The third and final in Kel Richards' "Sherlock Holmes' Tales of Terror" series, and perhaps the most disappointing of them all. (Please note: another three stories, probably intended for the series, have been published as 'Footsteps in the Fog').

As is probably obvious from the cover, this the repulsive story of Crosby the Banker and the red leech. In this book we are introduced to Dr. Grimsby Defoe, who is set up as the replacement for Professor Moriarty. Of course, we know there never was anyone who could assume the role of Moriarty and Holmes regularly complained that there was no challenge left in the London underworld after Moriarty's death.

The other thing about Dr. Defoe is that the description given of him is, practically word for word, that of the Devil Doctor himself, Fu Manchu. A little originality would not have gone astray!

There is some slight improvement in other areas: Holmes is not depicted as being willing to accept supernatural matters (a quote from 'The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire' is included). While there is a Christian homily at the end of the book, at least this is delivered by a priest instead of Holmes.

Not really worth your while, unless you want a basic story that borrows far too liberally from other sources.

Although the back cover optimistically refers to six stories, there are only two present. In "On Active Service" Watson tells "young" Stamford of his Mycroft-assigned job to dog the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, to keep him from giving away to his Arab cohorts the British plans to betray them. In "The Report," Mycroft tells Stamford about an earlier mission of Watson to Russia, to investigate the situation of the Tsar and his family, just before and just after the Tsar's overthrow. These stories make up only about 1/5 of the book. The remaining material is "backstory" on Holmes, Watson and Stamford. Holmes never actually appears in either of the stories.

The narrative structure of the tales is almost absurdly complicated. For example, "The Report" is as told by Mycroft, but in parts Watson speaks in the first person, while other parts are in the third person. It seems to me, as in the case of the author's earlier book ELEMENTARY CASES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, that the various parts of the book were written at widely separated times with no overall plan in view, and stitched together with the minimum possible revision.

With Holmes off-stage, the focus is on Watson just before, during and just after WWI. Can you picture Watson driving racing cars as a hobby? He does here, even though he is poor enough to have had to pawn his pocket watch. Can you picture Watson as a rugby three-quarter? He was, here.

I think readers will be mainly interested in "The Solitary Student," which gives some speculative details of Holmes' family situation and university days. It's a good guess by Charnock that he would have started out studying theology, because of his frequent, quite peculiar theological references as recorded by Watson.

Don't expect too much here and you won't be let down. This is in no way a collection of stories involving the adventures of Holmes, of Watson, or of Holmes and Watson together. It's more of a scrapbook than anything else.

This book is for the very begineer. Do not expect to pass the exam with this book alone. I did not find one item on the test that this book actually taught me. Waste of my slim and very valuable reading time.

The book is not great, but it's the only one I used to study for the exam and I passed. I thought it did an adequate job with the project assessment aspects of this exam - identifying and prioritizing problems and goals. It does a poor job of covering CIDR IP addressing, however. For this test though, you must have mastered the material in 216 and 217. My field experience helped me quite a bit, but was not a must for this test. I don't work with international WANs for example, but there are international scenarios in the exam. And there's no substitute for exam prep like one of the many test engines available.

Just yesterday, I passed this test studying from this book alone for about a month. But I didn't pass for the reasons I thought. Having a business background and having done case studies to death in graduate school, I believed (based on this text) that I would find myself on familiar ground with this exam. Not so. Although the test is ALL case studies, it requires an in-depth technical comprehension of how Microsoft products work together that this book spends very little time conveying.

That being said, however, I should also mention that although vague on interoperability issues, technical aspects that are covered here are well presented - for the most part; there are too many typos and inconsistency to make it really reliable.

I cannot recommend any other books as I haven't seen any, but I know there have to be better texts out there on this subject. But if you DO buy this book: a) forget about chapters 1, 2, and 6; nothing on the test relates to anything there and b) don't bother with the practice tests; these too are completely irrelevant to the actual experience.

If you are looking for a good EMT book, I would take my business over to the Brady series. Did the editor actually look at this thing? I would have to say no! Forget about it, move on.

For the most part the book is very educational & easy to follow. Although there are many misspelled words, wrong or conflicting answers. Also, many topic areas taught aren't the way it is in the "real" world. To me it didn't look like the auther did much proof reading prior to it being published. Hopefully, there'll be a better book on the market soon.

Sadly, the Oxford Illustrated is a complete disappointment.

Each chapter is written by a specialist, which is a promising start. Each chapter, however, seems to presuppose that the reader is already completely conversant with the period covered. The chapters are littered with references to people or events that have not been introduced or explained. Instead of providing an overview, context, and the essential events; most of the authors seem bent on proving points to other specialists in academia.

There is almost no continuity between the chapters. The prose of most of the authors does not rise above the most tedious of museum "curatorese". The mind swims, the eyes water, the head nods with boredom and frustration.

Interestingly, the brightest and most interesting parts are the illustrations themselves, and their captions. Alas, these are a few scattered jewels in the wasteland.

How did such a failure happen? I would guess that the editor either did not provide sufficient instruction to the authors, or did not impose any sort of editorial direction on the book.

But ultimately, the blame for this failure lies with the publishers. Oxford University Press has cheapened their reputation by publishing this half-baked collection of disjointed essays.

I'm still looking for a good one-volume history of Italy - any suggestions?

Granted, italian history is not one of the easiest histories to understand, but the geniuses at oxford could have done a better job bringing the history down to a level us mere mortals can understand. they talk about the stuff like I have already studied it, like its just a review. In my opinion, in order for this book to be better it would need to be much, much, longer in length with more clear details, especially about the politics. however, it does cover everything, so its not a one-starer. rock on.

This book isn't worth the paper it is printed on. It simply isn't standards compliant and the presentation is just plain boring. The main thing that sticks out about this book is the author's insistence on using void main(void) in ALL the examples in the book. What happened to standard's compliance?

Don't buy it. If you need a book on C, this isn't it. If you need a book on C++, this ain't it either.

For C++, I'd recommend Thinking in C++ Vol 1 & 2 by Bruce Eckel. These are good and interesting as well.

For C, the C Programming Language by K&R is a good read.

This book isn't worth the paper it is printed on. It simply isn't standards compliant and the presentation is just plain boring.

The main thing that sticks out about this book is the author's insistence on using void main(void) in ALL the examples in the book. What happened to standard's compliance?

Don't buy it. If you need a book on C, this isn't it. If you need a book on C++, this ain't it either.

For C++, I'd recommend Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel. These are good and they're interesting as well.

For C, the C Programming Language by K&R is a good read.

This textbook may be good as reference for those students who have some knowledge of of the programming skills taught in the book. For new students it is very boring and is not helpful in teaching C and C++ code in an interesting manner. In other words - NOT WORTH THE MONEY.

This is only a few page play, not worth nearly the price quoted. Nothing else needs to be said except do not buy!

I ordered this sight/review-unseen: what a mistake. If you are looking for a 15 minute junior high school one act play, buy it. If you're looking for one Sherlock Holmes pastiche, pass! The plot takes place during the Great Hiatus, with Holmes chasing after poisoners in the Folies Bergere. Rather predictable, rather mundane but as I said, if you are looking for a one-act for pre-teens, it may work for you. I was hugely disappointed:P.

I agree with the other reviewer that this is not a helpful book. I was hoping to find an informative book for children that have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This book is definitely not it! I believe it would scare youngsters into thinking that they might end up in an asylum, receiving electro-shock therapy. The book states that not everyone ends up like that, but it seems to dwell on the topic. It also has some disturbing information about the history of mental illness and they way patients were treated long ago.

This book is very limited in scope and focuses on the negative aspects of manic depression. As the wife of a manic depressive, I found it to be a book to steer clear of as the author seems to think that all manic depressives are doomed to be inmates and have no function in society.

This had an interesting storyline, but it was broken up by including the original introduction and ending --- every 5 minutes! This ruins the storyline.

Given that Martin Powell is writing stories based on other authors' characters, I didn't expect anything original in "A Case of Blind Fear". However, I expected Powell to at least steal from the existing literature effectively. Instead, he randomly grabs played out scenes, stitching them together into a travesty of storytelling. Case in point, the ending of the story. (Spoiler Warning) The last chapter opens with Holmes attempting to beat information out of a severely injured criminal. Watson chastens Holmes that he could have killed him; to which Holmes replies, "I fancy he'll recover enough to hang, Watson." On the following page, Holmes and Watson learn the story's main villain has raped Watson's wife, murdering his unborn child. As Holmes chases down the villain a few pages later he cries out, "Griffin ... You're hurt. Sick. Let me help you. Please ..." Oh, come on. Holmes is willing to risk killing one of the story's patsies in righteous anger, but longs to help the murderer of his best friend's child. Powell carelessly grabs scenes and dialogue from other stories and uses them to pathetic effect. (End Spoiler Warning)
"A Case of Blind Fear" was so bad, I finished the book wanting my money back. Since I can't get my money back, I figured I could at least warn you to not waste yours on this garbage.