds of drug dealing, family politics, and -- most deadly of all -- country music.

This title, like 'The Last King of Texas' (the third book in the series) starts off with a literal bang. But I found both 'Big Red Tequila' and 'Last King' easier stories to get into than this one was. Once the story starts moving, 'Widower's Two-Step' bears all the hallmarks of the Tres Navarre series: a plot that twists and turns, lots of characters (most with complex and hidden motivations), dramatic fights and confrontations, and truckloads of South Texas character. This book also introduces the Manos Detective Agency -- the employees of which have become regular characters in the Navarre series.

Devotees of the series will definitely want to read this title. I would recommend newcomers start with the first book ('Big Red Tequila') instead of dropping into the middle of the series, like I did. But even on its own merits, this interesting and atmospheric mystery is definitely worth a read or two.

Although not nearly as good as the Last King of Texas, my first introduction to the series, The Widower's Two-Step was a good addition. I'm not usually a mystery/cop novel lover but Tres Navarre is a great character, and I've liked every book with him so far. Some other reviews said that there were too many characters to keep straight, but I don't agree at all. This is a series with reoccurring characters, and all of the non- reoccurring ones have an important role in the mystery. Another reviewer said that this isn't award material, and I won't begrudge someone their opinion, but perhaps these books are just not for everyone. I personally find them funny and smart. A PI with an English Phd who practices Tai Chi? Can't you see the humor in that?

I have been prograaming VB for nine years now and consider myself to be intermediate to advanced. This book simply does not cover the new VB.net in sufficient details. New methods and properties are not explained whilst dealing with other new methods or properties. A good exmaple is the string class. This is not explained, just used, when giving a code example. Also, the examples are incorrect, in many places. I went to the website ... and they hadn't even bothered to correct the code there.
I'm sure there must be better books out by now. If

The trouble with most books on technologies like .NET is they try to be all things to all people, and end up being either too shallow or far too long.

This book is a very welcome exception. This is how technical books should be written: no messing about, no unnecessary repetition, but all the material is covered clearly in about 250 pages. A very clear target audience (experienced VB6 developers), and clear objectives help - the book's intention is clearly to communicate the essentials, and the practitioner will then get more detail from other sources. It's one of the few books of its type which can be read from cover to cover.

The book isn't perfect: I spotted a few proof-reading errors (in an early copy based on the Beta version of VS.NET); some examples are a little difficult to follow, and some topics inevitably rather sketchy.

However, I can thoroughly recommend this book, although I suggest that the serious VB developer will probably need other volumes as well: I also purchased "ASP.NET for Developers" by Amundsen & Litwin, and "The Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the .NET Framework Class Library" by Powers & Snell, both in the same series from Sams.

I am a project lead and have been struggling with various resources on .NET and had a tough time determining where to begin my venture into this new technology. I found this to be a terrific book and it has helped me learn various features of the new IDE and language. I particularly appreciated the before and after style of written that was done. For example, you will find many topics explained similar to, "In VB 5/6 this is how you would implement a class. In VB .NET the implementation would look like this..."

My project team was looking for a common point to begin their learning as well, so I encouraged (made...) them purchase this book. The fact that we have this common ground to begin our development has helped us tremendously.

I would highly recommend this book for those looking into .NET development. The book reads well, the examples thoughtful and straightforward, and the material covered is quite extensive. Enjoy!

This has a number of good examples, real enough that you can use them as a stepping stone to your own programming.

This book is also something of a 'Rosetta Stone' by listing the equivalent VB.NET and C# code for exploiting ADO.NET.

Shortcomings? Well, the examples, as noted in many other reviews, require a level of expertise in VB.NET and/or C# that frustrates folks who just finished a language 'step-by-step' book. Sometimes the objects that connect to Access and SQL Server databases need a tweak for your particular machine, and the error messages generated may send you scrambling for the installlation notes.

Anoher caveat is that you can't run the ASP.NET examples with a standalone XP Home Edition system - it doesn't include IIS.

Nonetheless, a good book, perhaps one you'll want to keep as a reference.

First, this book assumes you are already familiar with either vb.net or c#.net. This may be the reason some others have had problems, as her examples require some familiarity. An example from early in the book is "Add a call to the RefreshValues procedure to the end of each of the CheckedChanged event handlers." If you don't understand that sentence, you will have a hard time getting through this. You will want to start with one of the vb.net books (I recommend Coding Techniques for Microsoft Visual Basic .Net by John Connell for starting out).

Otherwise, all of the sample code has worked fine and the errata listed on Microsoft's web site only has a few code sample problems.

So why 4 stars instead of 5? I think that she could have explained some of the topics and code a little more for those of us who are newbies to ADO. She seems to assume that the reader is familiar with ADO and is moving to ADO.NET and as a result does not explain some things quite as well as she could. One example of this is in DataTables. There is a table showing dofferent forms of the Tables.Add Methods. In the table, it shows 4 options and the text describing the entries in the table pretty much matches the table exactly. Then the examples only show 1 of the options and the remaining three options are never further explained or demonstrated.

The other problem I had was that there seems to be no point to the code. You will add a foreign key to a table and the code will add it and then display the name of the key you added. But then it is never used again in he program. There's a lot of how, but not very much why.

Still, I have used this book a few times now as a reference. It is the most complete book I have found so far in showing you how to do something in ADO.NET, so the technical content is very complete.

So, here's the summary. If you're already comfortable with VB.NET or C#.NET and especially if you are moving from ADO to ADO.NET, then I would recommend this book. If you are just starting with .NET programming, start elsewhere and then come back here. At the very least, it makes a good, complete reference to ADO.NET.

Rebecca has done it again! Rather than the typical, this is how we used to do this in ADO, and now this is how you do it ADO.NET book, she has taken the path that developers need to take, and started from scratch - This is ADO.NET

Starting with the fundamentals of ADO.NET, walks through the basic principals of the new object model, and what you can do with the object model.

I would recommend this book to everyone - ADO.NET is such a fundamentally different approach to data access from Microsoft, that we will have to learn again from scratch, and this is the book to get the foundations right. I have found this to be invaluable in getting up and running with ADO.NET

Regretablly - link most of the .NET books - code samples are for the Prerelease versions of the .NET Framework, but I am sure that MS Press will release updates to these to work with the release version of the .NET Framework. Though it should be noted that they still provide a excellent example of how to use ADO.NET

Once again well done Rebecca - and keep the good books comming!

This book has the wrong title, it should be called "SQL Server 2000 Basics". The word 'programming' should definitely be taken away from the title as only about 1/3 of the book deals with programming, in just the most basic way. This book is just an intro to SQL Server, nothing too detailed. For someone that knows nothing about SQL Server, you will learn the basics here, but you will need to buy other books to get the details.

This book is good for a complete beginner to SQL Server, but if you're familiar with SQL generally, or if you've used SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0, you'd do well to purchase a different book (I recommend Professional SQL 2000 by Wrox Press).

This book *is* very clear, and it presents a great deal of screen shots. For some people that will be great. However, the step-by-step screen shots might be a bit too much for some folks (it steps through each dialog box for most tasks).

While this book is extremely clear, it doesn't offer real world advice.

For beginners -- four stars. For pros -- two stars.

Once again Rebecca has taken a difficult topic - SQL Server 2000 - and turned the complexitities of the topic around. I have found this book to be an excellent guide to using Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and a good reference to fall back on.

I would recommend this to anyone who is either planning or currently doing work with SQL Server 2000, you will find this to be an invaluable additional to the reference material included with SQL Server.

Buy it today, you will not regret it!