In 1979 Spokane, veteran Scott Moody is struggling with regaining control of his life. He has recently spent time in a mental institution and has quit his job as a private investigator. Instead, the former Nam grunt works on a newspaper and drives a cab. Though Scott hopes to one-day return to his ex-wife and child, he dates the beautiful heiress Xanthia Welch.

As he makes progress in straightening himself out, Moody has a setback, not of his making. He is the prime suspect in the stabbing murder of Xanthia's father, Andrew, an eminent businessman. Moody re-dons his sleuthing cap as he tries to prove his innocence by solving the murder in which he is the only witness.

Readers will forever know the type of who-done-it that stars Scott Moody. Like the debut tale (MOODY GETS THE BLUES), the second novel is a humorous, but convoluted satire of mysteries. Moody remains charming in a weird way and the support cast is a twisted crowd who add to the facetiousness even as they propel the story line forward. Though not for everyone, Steve Oliver has scribed a tale that will leaves fans of the offbeat mystery shouting MOODY FOREVER

Harriet Klausner

Quick, Excellent reference.

F. Burgess

I usually buy every year.

Smith's diary is especially insightful, and I used it a lot when I was writing my history of the Flying Tigers. He has a good eye for geography; I especially liked his account of driving up the Burma Road to the AVG's home base in Kunming.

I own the paperback; it was chock-a-block with photos, which I assume are included in the Schiffer edition. Good reading for all Flying Tigers buffs.

We take these technologies for granted now, but when Chennault first proposed them he was laughed at by the fledgling air forces that stumbled along between the two world wars with no vision. Chennault had the vision of what modern air warfare would become. He proved it with the Flying Tigers by taking an under-manned, under-equipped, and under-funded unit and making it into the bane of the enemy.

Robert Smith puts you there in the radio room, nursing the equipment, listening through static, sifting the reports and making the critical decisions to scramble the planes. The pilots got the glory. Smith told them where the glory was to be gotten.

This is a little known page in the history of aerial warfare that is told clearly, up front and personal, by a man who was right there in the thick of it.

I heartily recommend With Chennault in China to anyone interested in The Flying Tigers and/or air combat history.

Steve Mays Pastor, Laurens, SC.

You will read about Rev. Harper's last moments in his losing battle for life in the icy Atlantic, and the effect on the last person struggling in the water with him that survived. You will also be painted a vivid picture of his informative years by his brother and the story about his wife, lost six years earlier. This book also contains a gripping message delivered the Sunday after the sinking, to his grieving church in England, by his Associate Pastor. There is also a message from Rev. Harper himself.

Don't miss this book, it will make you think, touch your very soul, and could change your life too. This book is great to read again and again, as you will get something new out of it every time.

There is also another book ("Titanic" by Leo Marriott) that contains a photograph of a hand written letter written by John Harper to a friend, nine days before he sailed, about how he came to take the Titanic.

His plotting is sort of Dickens "lite." There are mysterious benefactors, sudden tragic deaths, reversals of fortune, paternity mysteries, ect. His prose is cleaner and easier to read than both Dickens and James; "Casterbridge" scans better than "Bleak House" or "The Wings of the Dove."

The story begins when a pastoral laborer, in a drunken rage, sells his wife and child one evening. When he wakes the next morning, abhorred at what he has done, he swears off liquor and decides to make something of his life. The novel truly begins eighteen years later, when his wife and daughter come back to present themselves to him. In the course of the rest of the novel, we witness the fall of the now Mayor of Casterbridge, brought about by his own character flaws and the interventions of fate.

Henchard, the main character, is a facinating combination of hot-spirited volition and turn-on-a-dime repentance. He is quick to do things which damn him but just as quick to admit his guilt. He is a wonderful character and a precursor to the later "psychological" novels of James and Forster. The satellite characters remind one of Dickens, but they are not nearly as startling and interesting, but of course, a character such as Henchard never existed in all of Dickens.

The novel proceeds to its forgone conclusion inexorably, albiet with a few melodromatic touches, yet it sustains its tone and readibility due mostly to Henchard, and the dramatic situations Hardy puts him through.

Well worth a look.

The plot in Mayor of Casterbridge is compelling throughout. I read somewhere that the book was originally published a few chapters at a time in a literary magazine, and this is quite evident, as every many sections seem individually complete with rising action, climax, resolution, etc. Hardy still manages to integrate these individual sections without flaw and create a wonderful composition of the life of Henchard. As everyone else has testified, the conclusion of the book is moving beyond description- without a doubt the most affective book I've ever read. Be forewarned: this is a book that will surely leave the reader in a depressed and brooding state. Going by Kafka's standard, that a book should be "like a suicide... an axe for the frozen sea within us", The Mayor of Casterbridge is surely one of just a handful of the great books in English literature.

The story in Purple America takes place over the course of one weekend, at the beginning of which Hex Raitliffe has returned home to suburban Connecticut to care for his deteriorating mother. While Moody slips the main character trough one mishap after another, he tours the realities of a mortal family as well as a diseased society. The book at times can be disheartening to read, because Hex Raitliffe is a sympathetic main character, but Moody's diagnoses for America points to rampant toxicity, radiation, the myopic misuse of technology, pollution, nervous overconsumption, and a male preoccupation with weaponry. By the end, when the remains of Hex's mother's body, a nuclear power plant, and nearly every human relationship has broke down, the author seems to have skipped any prognosis, deemed America past decline and created an autopsy for his bruised purple nation.

Despite the sad underlying tone, this book should pull you in by the sheer force of the language. The first two sentences, describing Hex giving his invalid mother a bath, make the most powerful opening to any novel I've read. The book in many ways reproduces the promise of that first chapter. The language soars, but is used to describe the most everyday activities. The brilliantly written sex scene of Hex's awkward reunion with his high school crush is an example. One reviewer for this reason, and accurately I think, calls the book a "domestic thriller." It is about the most ordinary of guys in an ordinary family, but in duress. It was interesting to read Moody catalogue the excesses of suburban living-inside the Raitliffe manse, the "mahogany couch-with-end-tables, the carved Brunswick Craftsman-style pool table, the inlaid music cabinet with Victrola, the rosewood love seat and parlor set, the imitation British pub-style bar with Waterford crystal low and highball set, the early Magnavision monochrome television receiver, the floor-model French birdcage with stuffed parrot, and more"-listing the material possessions that the Raitliffes and others in their neighborhood have amassed.

In that sense, the book is a kind of elegy for a class. The purple of America and the purple that Billie Raitliffe longs to surround herself with is the classic purple of royalty, but Hex's family-his ill mother and skipped-town step father-never meet their "ideal of rural paradise." Instead, words come easily to no one; communication within the family is stilted; Billie, the mother, resignedly talks through a computer; Hex stutters uncontrollably, and it seems they have just as little fluidity of access to their emotions. Billie wants someone to end her suffering. Her second husband, Lou, goes AWOL when he gets bored caring for a woman who doesn't want to live and her son balks at the possibility of euthanasia, choosing instead to stuff his face with a cheeseburger. Hex's sense of duty toward and simultaneous flight from the responsibilities of home create much of the tug and pull throughout the remainder of the book. And in Rick Moody's hands, it is a worthwhile, if not always upbeat, weekend to spend with the Raitliffes.

Surely even those who have never read this Charles Dickens' classic could recite the basic elements of its plot. Who among us is unfamiliar with the story of the young orphan who musters up the courage to ask, "Please, sir, I want some more." And yet this novel is so much more than a mere rags-to-riches story. It is also the heartwarming story of the triumph of good versus evil and of the human spirit's ability to face down adversity. Dickens pits an innocent child against the dangers of an uncaring world, and the story's happy ending is at once a celebration of Oliver's innocence and an affirmation of all that is right and just in society.

Though the prose can be tedious at times, Dickens' mastery of the English language is difficult not to appreciate. And while some may find the plot cliché, there is sufficient tension throughout the novel to maintain the reader's interest. For myself, I was continually surprised, as the chapters unfolded, to realize how much more there was to this classic than simply a story about an orphan who falls in with a gang of unruly pickpockets. This is definitely worth reading, even if you feel like you have already read it as a child.

"Oliver Twist" is a complex story about the English welfare system for orphans, overlayed by a story of love, family, and the pursuit of each.

What is missing from this version is Dickens' long descriptions and thorough presentations of a situation. What makes Dickens great, in part, is his multi-woven characters, filled with color and excitement. Some of that is lost here.

That said, this is an excellent choice for an older child having trouble reading, or the younger, aggressive reader. The story about Oliver Twist is strong enough to endure an adaptation, but, later on, it is a thrill to read the original version.

I fully recommend "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens.

Anthony Trendl