No one would expect murder to occur to any of the residents of the Almstone Manor rest home for the Fearnshire regiment and their families. Anyone living at the home already suffers from bad health and death would be from natural causes. This holds true for Gertrude Powell until her son receives a posthumous letter from her, stating that someone has been trying to kill her.

Callehsire Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis "C.D." Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby begin to investigate Gertrude's missive by trying to halt her funeral. The two law enforcement officials soon learn that the residents of Almstone have known each since W.W.II. Though it initially appears to be the ramblings of a very sick elderly person, five-decade old grudges remain, but are they strong enough to push someone into committing murder?

Catherine Aird is renowned for her witty, British police procedurals starring Sloan (see A GOING CONCERN). However, her current entry, STIFF NEWS, seems to fall short of her previous tales as the story line takes too long before finding its rhythm and the secondary cast never evolves into real characters. Still, Ms. Aird's ability to write keeps her novel from total collapse and Sloan remains an interesting protagonist. The news on this book is that it is a bit stiff, leaving readers who want Ms. Aird at her best to try any of her previous works. Sloan fans will both enjoy and be disappointed by Sloan's latest case.

Harriet Klausner

The book is divided into twenty-three categories of birds, and within each section the diary entries are arranged chronologically. The index is useful and, like Thoreau himself, a blend of the downright and the unaccountable; for example, among all those birds one can find "Blueberry trees," "Frog, dreaming," and "Suckers, dead." Thoreau's purposes and results, as John Hay points out in the introduction by quoting Thoreau himself, remind us that "there is a world in which owls live."

While I took a copy of DeLorme's Vermont atlas on a recent trip, I found a much better atlas once I arrived in Vermont. It's Jimapco's "Vermont Road Atlas" and is priced the same as DeLorme's book. However, the Jimapco atlas is smaller (8.5" x 11") and is spiral bound, making it much more convenient to use on the road as it always lies flat. You can also look at just one page -- if you try that with a DeLorme atlas too many times, the book will fall apart. Also, the Jimapco atlas strives to name EVERY single street and road in Vermont, while DeLorme names the more prominent roads only showing the minor roads while leaving them nameless. The only feature lacking from the Jimapco "Vermont Road Atlas" that DeLorme has is 3-D terrain shading. But, when you're in a car trying to find a street or looking for a point of interest, the terrain shading is of little help.

I've been a big fan of the DeLorme atlases for years now, but Jimapco's Vermont atlas will be a constant companion for me on all future Vermont roadtrips.

However, I would not recommend this edition. Although greatly annotated by Stover, the annotations detract from the text. Wells makes numerous references that are more understandable if one is British or lived in the 1800's, and when a footnote is next to one of these references, one naturally looks down below to better understand the context. But Stover repeatedly gives away key aspects of the storyline and the ending, thereby detracting from the reading of the text. In addition, some of the footnotes are just plain wrong. For instance, when at one point the protagonist, Graham, is referenced as "one man who must die for the nation", Stover comments this is an obvious attempt to compare Graham to Jesus in a fictitious quote from the gospel. But, says Stover, this quote is nowhere in the four synoptic Gospels. The problem is that there are only three synoptic Gospels- synoptic referring to the first three Gospels- and the quote if found in the non-synoptic Gospel of John- 11.50.