Coffey moved to America to teach (Maths, if you can believe it) and formed his own rather meditative idiom, which reads a little like some of the later poetry of Samuel Beckett - a spare, haunted voice. Some of his later poetry I find a little unrelieved in its spiritual extremity, though he can be sharp and aggressive in a strangely oracular way. His earliest stuff, from the 30s, is jaunty, bleak and hilarious in a way that no other Irish poet has ever achieved. He sometimes reads a little like that remarkable Australian phantom, Ern Malley. Coffey scholars value most highly the long "Missouri Sequence" from the 60s, and the later "Death of Hektor", but Coffey also wrote strange satirical works, published invariably by tiny independent presses, while the increasingly pedestrian mainstream of Irish poetry in the 70s and 80s simply ignored him. (He was nearly left out of the Faber Book of Irish Verse, but some younger poets implored the editor to include him. Thomas Kinsella's Oxford anthology ignores him completely, an omission for which Kinsella should be ashamed.)

His translations are highly eccentric and almost quixotically faithful to the original. They are not creative translations - he doesn't do to Mallarme or Nerval what Paul Schmidt did to Rimbaud, but rather tries to retain some of the weird music of the originals in a ruthlessly un-English idiom. Nabokov would've loved him.

Coffey's influence is alive today in the highly interesting and very hard-to-find strain of postmodernist Irish poetry. He can make more voluminous and big-voiced poets like Kinsella or John Montague seem like waffling frauds. The elegant games of Derek Mahon seem trivial compared to his gravity and concision. He is far above the mediocrity of a Michael Longley or a Paul Durcan. He died in 1994 - belatedly and posthumously honoured. He was and is a gem.

I am not new to Bible study, but I found this book to be a good choice for people beginning to undertake biblical study, or Christianity for that matter. I think the price makes it a safe and reasonable choice.

The setting is southern California - land of power and plenty, a landscape now scarred by brutal, sadistic random violence, its populace plagued by faceless enemies who relish evil.

Antihero Ted Lowe is a curious blend of hypocrite and truth-seeker. He's a seasoned, salty-tongued reporter for a Los Angeles newspaper whose view of life may be found in his musings: ".....the ancients invented God to explain why things happen. They were afraid to accept the arbitrariness of life, too ignorant to understand the great cosmic joke that the universe itself is just a gigantic accident."

He is assigned to cover a murder story - the rape and fatal beating of 13-year-old Megan Wright. Her body is found atop Sepulveda Pass; the crime scene is grisly. It's a sight Lowe cannot forget.

Obtaining a photo of the dead girl, he thinks, "I'm glad for this chance to see her whole."

Lowe's coverage of the crime is set against a backdrop of apparently unconnected break-ins - brutal assaults in which a band of ski-masked thugs force mothers to watch the rape and sometimes fatal beating of their daughters.

"Why look for motivation behind the violence - why did he do it, why did it happen to her?" the narrator coldly asks. "These questions are pointless of course. Things happen because they do."

Doors close, evidence is skewed, and possible witnesses disappear when Brad Devlin, teenage son of wealthy, influential Jeremiah Devlin, is linked to Megan Wright's murder. Pressured by his editors for daily doses of sensationalism, Lowe knows a lurid front page story would be a boost for his career. He investigates on his own, while launching an affair with a smart but naive young reporter who shares his affinity for rough and tumble sex.

When the band of rampaging thugs, which includes Brad Devlin, kidnap Lowe and force him to accompany them as they rape and pummel an Asian mother and daughter, he is forced to confront his inner contradictions - he is fascinated by the ghastly act. "The sound of breaking glass thrills me. It's a true noise of the night."

Brad's eventual indictment for the murder of Megan is hardly a blip on his father's mental screen - Jeremiah Devlin has already bought off the district attorney, his challenger, the newspaper publisher, and others. The Devlin's high-powered, higher-priced attorney exudes supreme confidence.

Lowe is left to decide whether to take the stand and testify to what he witnessed in order to help convict Brad, thereby risking recrimination for failing to report the crime or remaining silent to protect himself.

Mr. Coffey handily layers moral questions with legal issues as the narrative races from investigation to a no-holds-barred courtroom trial. To the author's credit there is little physical description of the character who most embodies evil - he remains a faceless terror, growing even more frightening in the reader's imagination.

A cast of L.A. noir characters enliven the story, while the enigma of Ted Lowe's character both puzzles and fascinates. Mr. Coffey, an editor at the New York Times, charts new thriller territory with The Serpent Club; he's a cagey, daring and imaginative writer from whom we want to hear more.

Los Angeles news reporter Ted Lowe has covered many violent crimes over the years, but no incident affected him more deeply than the death of teenager Megan Wright. She was his first corpse and she was left beaten and naked except for a pair of white sox.

Ted is surprised how serene Megan's mother is over her daughter's murder. He makes some inquiries and learns Mrs. Wright is involved with a rich and powerful entrepreneur. Additionally, Megan was dating the man's son Brad. An obsessed Ted finds evidence that links Brad to the crime, but the journalist does not know how sordid the truth really is.

THE SERPENT'S CLUB is a very good tale that mixes a thriller, legal procedural, psychological suspense, and amateur sleuthing into an entertaining story line. Though Tom Coffey's book includes much violence, none of it seems excessive as these acts propel the dramatic story forward. Ted is a flawed individual struggling to redeem himself by obtaining justice for victims. Fans will want more appearances of this imperfect antihero.

Harriet Klausner

Indeed, I purchased this book to read about a kayaking adventure but unfortunately the actual kayaking is only mentioned a couple of times in the book but not in any detail.

The apparent subject matter of the text is the story of a couple of middle-class wannabe hippies, Maria Coffey and Dag Goering, travelling (or more truthfully, scrounging) around a few different parts of the world.

It is certainly not a self-sufficient adventure as the couple seem to spend almost every night either living aboard a luxury yacht, staying in accomodation provided by the locals and even staying in the lap of luxury with the Governor of Hong Kong.

The bulk of the book is taken up with the couples time in India but basically could be summerised into a brief paragraph reading, "we pulled into the village, we met the local Holy man, we smoked copious quantities of dope, the locals cooked us a meal and then we stayed in one of their houses" which is what is basically repeated over and over.

There is absolutley no sense of adventure anywhere in this book and unfortunately, Coffey's writing is extremely dull and tedious, not to mention very repetitive.

The only time that any human interest crops up is in the brief mention of the couples time in Ireland when they run across a few local "characters" but yet again they do not do any kayaking.

Mention must also be made of Coffey's boyfriend, Dag Goering, who is constantly credited with being a "photographer" but unfortunately the few low quality "snaps" that are featured in the book would certainly suggest otherwise.

If you are looking for a documented kayak adventure (or indeed any adventure) you should be looking elsewhere.

Give this one a miss!

Military Blunders examines wartime efforts that failed, beginning with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and ending with the invasion of Kuwait. The decidedly twentieth century focus of the book lends itself to the fact that wartime motion picture records came into existence following the turn of the century, and television documentaries are generally more appreciative of motion picture records than written ones.

Thus, the marketing force of presenting military history from a "blundering" point of view is a strong and visual one. Mistakes in wartime are common. Those interested in playing games of "what if" will find this tome fascinating. What if the Archduke Ferdinand's driver had not taken a wrong turn down a Sarajevo street? Also, some mistakes lend an eerie quality of mystery. Case in point: The last flight of the Lady Be Good, an American B-24 that disappeared in the Libyan desert during WWII. Its wreckage and the remains of her crew were discovered years later by a British oil exploration outfit.

Offered in short, easy to digest anecdotal chunks, the book proffers an easy to read litany of historical anecdotes. A handful of photographs in the center of the book help give visual backup to the tales inside. Fans of the History Channel and military history buffs everywhere should enjoy this well written and interesting book.

Although Protestants and former Catholics such as myself can still be informed by Mr. Coffey's book, his writing is perhaps more helpful to Roman Catholics who want to know more about the origins, definitions, and significance of the peculiar doctrines that separate Catholics from other Christians.

Is the Catholic Church really the one true church intended by Christ? Should we base our Christian beliefs on the Holy Scriptures only, or does God want us to include the flexibility of Church tradition in the mix? What about confession, and the virgin Mary? These and other dogmas and Catholic teachings are explored and evaluated in an easy to understand, common sense manner with God's written word as the ultimate judge.

I would strongly recommend any Roman Catholics who do not have an understanding of the doctrines that they are required to believe, or how they relate to scripture, to read Coffey's book. They may be shocked to discover the lack of scriptural basis for what they have been raised to believe. For those Roman Catholics who are secure in their beliefs, can it do any harm to see another viewpoint? Those who have written reviews on this book and given it a bad rating make me wonder if they even bothered to read the book, or if they just automatically dismiss it as anti-Catholic.

Coffey's approach is gentle...this is not an angry or harsh denunciation of a denomination's practices and teachings. It is a loving call to awareness of God's objective and scriptural truth. Catholics reading this book may be surprised at what they learn and at one point thank God that they, too, can say they were "once a Catholic" but now know the difference between a relationship with a religion and a relationship with Christ.