Meet Wollie (short for Wollstonecraft) Shelley. She's the manager of a struggling greeting card store in a seedy part of Los Angeles. Wollie dreams of someday having enough time and money to design her own greeting cards full-time. Right now, though, Wollie has no time to spare. She is desperately trying to keep her store afloat, helping to care for her schizophrenic brother, and has agreed to participate in a dating experiment --- dating forty men in sixty days --- to help a radio shrink do research for a book on dating.

When Wollie drives to her brother's mental hospital late one night, she almost literally runs into a dead body. Then she's held hostage by a mysterious (but incredibly attractive) man she knows only as Doc. Who is this guy, and how is he involved with the murder? Why are two Swedish hit men on Wollie's tail? What is a ferret's favorite food? And will Wollie find the man of her dreams on the dating circuit or in a more unexpected place? These are just some of the burning questions answered in the course of DATING DEAD MEN's wacky, fast-paced plot.

Fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series will find much to enjoy in this mystery, the first in a series. Spunky Wollie keeps up a hilarious commentary on everything from the mystery itself to the absurd fashions she is required to wear on her dates. Wollie's sidekicks, including her uncle and her co-workers at the store, also add comic flavor to the tale. Unfortunately, many of these supporting characters drop out of sight midway through the book, as the plot grows increasingly complex.

As the mystery plot grows more central to the story, the weaknesses of this first novel show through. The two stories --- about the mystery and about the serial dating --- are not sufficiently integrated, and the relationships among the various mobsters can be as difficult to unravel as a plate of spaghetti.

There are some really poignant moments here, though, particularly regarding Wollie's brother and Doc's mute daughter. These thought-provoking characters help add depth to the novel, and readers will look forward to learning more about these characters in future installments. DATING DEAD MEN is a light-hearted romp through Los Angeles's singles scene and its crime scenes, and fans will be cheering for Wollie to find love and nab the bad guy in one fell swoop.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

There has been a lot of prepublication buzz about THE HAVANA ROOM by Colin Harrison. Everything you may have heard about this novel is true. It will be superglued to your hands, and to your mind, from practically the minute you begin reading it. There is only one way that I can describe how good it really is. After opening the book one morning and reading the first 319 pages in one sitting, I set the book down, shoveled the ice off of the driveway, and ran a few errands, all the while wondering how it would end. I simply wanted to make the experience of reading this spellbinding novel last a bit longer; I did not want it to end.

The most important lesson that one can learn about life is that every act carries its own potential for disaster, and that while there are ways to cut the odds, the house holds all the cards. This is a lesson that Bill Wyeth learns, at the cost of dear coin, in THE HAVANA ROOM.

Wyeth is a fabulously successful real estate attorney, still on the ascending arc of a brilliant career, when he commits an act of simple, almost offhand, courtesy that results in personal disaster. Within weeks he has lost his job, his family and his respect, while each day tolls his ever-deeper descent into his personal maelstrom.

The unplanned randomness of his life finds him entering a Manhattan steak house --- we never really learn its name --- where he finds himself slowly drawn into the web of Allison Sparks, the restaurant's attractive, enigmatic manager, and the Havana Room, a separate room in the restaurant where entrance is on an invitation-only basis and where what goes on is a closely held secret.

Wyeth and Sparks slowly form a conversational relationship, a relationship that begins a fateful culmination on the day that Sparks asks Wyeth to represent her friend, Jay Rainey, in a real estate transaction that must be concluded by midnight of that day. Wyeth has reservations about the transaction and his role in the matter almost from the beginning. The transaction, which amounts to a land swap involving a Manhattan building for some prime Long Island acreage owned by Rainey, brings Wyeth closer to Sparks at the price of ensnaring him in a mysterious, complex scenario that accelerates his downward spiral.

Wyeth is buffeted by a number of complex forces, among them a powerful Chilean businessman, a frightening hip-hop mogul, a farmer found frozen to a bulldozer and, most significantly, Rainey's obsessions, including his peculiar fixation on a fourteen-year-old British girl. The nexus connecting these seemingly disparate elements is ultimately located in THE HAVANA ROOM, where the denouement has the potential to ultimately result in disaster or redemption.

One of the most fascinating elements of THE HAVANA ROOM is the way in which Harrison keeps the plates containing different plot threads spinning while hypnotizing the reader to the extent that one can still see them rotating long after the book is done, and Harrison has taken his plates and poles, packed them up and gone home. But it is not just the exquisite plotting of the book that makes it such a delight. Harrison says more in a sentence than many writers do in a chapter, and more in a chapter than others do in an entire book. Harrison at one point gives, in a little more than three pages, a summary of the evolution of Manhattan real estate from its inception to the present. Is it complete? No. But after reading it, one could walk along Broadway in Times Square and feel the sense of history upon which the area is built.

At another point, when discussing Sparks, Harrison presents an interesting and bitingly accurate social and emotional commentary regarding the trajectory of the lives of the young, single women who come to work and live in Manhattan. His dissertation is only a few paragraphs long, yet contains more truth than any multiple DVD set chronicling a season of Sex and the City.

Harrison also has a way of making any character, no matter how secondary their role or fleeting their appearance, vibrant and real. This is true whether it involves a street punk on a subway stairway, an ex-cop running a down-at-the-heels diner, or a rap groupie strung out on heroin and the proximity of fortune. Perhaps Harrison's greatest strength, however, is his ability to infuse his characters with a quiet but strong nobility that enable them to make the best of a bad situation. In the end, all is not as it seems --- and if salvation is not at hand, there is at least the promise of it.

THE HAVANA ROOM may well be Harrison's breakthrough novel --- it certainly has that potential. It is a stunning triumph for him and a feast for the reader. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Together Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have written --- in my opinion --- some of the best thrillers of our time. Preston's solo effort THE CODEX earns that same praise. And if you are a fan of quest stories, you will enjoy this unique twist on a popular theme.

Aging and ill, Maxwell Broadbent has devised a highly unusual plan for the distribution of his impressive estate. An archaeologist-tomb robber, Broadbent has spent his life amassing an unparalleled collection of art and artifacts. His three grown sons are disappointments to him, but he can change that by sending them on the greatest adventure of their lives.

When the boys arrive at Broadbent's mansion to find it ransacked and virtually emptied out, they think their father has not only been robbed but kidnapped as well --- until they find the tape that begins with Broadbent himself saying, "Greetings from the dead." The eccentric millionaire has taken all his prized possessions and buried them in a crypt in Central America, and left instructions that the son (or sons) who find the treasure will inherit it. Oh, and Broadbent has buried himself with the goods!

The adventure begins. Vernon, the hippie spiritualist in the group, enlists his questionable guru for help. Philip, a professor, tracks down his father's former expedition partner, now a P.I., thinking who better to find Broadbent than the man who knew his past quests best. And Tom, a vet, declines to search until a beautiful young doctor convinces him that amongst the treasures is an item vital to the future of medicine and the future of mankind: the Codex.

The Codex is a Mayan book that contains the medical applications of the indigenous plants of Central America. When a failing pharmaceutical company learns of its existence, the race to feed greed and find Broadbent is on.

Thrilling, fast-paced and chock full of unexpected surprises --- including one Honduran who has claims on the inheritance as well --- THE CODEX is all that and more.

--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

Stephen J. Cannell recently celebrated his thirty-fifth year in what is commonly referred to as "show business." He has racked up some impressive statistics during that period. Cannell has been directly responsible for the creation of forty --- forty --- television series, many of which are still in syndication. He has also been the guiding creative hand behind a number of major motion pictures, and has recently become a spokesman for individuals affected with dyslexia.

During the past several years Cannell has also been writing novels that have achieved not only the commercial success one would expect but also much-deserved critical acclaim. At this point Cannell could probably phone in the plot and dialogue and still do well --- the man seems to be incapable of writing badly --- but he instead continues to demonstrate the craftsmanship and professionalism that have caused his work to be held in good stead during the past four decades.

VERTICAL COFFIN, Cannell's latest novel, is noteworthy on several levels. He has found a winning character in Los Angeles Police Officer Shane Scully, previously featured in the novels THE TIN COLLECTORS, THE VIKING FUNERAL and HOLLYWOOD TOUGH. Cannell continues to flesh out and develop Scully as he grows beyond the dimensions of the literary media. VERTICAL COFFIN finds Scully involved in a shootout, the result of a routine warrant service that goes horribly wrong. The carnage leaves an L.A. Sheriff's deputy --- Emo Rojas, a close friend of Scully's --- dead, a home destroyed, and a number of people asking why.

It appears that things went terribly wrong due to the negligence of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which gave the warrant to the Sheriff's Department but apparently neglected to mention that the subject of the warrant was thought to possess an arsenal of illegal weapons and explosives. This error results in Rojas's death, and the Sheriff's Department blames ATF for his death. The two agencies soon appear to be involved in a clandestine war, with first an ATF member and then an L.A. Sheriff being murdered in their homes. The mayor of Los Angeles, hoping to keep the violence from escalating, directs the LAPD to investigate. The investigation is handed to Scully, who in turn soon finds himself isolated between the two agencies, and he and his family are at risk.

Cannell's work throughout VERTICAL COFFIN, meanwhile, is absolutely first rate. His research into the hows and wherefores of SWAT team procedure and weaponry put the reader right in the strike vans; if you don't feel like you're choking on the gun smoke you're not reading closely enough. Cannell's plotting is meticulously detailed, complex yet simply told, so that it is impossible to lose the plot threads as they slowly but surely come together. He also pulls off a major coup by introducing a fascinating and unforgettable character within the last thirty-five pages of VERTICAL COFFIN, smoothly and plausibly integrating him into the storyline.

VERTICAL COFFIN is arguably Cannell's best novel to date. If you are not familiar with his other work, particularly the Shane Scully novels, this is the perfect place to begin what is sure to be a new literary addiction. If he continues on his present trajectory, Cannell may ultimately become better known for his novels than for his film work.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

You cannot come away from reading a Brad Meltzer book without being just a little smarter. THE FIRST COUNSEL provided an extremely interesting peek behind the curtains of the White House. THE MILLIONAIRES contained several side dissertations about finance that were not only informative but also interesting. In his latest offering, THE ZERO GAME, Meltzer provides an illuminating, and at times, quietly frightening look at the way the United States government does --- and does not --- work.

At age 19 Meltzer was an intern on Capitol Hill. Along the way he apparently acquired a bit of knowledge about appropriations committees. You've heard the term "appropriations committee." It's a term of art that usually causes one's eyes to glaze over. He apparently did a lot more than work on Capitol Hill, however; he observed and absorbed a lot as well, if THE ZERO GAME is any indication.

The initial focus of the novel is the appropriations committees of the House and Senate. Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are good friends who are on appropriations committees in the House and Senate, respectively. One day Sandler lets Mercer in on something called the Zero Game, which is kind of a clandestine government office betting pool. But it isn't a wager on football games --- it's a bet on such things as how many votes will be cast for or against House resolutions, or whether items will be included or excluded from bills or resolutions. The fact that the participants in the game don't know the identity of the other players, other than the pool member who invites them to participate, adds to the intrigue.

Meltzer initially takes a bit longer to set up THE ZERO GAME than he ordinarily does in his novels, and for just a page or two his regular readers might wonder if he's going to tone things down a bit for this offering. Never fear. The quiet beginning is a setup. After the first 50 pages or so Meltzer takes a completely unexpected left turn that will have you rereading a paragraph or two several times until you're sure that he actually did what you think he did. I still can't believe it, but he did do it.

From there, Meltzer doesn't even give his reader a chance to come up for air. What appears to be a harmless, even beneficial, line item in an appropriations bill --- authorizing the private acquisition of an abandoned, and apparently worthless, gold mine in South Dakota --- becomes a wager subject of the Zero Game and leads to a desperate cross-country race to determine why someone is willing to stop at nothing --- including murder --- to ensure that the transfer of the land goes through.

Meltzer is in fine form here, as his protagonists are pursued back and forth across the country with an ultimate, and perhaps symbolic, showdown in the bowels of the Capitol Building. The elements that make Meltzer's work so addictive are all present here. Meltzer has few equals in his ability to ratchet the suspense level of his narratives to new highs, all the while dropping interesting little factoids about the nooks and crannies of his well-known surroundings. I learned more about the Capitol Building in a few pages of THE ZERO GAME than I learned from a solid year of high school civics. Yet Meltzer never lets the information drag his storyline down. There are times when reading this book is like being taken on a tour of the Capitol Building by a tour guide who has a pistol stuck in your ear while you race through the corridors of government. You know where you are and you're conscious of what he's saying, but you're praying that everything turns out okay.

Meltzer also demonstrates some familiarity with caverns. I don't know if he is a spelunker in his spare time, but his descriptions of mine shafts and caverns are dead on. Maybe a little too dead-on, actually. If you're at all claustrophobic, you might want to read the last half of the book outside so you can take a breath once in a while.

With THE ZERO GAME Meltzer continues to demonstrate his ability to present a complex plot in an understandable manner while using it as a method to propel his characters, and the reader, through a reading experience that is unstoppable. Although this is only Meltzer's fifth novel, he writes like a Grandmaster of many years' experience. If you haven't reserved a bookshelf in your library for him yet, you will soon.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Mike Gershman was in the final stages of lung cancer before the doctor discovered he was sick. Every night after that, his wife of 25 years lay in his arms and sobbed, "What will I do without you?"

"You will go to Paris," he said.

Six weeks after the official diagnosis, he was dead.

In the officially-sanctioned grief book, the widow mopes in her house, wrapping herself in her husband's old shirts and becoming a pariah among friends and family. She hits bottom, crawls to some officially-approved house of redemption, and there, in the glow of the love of the Lord, starts the slog back toward life --- which includes, along the way, the writing of an officially-sanctioned grief book and the appearance of a Good Man (though never, of course, as good as her husband).

This is not that book, for the simple reason that Suzy Gershman is not that woman. She grieves for her husband, alright, but she's no moper. Indeed, rarely have I encountered a woman with such an optimistic take on life. She likes people, and people like her right back. She likes going out --- she's the author of the Born to Shop guides --- and the folks she meets in shops and cafes quickly fall under her spell.

So 52-year-old Suzy Gershman, to the surprise of her college-age son and a good many of her neighbors, walked out of her cozy, memory-filled house in Westport, Connecticut, and moved to Paris. (What would have surprised friends and family more: "I paid for the funeral with a credit card. I wanted the miles.")

And once she got to Paris, she had adventures with a capital A. Renting an apartment is a chore at best in France; the rules are crazy, the landlords often sadistic. Suzy's spared nothing; good cheer carries her through. Ditto the buying of a bed --- you have no idea how complex a transaction that is --- and the shock of buying standard kitchen items at three times the American price.

But Paris, she discovers, is a place where she can thrive. It's not just the flower-markets and cafes, it's the culture. A cheery news story reminds her that the French didn't have more sex per week, but that they have more sex later in their lives. Her conclusion: "Maybe every American woman over fifty should move to France."

Prose this breezy grabs your hand and just pulls you along. You race with Suzy through the first year of her new life as "The Runaway Widow" tosses off useful advice for Paris visitors and the bereaved with equal insouciance. Naturally, because her charm is so infectious, she meets a man whose opening salvo is "You are too beautiful to walk past me. I say a prayer you will stop to talk to me."

Widows don't have sex? That's only in the officially-sanctioned books. Suzy Gershman not only goes to bed with this man --- this married man, in fact --- she describes their frolics in what might be called lurid detail. Women of a certain age will cheer her, even as they want to tell her what she already knows: He's wrong for her.

"Life handed me a lemon," she writes, near the very happy ending. "Somehow I had made citron pressè ...and it was sweet." How sweet? This book makes you want to go to Paris immediately. And, once you get there, it makes you think you must call Suzy, for in just 270 pages, she has become an old and dear friend.

--- Reviewed by Jesse Kornbluth

Stuart Dybek's I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN arrives more than a decade after his previous book, a short story collection titled THE COAST OF CHICAGO. While it's neither a blockbuster nor a doorstop tome like Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited MIDDLESEX or Donna Tartt's years-in-the-making THE LITTLE FRIEND, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN is definitely worth the wait, serving as a reintroduction to a writer who captures his old Chicago neighborhood with documentary detail and raconteur flourish.

Despite its billing as a novel, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN is actually a series of short stories that have locales and characters in common. All feature a teenage narrator named Perry and all are set in the Little Village community of Chicago during the early 1960s. Dybek lovingly and often humorously evokes this time and place through telling observations.

Poor families use old bed sheets for curtains and veterans order shots for friends who didn't come back from the war. It's a dangerous, often discouraging neighborhood, and in strong, unfussy prose Dybek describes "the daily round of life where bag ladies combed alleys and the homeless, sleeping in junked cars, were found frozen to death in winter. Laid-off workmen became wife beaters in their newfound spare time; welfare mothers in the projects turned tricks to supplement the family budget; and it seemed that every day someone lost teeth at one or another of the corner bars."

Fortunately, Dybek lets his lively characters --- including a junior high writing prodigy named Camille Estrada and a slob hitman named Joe Ditto --- run wild in this setting. Rather than engineering plots and scenes for them, Dybek simply lets them tell their own stories, a rare talent that gives the book a personal, unrehearsed quality. Plus, it makes for some truly weird goings-on. As a coming-of-age story, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN eschews any predictability in favor of a dreamlike flow of events and characters, many of which are supersaturated with local color.

There is, for instance, the Chickenman, who walks around town with a chicken perching on his head and pecking corn off his tongue. And there's Little Village's unofficial child saint, Ralphie Poskozim, who was born with blue skin: "The blue was plainly visible beneath his blue-green eyes, smudges darker than shadows, as if he'd been in a fistfight or gotten into his mother's mascara. Even his lips looked cold."

All of these strange characters are filtered through Perry's perspective, and as the novel progresses, he grows up and his concerns become more adult. Fortunately, as Perry gains more freedom, the stories don't lose their charm or their sense of wonder.

Memory works in flashes, not in fluid narratives, and it allows for exaggeration of facts. In the end these chapters cohere into something larger than a short-story collection, but the book is not like a proper novel. This is certainly not a criticism: the form of I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN may be unclassifiable, but its inventiveness and spirit are undeniable.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

Rhys Bowen's third novel in the award-winning Molly Murphy mystery series is a story sure to be recognized on its own merit. A combination of Murphy's Irish temper, loyalty to her chosen profession and stubbornness make for good reading.

After the death of her mentor, Murphy sticks with her attempt to earn a living as a female private detective in turn-of-the-century New York City. When she stakes out a client's husband as a possible wife-cheater, her troubles multiply. She's not welcome in bars or on the street late at night, places necessary for a private eye to operate. More than once, she is harassed by the New York City Police who mistake her for a criminal. Murphy is reluctant to seek help from her former lover, Captain Daniel Sullivan, at the precinct. But more than once he intervenes on her behalf.

Murphy's spunky spirit pulls her out of the doldrums on numerous occasions. At a time when she is penniless, without a client and nearly giving up, an opportunity comes her way to persevere. She's involved in the women's rights issues of the day when she takes on a case to locate a mole in the garment industry. Labor unions, gangland mischief and further tangles with the law become her daily companions.

At the same time, Murphy has accepted a missing person search for a family in Ireland. Their daughter, Katherine, has fled to the United States with her lover, Michael. Her father has reason to think that the runaways may have gone to New York City. Murphy's research leads her to a dead end. It appears as if the girl and her husband may have been murdered. However, Murphy doggedly follows any lead that might promise a positive outcome.

Bowen's Murphy is determined, relentless, plucky, pretty and definitely possesses an Irish temperament. She is stubborn when offered help, preferring her own instincts for survival. The men in her life seek to protect her, but she sees their attempts as interference. Jacob Singer vies with Capt. Sullivan for Murphy's love, but she puts her job ahead of them both. There is no satisfaction for the reader who wants a neat romantic knot tied.

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE is full of the flavor of New York City at the turn of the century. Sweatshop turmoil and the plight of the lower end immigrant worker are given colorful treatment. The infancy of labor union struggles and women's suffrage movements are well documented. FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE is a well-paced and well-researched mystery novel that leaves the invitation open to the next book in the Molly Murphy series.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Melissa Dickinson was in her senior year at Miss Porter's School in Connecticut. "In her father's family ... the women always attended Miss Porter's --- even her, no matter how far down the family hierarchy she was rated. Her father wanted to be President, and her mother was determined to get him there. Daddy's importance was like a family member, bigger and even more visible than her two older siblings, Richard IV" ... an ambitious younger version of his politician father ... and her sister, smart, beautiful, lawyer-to-be Merilee. Her younger sibling Billy was the rebel but he had an edge that made him "acceptable" because he was handsome and smart. As the third child among the four, Lissa felt like a misfit. She had failed before she started in this family. And as the "outsider" she had taken an objective view of her family and she didn't particularly like what she was saw. In her position "she was powerless, but she could try to place them in perspective, she could learn and criticize, silently, stealthily. With [her parents] all was stealth."

Marge Piercy, who has written fifteen novels, sixteen books of poetry, a writing manual, a play, a memoir, a collection of essays and has edited an anthology of poetry written by American women opens her latest novel, THE THIRD CHILD, by introducing the reader to the Dickinson clan through the eyes of the story's mixed-up, unhappy, and very lonely heroine. Now that she was eighteen ... "she had gradually come to understand things that had been encoded and hidden when she had been young and naïve. Her past with her parents rewrote itself as she gathered knowledge, as the landscape of her childhood mutated out of ... blue skies to a landscape with shadows and dark pits and hidden fires burning," under the imperfect reality of her powerful parents. This form of narrative works perfectly; especially when she gives us hints of what we can expect to emerge as the novel unfolds.

"The first big event Melissa remembered after her father had become governor (of Pennsylvania) was an execution. The prisoner's name was Toussaint Parker, and he had killed a policeman." On the night he was to be put to death, the governor's mansion was surrounded with protestors, "[m]ommy called the demonstrators softheads ... [she] said it was an excuse for the radicals and the commies and the softheads to make a fuss, but no judge was going to let off a Black troublemaker who killed a cop." Her father, the current senator, was the prosecutor at the time of the trial and it was he who got the conviction.

Piercy is a rebel in ideology and action. She became politicized when she protested the war in Vietnam and much of her writing reflects her commitment to righting wrongs imposed on individuals. Usually, she writes about women who are struggling to escape whatever confines them. In THE THIRD CHILD, the protagonist is very much trying to stave off the knifelike criticisms heaped on her by her mother, while trying desperately to shed the role she was forced into as the family's scapegoat. Her world is often bewildering, and when she finally graduates from high school and gets to Wesleyan she begins to slowly pull herself away from their dark influence.

"Melissa felt as if she abandoned past selves like snake skins of shame along her bumpy route to adulthood ... she viewed herself as a project under construction, the road all torn up ... [s]he would remake herself ... into somebody strong and important." Unfortunately, Blake, the man she meets and falls in love with, has a hidden agenda that will lead her down a path littered with landmines, searing explosions and irreversible decisions. With his encouragement she begins to slowly investigate her father and his political history.

Blake introduces her to a fellow classmate, Phil, the son of the investigative reporter who ... "had tried for years to smear her father and never succeeded. Phil was engaged in amassing long lists of contributors to [her father's] campaigns and to organizations supporting him. They were looking for interlocking directorates of corporations and institutions to identify the men --- and it was eighty percent men --- who had given and given again, whose pockets were deep for Dick." Slowly, Melissa begins to uncover secrets her parents have worked diligently to keep buried. Her politicization helps foster the tension between protagonist and antagonists. Piercy does more than create suspense; she has molded her characters in perfect relief to each other. Their actions result in repercussions beyond anything each of them could have predicted, thus pummeling them as every event unfolds.

THE THIRD CHILD is a phenomenal story comprised of a carefully thought out thematic structure that is very complex. The issues addressed are many and range from a coming-of-age story, to an intense love story; from a political treatise, to a fully realized novel; from its chilling undertones it often reads like a mystery; and as we move along with Lissa, we see, too, that it has all of the elements of a true bildungsroman. Marge Piercy gives readers a valiant heroine, a young woman who painfully comes to know herself and her family.

This novel is very provocative and resonates with passions that are both restrained and at the same time allowed to run wild. Many of Piercy's novels often end sadly, but that is no reason not to read them and learn from them, to think about them and grow with them. Enjoy!

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

The title of this book, MY PRISON WITHOUT BARS, appears on a background of solid red, perhaps as a nod to the team on which Pete Rose earned his fame and infamy. On the back is a photo taken when he broke Ty Cobb's all-time hit record, showing him in an uncharacteristic display of emotion ("I'm not a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy" is his mantra). It could also be a metaphor for the shame one might expect him to feel over his banishment from baseball for almost fifteen years.<m.

Ultimately, as Rose has maintained, he is the only one who really knows the whole story. He has been lying so long, why should the public believe him now? What can he really say to persuade a public anxious to welcome the return of baseball's prodigal son?

He concludes MY PRISON WITHOUT BARS with a left-handed regret: "I know I [messed] up. . . . I'm sorry it happened and I'm sorry for all the people, fans, and family that it hurt. Let's move on."

Readers will undoubtedly interpret his story in different ways, depending on point of view. Some will agree that his vice is his own business and that he should be reinstated. Others might believe there is no excuse for his transgressions and demand his exile remain in place. Then there are those who might be more forgiving, believing that he did wrong, paid the price and should be forgiven.

Is this the final say on the matter? If he is ever allowed back into baseball's good graces, and into baseball's Valhalla, don't bet against another volume on the life of Pete Rose.

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan