I read a little of this book and then found that I just didn't want to waste my time reading any more. And it sounded so interesting in the NYTimes review! I feel this book is pure garbage. He seems to be under the impression that every thought and memory which flits through his head is of great value. Just as power corrupts, fame insufflates the ego - unless you have the supreme wisdom to resist it. I read halfway thru another book called something like 'the delights of aging'. It was just as disappointing. And I'm aging. Are there any books which genuinely make you believe aging isn't as bad as it feels? Like that music isn't as bad as it sounds? Maybe self-delusion is the only way to joyfully tolerate the whips and scorns. Maybe that's Mortimer's real message here - message by example.

John Mortimer is a wonderful English author. My husband is a great fan of his work. I read of this book this summer in England and when I returned home I rushed to buy it.
My husband hated it! He said he had already read most of the stories in other works. The author also gives his opinion on the wonderful Labor Party in England. His mother should have taught him not to discuss politics in polite society.
It is really a dreadful book. Only useful as a door stop on a windy day.

Everybody and their brother and sister, which includes Gertrude Stein, of course, seems to be penning memoirs. A caveat to the form practiced at its best: The memoir of a man nearly eighty should be read quickly. In part to raise demand - if the recounting is revisited in prose artfully and summons forth a brilliant life - for a return engagement of cottage industriousness from the un-retiring pensioner, and chiefly because the best memoirs offer frothy recollections and musings which naturally propel alacrity.

In the case of "The Summer of a Dormouse" by John Mortimer, the episodic visits taken around the world and within the circle of the celebrated novelist, Queen's Counsel, playwright, knight (bearing a unique coat of arms), and "champagne socialist" end all too soon. We need some levity to dispel the infirmities of old age, septuagenarian John Mortimer advises.

The adapter of "Brideshead Revisited," Mortimer compares his life to scriptwriting's pace, "scenes get shorter and the action speeds up towards the end." And sped-up indeed it is for Mortimer. He plays the strolling scribe and player, from the "Chiantishire" to San Francisco and Watford to Antibes, respectively. He loosely adapts Franco Zeffirelli's life in "Tea with Mussolini" and Laurie Lee's (with whom he worked in government films during WWII) "Cider with Rosie"; for the former he is whisked off to Cinecitta - enclave of la dolce vita for the film industry set.

Back in London, Sir John chairs the Royal Court Theatre's - presenter of George Bernard Shaw and John Osborne - rebuilding. Despite stupefying behind the scrim skirmishes, he soldiers on through meetings with overly sensitive playwrights of the cut-off-your-nose-in-spite-your-face variety. Finally, Mortimer's common sense prevails and the theatre gets built. The redoubtable David Hare, none the worse for bygone artistic differences, writes a play for the new stage.

Goaded by a politico hostess to "have a go" at [then] Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw, this former barrister uses a lunch encounter to argue the defense of civil liberties and Magna Carta, and he hosts another lunch, a fundraiser on behalf of prison reformation, where a CEO is drilled over the company's annual report by a major stockholder--a convict--at the prison's groaning board. He also dispatches his opinion to the newspaper on the crisis in farming, easily deducible from the vantage point of his countryside home that is roundly ignored by Tony Blair's New Labour government. In fact, Mortimer questions whether "the promised land of a Labour Britain" looks or acts any different from its Conservative Party predecessor.

Mortimer recalls, from his youth, the Shakespearean passages his father quoted and conjures the blinded in middle age, intrepid, yet reliant for personal matters such as daily dressing on his wife (Mortimer's own Shavian, strong-willed mother), barrister that mirrors Mortimer's own age-related frailties - from use of a wheelchair to not being able to put on socks anymore - to wistful effect. A tinge is likewise evoked during a visit to an old artist friend with late-stage Alzheimer's who has, nevertheless, recapitulated a radiant painting he had done twenty years earlier, "this was only an echo, something left stranded on the beach after the sea had retreated."

Famed as Mortimer is for his Rumpole of the Bailey series, he acknowledges that when filling up his writing pads he draws more interest from failure than success. Coincidence, perhaps fate, abounds in his lifetime, and he attends the funeral of his first wife, Penelope, with his wife, Penny (for Penelope), surrounded by children of the first marriage and his teenaged daughter from the later union. The couple of years chronicled in this memoir include an eclectic cast of friends and colleagues: Muriel Spark, Neil Kinnock, Stephen Daldry, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Lord Richard Attenborough, Joss Ackland, and twins, Vicky and Jackie, who married Deep Purple band members. When an elegiac tone sets in, as birthdays come and friends die, Mortimer says the "cure is to be found among the living..." And so it is.

In the interim between another trip down memory's lane, once past the surfeit of this writer's well-lived life is consumed, the reader can go back to John Mortimer's catalogue of autobiography (now in three published books), novels, and plays. Then, with delight still at the fingertips, perhaps the champagne-tippling dormouse will serve up yet another rich and textured morsel from a gracious and blessedly prolonged summer for Sir John Mortimer, Esquire.

Don't read this looking for slip ups or unconscious revelations about the role of the Ramseys in the death of their daughter. This is a closely edited, legally observed, and unabashedly self-serving book. (I'd love to see what was edited out.) Yet, between the lines we can catch a glimpse or two about who the Ramseys really are and what they are about and what they believe.

This is a well written and very well edited exercise featuring a centerfold of family portraits, including several modest shots of JonBenét. The Ramseys give a close rendering of the events of Christmas day, 1996, and the next morning. The story of Patsy's successful fight against cancer is told in some detail, and the beauty pageant issue is addressed. The book ends with John Ramsey's profile of the murderer and a chapter of advice on how to protect your children. There is no index.

Throughout, the Ramseys tell their story in the first person in alternating sections. First John speaks and then Patsy, and then John again, and so on. What they are intent on demonstrating is their innocence. They try to accomplish this by convincing the reader of their abiding love for JonBenét and for God, and their adherence to the Christian faith. Both seem to have a special relationship with God that allows them to hear his voice. John writes "there's a point where...you know and understand the truth of what God has done through human history and you grasp his plan for the future through his son, Jesus Christ" (p. 72).

Patsy in particular has felt the "divine intervention" in her life on many occasions, particularly in her successful battle against cancer (p. 77), but also when her cable TV line was accidentally cut, thereby preventing her from hearing the lies about her on television (p. 230). She has received messages from God (e.g., on pages 82 & 243). In fact in several spots Patsy seems to liken her experience to that of Jesus. As she was watching the "Geraldo Rivera Show" on October 22, 1997, for example, she heard voices calling for the crucifixion of herself and her husband (p. 229). And as Christmas, 1997 approached, her faith, like that of Jesus, was sorely tested, and she found herself "mad at God" and screamed, "I hate Christmas!" But there came a "stillness at the center of" her "being" and she "received a message from God" telling her that she more than anyone needed Christmas, and her faith was restored.

Even in day to day activities, Patsy found herself calling on God to guide her and he did. For example, before picking up the phone to insinuate herself into the Princess Di media discussion she was watching on Larry King Live, Patsy told her mother, "I'm praying that God will give me the right words." After being on hold for a while, "suddenly" she was "talking on live television, launching...into an attack on Larry King..." (p. 210). She relates on the next page that she was so successful that Larry King called to thank her and to ask her to appear on his show.

Almost as annoying as this "holier than thou" posturing was the Ramsey's unrelenting attack on the media and the Boulder police as the cause of all their troubles. I thought it was significant that they blamed the police leadership more than they blamed the officers who had so compromised the crime scene (p. 178). I also thought it telling that John Ramsey in particular tried to tie the crime to "how transient" their "University Hill neighborhood really was," and to people who "pushed New Age experiences" (p. 204). In Lawrence Schiller's book, he is quoted as saying that Bill McReynolds ("Santa Claus") should be a suspect partly because "he doesn't have two nickels to rub together." This high-handed and snide tone, I believe is as much responsible for the public's suspicion of the Ramseys as anything else.

Nonetheless, after reading three books on the subject, I am forced to say that I don't think there's enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are responsible for their daughter's death. I think the Boulder District Attorney's office and the Grand Jury are to be commended for not charging the Ramseys with a crime they could not prove. Whether this book will help their public image is another matter.

I think the book The Death of Innocence is long overdue! After knowing for years how badly the media portrays people in the interest of money, I was ready to read the Ramseys side of the story. At this point it would take some very hard evidence (factual) to convince me that the Ramseys had anything to do with the murder of JonBene't. As a parent myself, I can't begin to imagine their grief or the hell theyve been through if they are innocent of this crime. I think its high time that a real investigation is done instead of a manhunt for the parents. We still live in America and it stands for innocent until proven guilty. I couldn't rest at night if I judged the Ramsey's without any real proof and how anyone can feel good about throwing accusations around with no proof is beyond me. This poor little girl and God are two who definitely know what happened and at whose hands. May she rest in peace.

Having just finished this book, I am struck by the overwhelming feeling of sadness I have concerning everything regarding this case. The incredible ineptitude and tunnel vision of the Boulder Police Department and their immediate suspcion, but lack of evidence, pointing to the Ramseys, the feeding frenzy of the media and the obvious support of the tabloid publications by the misguided souls who purchase them, the utter depths of desolation and despair experienced by the Ramseys, and the loss of the light of JonBenet in this world all add up to an incredible American tragedy.

I felt that the Ramseys were extremely justified in writing this book. After years of unrelenting attacks in the media, and incredible pressure by the Boulder Police Department, I think they had every right in the world to tell their side of the story. And to me, their story is believeable. The extreme amount of their pain over the horrible murder and loss of their child, as evidenced in their writing, is something that could not be faked had they indeed been the murderers.

As to the contents of the book, I see it as part of their grieving process. The book is a diatribe against the failure of the Boulder Police Department to call in the FBI or to vigorously pursue other suspects, and against the supermarket tabloids which so shamelessly intruded upon their grief. Their early grief turned, through the years, to rage against the impossibility of their situation. It is *their turn* to speak out. Heavens knows, the rest of the world had its turn.

The Ramseys take us through the night of the murder, the ensuing *investigation*, and the subsequent media harassment, grand jury hearing, and end with an admonition to society to protect its children. Throughout their book, whenever a source is quoted the name appears with the source. There are no "unnamed sources" they rely upon to prove their point. Indeed, everything they have written is well-documented and is meant to be a counter-point to all the erroneous reporting.

One can't help empathizing with their feelings of utter hopelessness as they realized the murderer was not being pursued because they were the prime suspects.

Having followed this murder since it was committed, I am glad to finally have heard the Ramseys speak. I would encourage anyone who thinks they have all the "facts" in this case to read this book.

Newly out of the hospital, commander John Coffin of London's mythical Second City police is confronted with a woman's severed arms and legs outside his former home. His thoughts turn to long abandoned affair--could the limbs belong to the woman? When a second women is murdered, Coffin begins to suspect his wife's friends. Yet with all of the police force at his disposal, no one seems to be able to find a real clue, or discover any reason why these attacks are happening now.

Author Gwendoline Butler does a fine job setting the scene in the 'second city' of London--a city of abandoned warehouses, crime, and poverty, with just the beginning of gentrification brought on by the theater. American readers may find Butler's Englishisms occasionally difficult to follow (although occasionally amusing--I especially enjoyed the police secretary with the pot plant (perhaps potted plant) on her desk).

With multiple murders, a dismembered woman and a decapitated cat, COFFIN'S GHOST should have been a fast-moving adventure. Instead, Butler's writing moves at a ponderous pace, leaving the reader both confused about where the plot is going and lethargic to find out. Coffin's regret over his affair seems more based on his fear of his wife's reaction to it than any realization that he made a mistake, and his treatment of the abandoned mistress is difficult to view sympathetically.

"Coffin's Ghost" is supposed to be a mystery/thriller novel, but unfortunately, there is neither in this book. I was so excited to read this book and it took forever for me to find a place to order it from. I recieved the book and was utterly disappointed. There is no mystery or suspense in this novel whatsoever. This book came from England and it is extremely hard to follow, the book skips around like a rabbit in a field. You never know why something happens and you are always left hanging there. The characters are introduced randomly and they are speaking in "short-hand" making it hard to follow and understand. After reading this book I still have no idea what it was about. This novel has no plot or theme. Not reccommended.