This may be a good novel of the thriller genre; I never finished it. Why? Because of the author's cold calculation that his opening of the book - consisting of a masturbatory scene - would intrigue and tittilate the reader. Maybe if one is wrting to make a buck, this kind of thing is understandable. But that will never make it right. There are other Les Standiford novels on the bookshelves. I won't read those either.

Standiford has topped himself.His wonderfully drawn everday hero, John Deal, is out to find who killed his friend, bookstore owner, Arch Dolan. He teams up with estranged wife, Janice, for the ride of their lives. Don't miss out on this one. Standiford writes a wonderfully stylish thriller

DEAL ON ICE Les Standiford HarperCollins, Feb 1997, $23.00, 231 pp.

I certainly felt like doing so when the murderer was unveiled. I won't give anything away if for some reason you decide to read this book, but believe me the murderer is the one person who absolutely could not have committed the crime... at least not without more explanation from Pozzessere as to the logistics of the crime. But I went back and checked and double-checked and I'm positive that this was a case of this author's habitual sloppiness with details. Forget this book. It's not worth the frustration.

Wow! I haven't read a Graham book in a long time and I thought I would try out one of her contemporaries and boy was I shocked! I had only read her historicals all these years. This was excellent! The characters were so real and complex, I loved them! Especially the male lead of David Delgado. Whew, does he burn up the pages!!!

~Spencer Huntington just lost her husband, a police detective, to a brutal murder and now she is faced with the possibilty that the crime wasn't random at all. She needs help and only the trusted help of her husband's best friend and her former lover and ex-cop David Delgado. But, can she do it? She has to. She has to swallow her pride and put the past aside and get to the bottom of this heinous act.

David is from the wrong side of the tracks, being a former Cuban refugee as a child and struggling through life with nothing until his best friend Danny Huntington saved him. Danny made his friends David's too and they both fell in love with the same girl, a petite blonde rich girl named Spencer Montgomery. Ten years later, David is faced with his friend's murder and his widow, the only woman David ever loved.
...
Can their long lost love hinder their efforts for the truth or spur them on to the end? A killer awaits...

Gritty and very well written. As I would expect from Ms. Graham. David is very real and deep. Spencer is no 'rich girl' to be put on a shelf. These two make a real 'slow burn' on the pages and you will wish for more! The only complaint is that the killer is a little farfetched, but all in all, the story make up for it by far! Definate hot romance to read on a hot summer night even though I read it in March, lol.

Tracy Talley~@

David and Spencer are not your average lovers. With a long history and wonderful future, there story goes from Miami to Newport. With a killer thrown in it makes for a wondeful mystery as well! The pereferal characters are wonderful and add much to a great story. Cuddle up with this one on a winters night and before you know it, it will be spring.

The most useful aspect of the Fodor's Guide for Miamai and the Keys when compared to other guidebooks is that this book covers the areas north of Miami, all the way up the Atlantic coast to Sebastian. My past few trips to Florida have been to Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Vero Beach as well as Miami and the Keys. It's nice to have the basic information in one place.

However, I always feel that Fodor's guidebooks tend to be a little superficial. The last five or six I've read haven't included the hotels I've stayed at (for example a Hyatt that has been open for at least ten years). I also don't care for the type of paper stock that Fodors uses. I like to take a highlighter to my guidebooks and you can't use them on this paper because it bleeds through the pages. I will continue my quest for the perfect guidebook!

Great places to stay in Key West. Never disappointed...however, it forgot to mention the great cuban coffee, cafe con leche, that Frommer's went into detail with and had mentioned as a must have. Great restaurant's, esp. the cuban ones.

This book is probable very good with it's coverage of Miami and South Florida, but coverage of the Keys is bare minimum (47 pages (1 chapter of 13) of over 300 pages in the book).

The Fordor guides are a good source for the various locations around the globe. They are not as good as the Arthur Frommer guides. The Fodor guides are not for the budget traveler. They focus on the pricier accommodations and restaurants. But, what they do rate there is a wonderful detailed description. The maps could be a little more detailed.

The book seems to be good, but the translation is poor, and it is full of spelling errors - I only wished I had read the book in original language to really enjoy it! Between the translation and the spelling errors, it is very hard to read!! It is not a relaxing exercise any more. Pity!

This book is a wonderful story of two sisters that have lived separated for most of their lives. A view into life in Cuba and life in the US as an immigrant. The constant strugle between ones personal beliefs and those instilled by the Cuban government to it's people. It is most importantly about "familia" and the story of the Agueros (3 generations of them). I highly recommend this book (also available in English). Good use of imagery. I had forgotten I purchased it and just recently found it in my bookcase and what a surprise it turned out to be.

I bought this book hoping for great insight on Key West (an infinitely more desirable and intriguing locale to write about than Miami) and was sorely disappointed.

I really enjoyed Sehlinger's Unofficial Guide to WDW and frankly, expected more from this book. A lot more.

To be fair, most guide books don't pay nearly enough attention to the Keys, instead imparting more information than I ever wanted to know about Miami, a city that I've come to deplore.

It might be me; I just don't get the hype and focus on a sullied, soulless, filthville of a town like Miami over the glorious, exquisite keys.

At any rate, if for whatever unfathomable reason you really want to spend lots of time in Miami, this book is for you. If you're looking for Keys information, look elsewhere (though I haven't found a good alternative myself).

Just be forewarned that there's a good reason MIAMI has a huge typeface on the front and "the Keys" is shrunk down in size. It's a damned shame.

This book rates hundreds of hotels on quality, 1-4 stars, and also rates them by price. But the really excellent part is that the quality/price ratings are rolled into one more listing, and that is the VALUE listing.

Looking at the value lists, you can spot in the top value hotels a couple that are in your price range, and are high quality (relative to the others in that price range). When I was a college student in Florida this was a fantastic way to find a low priced hotel, and still be confident that it has good quality.

Unfortunately the (first edition) book does not have text descriptions of all the hotels, but really, that is not what I am looking for. I just want the best quality I can find for a certain price. It does have amenities listings, and phone numbers so you can go ahead and call the three or four hotels that look best value.

Now the first edition is seriously out of date in this very dynamic tourism market. The third edition is about two years old so it may be out of date, too, but the value guidelines will still hold for the key properties.

I LOVE some of Harry Crews' work so this came as a real disappointment. It seems designed to work as a sort of anti-establishment fable, and some of the characters are typical of Crews' better work. But this book lacks the heart and the careful plotting of the better books. It's almost as if this is self-parody, a kind of Harry Crews-meets-Soylent Green. I don't suggest this unless you are a committed fan!

For many years Crews has been one of my favorite novelists; his personal life is an astonishing example of how endurance can conquer tragedy. Futhermore, the early '90s books, BODY and THE KNOCKOUT ARTIST had him back on the track he had cut with the early novels. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for this near travesty. MULCHING, as an idea, has great promise, but the work reads like a rough draft. The author wants so badly for the audience to embrace the bizarre protagonists of this book, that he sacrifices plot and often sense to accomodate them. Rather than a scathing sendup on American business, MULCHING becomes a parody of its own ideas, a product without substance.

Although this book was not as strange, or as blatently shocking and funny as Crews' other masterpieces, this book is truly one of his greatest, and one of the greatest social satires to date. In the spirit of "Death of a Salesman" and in the tone of a truly tortured soul, this book was witty, remarkable, and brilliant.

Most written materials on either Cuba or the Cuban exiles are biased toward relentless criticisms or else justifications and praise.Not this one. Living in the Miami area, I find that the book has an uncanny portrait of this group impact on anyone who dwells here, whether one cares about Cuba or not. The influence that the Cuban exiles, and their political and local media have in this County is evident for anyone that followed the Elian story, let alone the national electoral events in 2000. This is well described in this book, with immediate character impressions in interviews that make it irresistibly suspenseful, especially in the first few chapters. The juxtaposition of persons of the Elian Gonzalez family in both sides of the exile divide, is presented with candid portraits and fresh information .The personal saga of the Castro family , and of the relatives which are at opposite poles of passion, often hatred, is particularly illuminating, and brings surprising data. The views of the persons left in Cuba give a human dimension that no doubt is a common experience to the over one hundred thousand Cubans that come and go every year, but unavailable to the rest of the US citizens who cannot travel to the Island. This is not a political or socio-economical treatise, and it has a minimum of quantitative information. Political events, especially those at the beginning of the Revolution, are incomplete and critical figures are glossed over. It indirectly describes- I believe impartially- the hardships of life in a one-Party state with few political and economical options, and suggests the adaptations that allow everyday endurance . Overall, it has the freshness and attraction of superb reporting. It cannot be ignored by those who need to understand a community with at times disproportionate influence in American life .

Wow! She's got guts. As an earlier reviewer noted, to understand the negative reviews of this book, you have to read the book. I read it in 2 days, although some of the sections on the Cuban exile community are just so disheartening/sad/frusturating that I had to skim over them.
The U.S. public has been fed one version of Cuba by a lazy media and pandering politicians. But more and more people are becoming more and more interested-visiting Cuba and educating themselves....Bardach's book is an excellent contribution!

...to read the polarity of reviews with which Ann Louise Bardach's book has been received ... but actually reading them makes one think that there is some sort of "agenda" behind the dismissive or more vitriolic ones. CUBA CONFIDENTIAL is simply brilliant. It reads like a great detective story and I finished it (devoured it, actually) over 2 days. Anyone interested in Cuba, history, politics and future generations or descendents of the Cuban people should DEFINTELY not miss the opportunity to "catch up" on an amazing story.

If you're interested in this-- read the books from Christian McLaughlin, Robert Rodi and Doug Guinan before you read this. It's not very well written and the story isn't especially exciting... the others are much better examples of the "gay beach novel" genre...

In this book, our hero, a young and handsome boy named Hugo, seems to sort of flow from one situation to another. His mother is a former model, now a realestate agent who has given him handsomeness which he uses to begin dancing in a strip club, getting a part on a local TV show and to attract the attentions of a former gay pron star who starts dating his mother at the same time. A later twist comes when a sleasy porn director wants to use him in his films later turns out to be his long lost fater in desperate need of money. The book never really seemed to alight anywhere for too long and I never really developed an affinity for any of the characters. I thought it odd that nobody seemed to ever tell anybody anything. For instance, the boy loves his mother, yet when he finds out she is dating the same man he is, who he also just found out was a porn acter in the 70's he doesn't suggest that it might be a good idea for her to get an AIDS test. Not a horrible book but not one I would read again.

An enjoyable read looking in on the life of an intelligent sixteen year old boy, Hugo, who discovers his sexulality while living in the South Beach area of Miami. There are some very bizarre developments in the story, yet, none are morbid or impossible. Actually, while reading as comical, much of the book calls upon the reader to think through their personal points of view on various issues. Some good examination of the range of sexual orientation (goood examples of degrees of hetero and homosexuality concept.)Hugo and his friends are delightful. His mother is a wonderful role model of a single parent who is mom and dad to her son without hindering his freedom or being nosy or invasive. The most ambitiously sexual character in the story is one that I could love or hate -- at least I found myself running from one of those directions to the other throughout my reading. Avoids the morbidity of AIDS which (perhaps correctly) has weighted down much of contemporary gay fiction. The story doesn't avoid the issue either -- simply places it in the kind of perspective that is probably much like the place gay men put it in going about their daily lives.A fast, worthy and endearing read. Leddick should be commended for his character development. There's a range of everyone and everything on earth threaded in this story and the author makes each memorable. Go for it! P.S. The cover has nothing to do with the book.

Book Review on Molly Bendall's Dark Summer

The poems in Molly Bendall's book Dark Summer deal primarily with the sexual experience. She seems to be infatuated with the topic referring to it in one way or another in just about every poem. Her constant references to sex leads the reader to suspect that she is speaking largely from personal experiences and frustrations with it Despite this overbearing emphasis on the sexual nature of humanity other value can be taken from the book. The poems describe relationships. In so doing, the reader can gain insight into the characters of the poems, and hence themselves. By looking past the sexual emphasis much can be learned from relationships in general. Bendall's poems often illustrate the dichotomy of existing and broken relationships. She describes the benefits that everyone desires yet their sad, oppressive, and fragile side as well. Overall, the book is an interesting read. Unlike many modern contemporary poems, most of Bendall's poems have a story line that the reader can decipher. The typical reader can relate in one way or another to many of her poems in the themes that they express.

What do most young men and women expect from the summer? They want beaches, no school, cold beer, and hot nights. Also, they expect a steamy summer love. You know, one of those relationships where two curious youths spend their days rolling in the sand, and the night rolling in each other's arms. The typical summer love is purely a physical experiment into newly discovered body parts and emotions. Once the summer draws to a close, the two young lovers move away from each other, only after one more sunset tryst by the water. They spend the next couple months dreaming of each other and the time they spent in the summer, but with little emotional attachment to each other. As many victims of summer romances realize, these relationships are not so easy to break away from. Young hearts are fragile and can shatter when they are forced to separate from their first love simply because the leaves change. In her book Dark Summer, Molly Bendall examines these relationships with a series of poems. Through her poetry, she describes how the heat and passion of summer can create serious emotional ties within young lovers. These are ties that are not as easy to let go of as some may expect. For anyone interested in exploring this side of love, I highly suggest Molly Bendall's Dark Summer.

Dark Summer is a wonderful book of poems; on the surface, the poems shimmer with elegance and luminous language that's almost seamless in its beauty. Beneath the surface lurks a more complicated tone, often tongue in cheek, almost savage. There is much more to Bendall's poems than initially meets the eye, like much good poetry, they reveal themselves slowly, and will reward the patient, careful reader.