Miriam seems to have noticed and put into words what many of us probably know already ... yet do not readily recognise.

The end result is that this book gives me a different perspective on how to view the opposite sex, and in turn, gives me an insight of how I, myself, might be viewed !!

Once again, the Bluffer's guides have turned up trumps ..... with a smile !!

This book is great erotica for the gay male S/M enthusiast. The author creates a richly described setting for his story which hits home with all the darkest non-consent fantasies a bottom has. Unlike lots of the work in this area, the details are extensive enough to bring a disturbing sense of reality to the story. It may well leave you pondering the depths of your own desires, both sexual and non-sexual.

The Putnam is an excellent series of aviation books. Every books in this series provides detail information of aircrafts, systems, development, performance and history. This book covers the history of British fighters from 1912 to now, almost every fights you can find in other books. Although there are books for individual Britich aircraft company in this series, this is the book to give comprehensive coverage of all British fighters since World War One to current fron line fighters.

This book gave an excellent overview of the history of Belgium and Bruges, and a nice overview of the main sites of the city. Furthermore, it's nice for someone only visiting Bruges that it only deals with that city. The small size makes it easy to shove in a pocket while touring.

I have a couple of nitpicks. First of all, the statement that "In the summer Belgium is seven hours ahead of US Eastern Standard time" is technically true, but misleading. It's six hours ahead of EDT. Also, "the maps in this book will provide all the detail you need" isn't true; it's very easy to get lost, since the side-streets aren't labeled.

Robert Mason tells you the story of Annie White as if she is reading you her diary. He draws you in because he has done a good job at reserching the Arizona territory before it became a state. But the reason for the burning of the 2 houses are only speculated on.Her 20year fight for compensation leaves the reader sympathetic and profoundly moved.

Captain Hugh North of G-2 Army Intelligence is assisting Major Bruce Kilgour, a British agent, on a case involving a series of murders in Cairo. The killer leaves a red-and-black female garter fastened about the left arm of each victim. The murders are somehow linked with the recent supplying of Arab tribes with modern weapons. Trouble is now brewing in Palestine. England does not like this situation and France does not like it either because of Palestine's proximity to Syria.

Solution of the crimes is aided by the ability of North and his allies to decode messages. One such message is written in hieroglyphics.

The author is a big dropper of place names as he tries to reassure the reader that he has first-hand knowledge of Egypt and especially Cairo.

This book contains three of the earliest Hugh North stories. THE VESPER SERVICE MURDERS is only the second of the author's twenty-six books featuring Hugh North. Captain North is invited to participate in the investigation of a series of murders in the city of Deptford, Massachusetts. Dr. Walter Allan, a friend of North, is used as a narrator by Mason. North is already famous because of newspaper publicity about previous cases he has solved dating back to World War I army service in Europe. Knowledge of American Morse code is employed by North as a tool of detection in this case. The novel is written in the style of a police detective story and it shows the promise realized in the later entries in this series which deal entirely with espionage and international intrigue.

In THE YELLOW ARROW MURDERS Hugh North is actually working as an agent of G-2 of the United States Army on a case in a foreign country. He is sent to Cuba to either buy or steal plans for an advanced torpedo which are being sold by its inventor in Cienfuegos. The seller of the plans calls himself Alvarado but his real name is Doelger. He is a disgruntled American who was discharged from the U.S. Navy for dereliction of duty in 1918. When North arrives in Cienfuegos, he finds plenty of competitors already there seeking the prize. Some are agents of their governments while others are merely adventurers in the game for profit. In one role or another there are representatives from England, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, Portugal and Italy. This is the first novel in the series in which North operates in a foreign country under orders from G-2 on a matter of international intrigue.

In THE BRANDED SPY MURDERS Captain Hugh North is sent to Honolulu. His mission is primarily to prevent a war from breaking out between Japan and the United States. A Japanese naval squadron is headed towards Honolulu with unknown intent. North attends a party at the home of Abner Polk, owner of a big American steel company. The other guests at the party include intelligence operatives from Russia, France, England and Japan as well as steel barons from France and Germany. All have an interest in either starting or preventing the war. Before the evening is over a dead female is found floating near Polk's dock. She has a strange design on her shoulder. Perhaps it is a tattoo that has been erased. Who is the dead girl and how does her death fit into a plot to start a war? The toughest obstacle North faces in this adventure is his attraction to Nadia Stefan, a beguiling Russian agent. Considering the fact that the story was written in 1932, the near attack by Japanese naval ships on Honolulu shows the author to be gifted with uncanny foresight.

Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Dangerous Dowager": B-

This Perry Mason mystery has a promising premise and opens nicely, but falters in the latter stages, never really bringing the disparate elements of the mystery together in a very satisfying way. The central problem with the story is that the mystery itself is too weak - Gardner fails to divert our attention from the crucial clue - the timing of the visits to the office where the murder is committed - and we realize who the guilty party is as soon as Perry himself does.

The situation is a good one, one that Gardner uses with outstanding results in some of the later entries in the Perry Mason series - dealing with a blackmailer. Matilda Benson engages Perry to buy back gambling IOUs signed by her niece, and held by the apparent owner of a gambling ship that cruises the waters just beyond the twelve-mile limit. Perry approaches the problem the way we've come to expect from a man who dearly maintains a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to blackmailers: with a frontal attack, full of bluff and bluster and the kind of aplomb that would unnerve the steadiest of criminals. This confrontation is very neatly handled by Gardner and makes for a very tense and satisfying read. A nice game of cat-and-mouse engineered by Perry.

On the night of the crucial confrontation, however, Perry finds the blackmailing holder of the IOUs dead, and Matilda Benson and her niece both aboard the cruise ship - and possibly engaged in that old shipboard pastime, toss-the-gun-over-the-railing. The coincidental visit to the ship of all the key characters on the same night is not carried off very convincingly - we are too aware of the sheer contrivance of the whole setup.

Despite the excellent situation and the effective ambiance of the gambling ship, getting Perry's client off the hook is a bit too easy - the comings and goings from the murder scene are too well monitored and too straightforwardly reported by Gardner to be sufficiently mystifying.

The set pieces are good and effective, but unfortunately the whole amounts in this case to less than the sum of its parts.

I loved reading this book, simply because of the way Gardner presented the whole plot.

One of the charms of Mason Mystery is the strange opening. This may be one of the strangest; when Mason was working in midnight, a mysterious girl was prowling on the fire escape; Mason tried to catch her who slapped his face and went away; the newspaper reported the incident as Mason's love affair and Della mocked him "it is not safe to trust you alone in the office." I enjoyed this opening very much. I also enjoyed the whole story.