I just finished Lewis Purdue's The da Vinci Legacy after several jerky starts. No matter how many times I started it, I was unable to find the hook, the interesting thing that would pull me in and keep me reading. After 400 pages, I still had not found it....

It's rare to come across a writer as ham-fisted and inept as Purdue, whose heroes are manly and capable, whose villains are purest evil and whose plotting is nearly non-existent. Vance Erickson, the main hero, is an everyday joe who just happens to be able to find oil where no one else can and who also just happens to be one of the world's foremost amateur Da Vinci scholars. Lucky, then, that it is he and no other who comes across the bogus codex and recognizes it for what it is. Suzanne Storm is a reporter for a fluffy culture magazine who also happens to be a former CIA operative. In true hammy heroic fashion, the two, who initially can't stand one another, fall in love after the first gun battle.

The villains are a band of excommunicated Catholic monks who seem to be behind every famous missing-persons case in history. They want the codex so they can work their nefarious evil by turning its contents into the most powerful weapon ever created. Apparently they were extremely competent until the present, when they keep conking Vance on the head and storing him in locked rooms from which he escapes easily, instead of just killing him. That's the whole of the suspense in this book; Vance getting conked on the head and escaping.

In other areas, Purdue's writing is just plain embarrassing to read. His exposition reads like he simply transcribed a Who's Who entry. His romantic pronouncements are as real and heart-felt as a teenaged girl's. His action sequences are so dull I had to physically restrain myself from flipping forward.

There are many, many better ways to spend your time than with this book. Try plucking all the hairs out of your arm with tweezers: it's bound to be more interesting and rewarding than reading a Lewis Purdue novel.

The Judas Virus opens with a bang and keeps us guessing until the very end, which is just what I like in a thriller. Author David Best (some might know his as Don Donaldson) handles his latest book with his usual precision and skill.
Chris Collins is a doctor in an Atlanta hospital who is confronted by her terminally-ill father, Wayne, years after he had walked out of her and her mother's life. With unparalleled gall, he asks her to donate a piece of her liver so that he might live. She refuses, but pulls some strings to get him accepted in an experimental program.

The suspense builds when an unknown virus affects not only ayne, but the nurses who treat him. But the weird thing is that the virus makes the infectees feel better, healing old wounds and salving aches - right up until it makes them blind and kills them.

Chris and her colleague Michael suspect there's more going on than meets the eye and begin a private investigation, which draws a killer's attention to them.

Reading David Best is like riding Splash Mountain at Disneyland. The ride is mesmerizing, with plenty to draw your attention and keep your interest, right up until you drop off the side of the mountain, your heart in your throat. The suspense here builds slowly, tantalizingly, and the payoff is a good one.

One of Best's best features as a writer is his economy of words - every word is chosen for maximum effect. His characters and motivations are real enough to make you believe the action. And that's no mean feat. I recommend The Judas Virus and I can't wait to see what he does next.

The Judas Virus opens with a bang and keeps us guessing until the very end, which is just what I like in a thriller. Author David Best (some might know his as Don Donaldson) handles his latest book with his usual precision and skill.

Chris Collins is a doctor in an Atlanta hospital who is confronted by her terminally-ill father, Wayne, years after he had walked out of her and her mother's life. With unparalleled gall, he asks her to donate a piece of her liver so that he might live. She refuses, but pulls some strings to get him accepted in an experimental program.

The suspense builds when an unknown virus affects not only ayne, but the nurses who treat him. But the weird thing is that the virus makes the infectees feel better, healing old wounds and salving aches - right up until it makes them blind and kills them.

Chris and her colleague Michael suspect there's more going on than meets the eye and begin a private investigation, which draws a killer's attention to them.

Reading David Best is like riding Splash Mountain at Disneyland. The ride is mesmerizing, with plenty to draw your attention and keep your interest, right up until you drop off the side of the mountain, your heart in your throat. The suspense here builds slowly, tantalizingly, and the payoff is a good one.

One of Best's best features as a writer is his economy of words - every word is chosen for maximum effect. His characters and motivations are real enough to make you believe the action. And that's no mean feat. I recommend The Judas Virus and I can't wait to see what he does next.

I try to write balanced reviews. I try to delineate what an author does well and where he screwed up in even doses whenever possible. Well, that's just not going to be possible with this book, because Christopher Golden did nothing right with "Into the Wild". This book is a disappointment from beginning to end.

Let's start with Oz himself, our favorite cold-blooded jelly donut. Oz is an intense presence, a sponge who soaks up everything around him, cogitates and usually returns a thoughtful gem of truth. The guy in this novel was fairly chatty, never insightful and kind of dorky.

The story: novels about self-discovery have rules, one of the most important being, the person must discover HIMSELF. Oz does not truly come to know himself during the course of the story. he hops a ship, chats with some folks, meets some demons, gets chased by a werewolf hunter. But he never approaches the elusive self, the animal within. Twice Christopher Golden uses the hoary old werewolf plot device, the full moon countdown..."Dateline: Two Days until full moon". If used properly, this can be an effective suspense builder; we know Oz is a good guy and, in the past, the Scooby Gang has always been there to make sure his honor stays intact and he doesn't kill any innocents. But here, alone, without friends, what will the animal inside do? How will he cope? How will we deal with seeing our boy Oz as a savage killer, remorseful and even more driven to curb his wild side? Well, we won't. Because Golden cheaps out and Oz manages to find someone to lock him up JUST IN TIME! It's a copout the first time Golden does this to us; it's insulting the second.

For some inexplicable reason, Golden introduces us to a hot-tempered Fire Demon chick who rides Oz's coattails to Tibet, where she, too, will learn to control her talents. So, somehow, Golden manages to divert the focus from Oz onto this dull, petty, whiny little sprite without enough sense to duck when people are hurling things at her.

And don't get me started on the Tibetan werewolf monks. Jeez. I'd rather live in any town in any "Seven Samurai" remake than hook myself up to these clowns. It's like they hung a sign on the door that says "Come in and kill us. We'll leave the light on for ya".

The pacing was awful, the writing was awful, the characterization was awful. And, oh yeah, the book was awful.

Those who take issue with John Evangelist Walsh's "Midnight Dreary" are, I think, missing the point. Certainly, there is truth to the suggestion that this is two books, one, a detailed recreation of the last days of Poe and two, the author's attempt to make sense of the random data and form a reasonable explanation.

In the first instance, Walsh succeeds beyond one's expectations. I ahve read dozens of biographies of Poe and have not come across a good deal of this material. Letters, journal entries, recollections of personal interviews - Walsh succeeds in bringing extant material to light.

In the second endeavor, Walsh has not been as successful. In my opinion, he falls into every theorists greatest trap - attempting to bend the facts to fit his hypothesis. In several cases, Walsh accuses his subjects of faulty memory and/or outright embellishment. "Such and such can not have occurred on this date, but if we assume that the wrier was incorrect and it actually occurred on blah-blah date, then it all makes sense." No. No and no. As observers of history, we do not have the luxury of assuming those who lived it were forgetful liars.

Nonetheless, this IS an interesting book and it is a treasure trove of data for those interested in Poe's death. Additionally, it is written in an interesting, conversational style that I found quite readable. I enjoyed this book, as a reader and as an historian.

This is my favorite Christmas album of all time and that includes "Alligator Stomp, Vol. 4 - Cajun Christmas". The whole CD crackles with wit, warmth and holiday tradition; at the same time it ruffles the hair of convention.

Most of the tunes are tasty, a generous mix of old chestnuts and new tunes. Everything but the Girl's "25TH December" is a slow and poignant beauty; Donna Lewis' "Christmas Lights" is a synchopated wonder, reminiscent of her now outdated "Always and Forever". The talented Tori Amos breathes new life into the bloated corpse of "The Little Drummer Boy".

If you're feeling a little wacky this Christmas, give it a try. If nothing else, you'll at least have a bright, shiny new coaster.

Joanne Dobson's mystery of academia is a passable book. It certainly wasn't unpleasant to read, but I don't feel I gained much from reading it. Most of the facts in the life of Edgar Allan Poe were known to me prior to reading this novel, but since the Poe connection was what drew me to the book, I can't help but feeling a little cheated. That's my issue, though, not yours.

Main character Karen Pelletier is innocuous enough, and the book is at it's most interesting in the classroom scenes, where Dobson is able to inject some life into Pelletier's dialog. Other than that, she's just a ham-fisted academic trying to act sly when asked to question her fellow professors after the murder of a colleague.

I didn't get a read on any of the other characters at Enfield College. Most were academic archetypes rather than true characters. I was neither intrigued nor interested in the petty squabbling and ca't get behind any murder motivated by achieving tenure.

The love interest/cop is an okay guy, smart in a Matlock kind of way, which is to say that he seems dumb on first meeting. Unfortunately, it will be my only reading because this book just didn't grab me and make me want to read the rest of the series.

On a semi-related note, it's kind of sad that some people have built certain literary figures up to the point that they are unable to see his flaws. Poe was a deeply flawed man, very whiny and of dubious character. He really did many of the things of which Dobson accuses him. That makes him no less a genius, no less fascinating.

I, too, was first drawn to Klaatu by the rumor that they were the secretly reformed Beatles. I bought their first album, "Klaatu" and pored over it, looking for clues or proof. Certainly, some of the Fab Four's orchestral imagination was in evidence, swirly, brassed-up pomp & circumstance a la "Sgt. Pepper", but, in all, the sound belonged only to Klaatu themselves.

I went on to buy "Hope" and, many years later, "Magenta Lane". For the most part, I loved the trippy, happy music that often told wonderful, lighthearted stories, like "Anus of Uranus", "Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III" the story of the only man whose been to "Hell and come back alive". But they were capable of much more serious and thoughtful work, as well.

Klaatu was, without a doubt, a product of the 70's. Such lush, pensive music was a staple of bands like Led Zeppelin, Marillion, Rush, Genesis and Styx, but could not be produced today. But if you like that sound and you're open to trying new, old things, give them a listen.

For a "Short History", this little book is jam-packed with interesting information, trivial asides, entertaining anecdotes and just about anything having to do with New Orleans.

One feature of the Short History series that I really like are the marginal lagniappes - little stories relating to the main text, but printed in the margins.

I was stunned at the amount of knowledge crammed between these covers - I've read a lot of NOLA history and larger books don't really come close. Sure, they expand information, but for the casual, non-historian reader, that might be overkill.

I didn't particularly like The Dracula Tapes, but I thought that might have been because it seemed forced; Saberhagen was obliged to stick with the "facts" as written by Bram Stoker, which produced some very silly and unintentionally comical results.

I was sufficiently entertained so as to be drawn to a second novel, hoping that the author might do better when not fettered by the chains of existing narrative. I selected "An Old Friend of the Family" because it is an early book and might still retain something fresh.

I was dead wrong. Writing in 81, Saberhagen makes attempts to modernize his tale of Dracula coming to rescue Mina Harker's descendants but those efforts now seem dated and comical. The entire setup, about Morgan Le Fay and her minions, seems forced. And kidnaping Dracula by whacking him on the head with a wooden stake just seems ridiculous.

This book is the one that pretty much convinced me not to bother with the rest of the series.