What's better than a new Maffini crime series? Two Maffinis working together.

Canada's Queen of Comedy teams up with her talented daughter to produce the first Victoria Abbott mystery: The Christie Curse. It's a corker!

With her newly minted English degree and a whack of debt thanks to a deadbeat boyfriend, Jordan Bingham hits the road to Harrison Falls, NY. Not only can she be near her loving and eccentric uncles, one of the funniest clans to come down the Irish pike, but she has a dream assignment chasing down rare books for Vera Van Alst.
Vera's mansion comes with gourmet meals from the indefatigable Signora Panetone ("mangia!"), who could be a foie gras overseer, and a mesmerizing Laura Ashley bedroom, but there is a hitch. Vera, heir to a defunct factory which founded Harrison Falls, is now the most hated woman in town. Rude, demanding, and that's just her nice side.
Vera's obsession lies with her fixation that Agatha Christie wrote a play during her famous disappearance. Her famed Mousetrap was London's longest-running drama. Whatever the cost, Jordan MUST find it.

Jordan is smart, witty, resourceful, and nobody's fool. She'll make one terrific new heroine in her sequels. Did I mention that there's a love interest? Where else but at the library?

The Northwest Rebellion has broken out in Canada in the spring of 1885 in this second exciting adventure of Durrant Wallace, sergeant in the North West Mounted Police. Durrant has a painful prosthetic leg and a hand injury from an attack that nearly killed him, but he's battled back to keep his job and self-respect. Friends support him, but enemies watch him with a wary eye, for he is a fierce fighter for justice and a man who never gives up.
The decisive Battle of Batoche left horrific casualties on both sides, but among the dead is a disagreeable man called Reuben Wake. Wake was foreman of the teamsters in charge of the horses. His body was found inside the zareba, a defensive structure made of wagons, boxes and earthen berms, shot in the head with his own pistol. The Colt revolver was located on a Metis deserter who hated Wake. He says he's innocent. In the usual pillaging, Wake brutally raped a thirteen-year-old girl, and her farmer father is also on the rampage and in custody.
Legault introduces the graphic horrors and destruction of war as a peaceful prairie turns to Golgotha:
The town of Batoche lay in ruins. Buildings were pocked with holes and several fires burned in the tall dry grass along the banks of the river. Beyond, on a high sloping hill above the town, more fires smouldered...a church and a rectory amid the grey haze.
Durrant disobeys orders, setting out from the new city of Calgary out across the plains where conspiracies are brewing in this pivotal time in the new nation's history. First is the prophet Riel's movement to set up his nation of Metis and friendly tribes in response to the abuses of the Macdonald politicians. Treaties have been broken time and again, and many people are starving. Then comes the plan to stop Riel. And finally, the shadowy plot to kill Riel before trial to save the government embarrassment when the sordid facts are revealed.
Thanks to the railroad, Durrant can compress a week's journey into a day, and Ottawa transports troops to quell the rebellion. A thrilling scene takes place later in the book as a madman threatens a woman's life on the speeding carriage.
Legault's passionate and committed characters bring these stories to life. Wounded in body and soul after his wife's earlier death, Durrant and his elfin young friend Charlene Mason aka Charlie match wits with each other and the forces of evil. Not only is there an age and sex difference, but similar stubborn personalities. Introduced as a stableboy in the first adventure, Charlene disobeyed Durrant's edicts about staying safe at home. Despite his role as a "guardian," sparks fly between the two: "She was dressed...as a stableboy, but she was smiling broadly, her hair touching her shoulders and the morning sun on her face. The light caught in the blue of her eyes was mesmerizing."
The battle scenes define the cusp of modern warfare. Soldiers still roll out of their blankets and hunker down for warmth as they have for five thousand years. "They sat by the fire and ate potatoes with the skin on them and slabs of bacon with biscuits and drank more of Garnet's coffee." On the other hand, the new Gatling gun is wiping out the rebels in exponential numbers. Details add to the realism. Legault knows his guns, from the famous Enfield and Winchester rifles to the Webley and the tiny British Bulldog model in his boot. His doctor friend Saul uses the latest forensic tests to pluck cartridge casings from a victim's skin as Durrant struggles to tell the difference between powder burns and gun-oil stains.
Those who regard Canada's history as dry and unpalatable might drink deeply at this reviving spring. Charlene and Durrant seem poised to enjoy many more great adventures in the West, their relationship maturing along with the nation.

Vancouver Island is an ocean away from the Peak District, but fertile crime territory for RMCP Constable Danutia Dranchuk and drama critic Arthur Fairweather. Arthur is back home in England attending to the death of his mother. Danutia is on a study visit, in particular Community Service Orders for juveniles. The pair are chalk and cheese, a prickly but caring partnership.
They have arrived in time for the annual ceremonies of well dressing, which date to a Celtic heritage honouring the source of life. Seeds and leaves and flower petals are pressed into clay for an ephemeral but beautiful ceremony. Those who favour a Christian interpretation are also disturbed by such phallic games as the maypole dance.
Arthur's mother has left disturbing scrapbooks dating to the "accidental" drowning of a young child several decades ago. She had suspicions about someone and mentioned to Arthur that she wanted to talk to Danutia about this situation. Now it's too late. Mom had seemed faint at a Candlemas gathering, so a young boy was sent to walk her home to Well Cottage. A neighbour found her dead soon after. From a known heart condition or something more sinister? What about the herbs and naturopathic potions she took on trust from a friend? Was there an error in the dosage, an interaction with her normal meds? Did the boy do something? Impossible to tell now. Other than Arthur, who benefits from her will?
In the face of memento mori , Arthur becomes less stubborn and more endearing. To Danutia's consternation, he finds comfort in smoking his father's old churchwarden pipe and as they search for answers, begins to see her in a more tender light. Danutia, on the brink of her first promotion, examines her life goals. Might they include Arthur, or is that preposterous? A romantic night spent together leaves her pleased and puzzled. But they both get busy and days go by. Then a car accident sidelines Arthur.
The postcard village of Mill-on-Wye is shadowed by a sordid past involving child labour at the crumbling Monsal Mill, dating from the Industrial Revolution and a troublesome present. Local sheep mutilation under the full moon threatens to escalate. What of the sinister "triple death" practiced by the Celts? When one of the panels of grazing sheep is despoiled, is it a prank, or is someone sending a gruesome message? Do sinister roots lurk behind the pleasant faces and hospitality? Who is dossing down at the old mill?
The village has a special meaning for Arthur, a return to his childhood and and an illustration of how the "blessed isle" has been reinventing itself, as one villager says:
That's what happened when the trains shut down....the village dried up...with no railway to ship the stone, most of the quarries closed down and the workers moved away. Like a sleepy little ghost town....It was the well dressing as brought us back to life.
Authors Stewart and Bullock took a summer off to hike the tors and trails to provide the graphic details that illuminate the narrative. Danutia's fear of heights resets the bar as it becomes obvious that only she has the small size to enter a perilous cave during a crisis:
The footpath led past a cottage and down a slope covered with scrub to a muddy footpath along the River Wye. Across the narrow gorge rose the forbidding limestone cliffs of Chee Tor, with ash trees crowding the base and clinging to the sides....Danuta felt her palms turn sweaty....
Suspects are everywhere. The herbalist, two warring ministers, the doctor, the publican, the woodworker, B and B chatelaines, and an assortment of wife beaters, thieves, and cheeky delinquents. Few lock their doors, but a serpent slithers by night as a country fair takes place and plastic ducks begin their wobbly race down the stream. Setting the book in 1997 to dovetail with the series preserves an innocence, keeping technology and forensics on a simpler level.
The abduction of a child ramps the suspense into high gear as everyone joins in the search in this hilly and precipitous terrain. Stakes couldn't be higher when this thriller draws to a nail-biting duel with a cunning sociopath whose blood lust calls the plays.

Welcome to Ashton Corners, a peaceful, tree-lined village which prides itself on its southern geniality and old-fashioned good manners. Lizzie Turner is preparing for another entertaining meeting of the Mystery Readers and Cheese Straw Society. Everyone is welcome, from high-school age to retirement, as long as they love good food and good books, from cozies to amateur sleuths to hard-boiled to police procedurals. Gentle teasing is allowed, and feelings rarely get hurt.
At where else but the local Book Bin, Lizzy meets a famous author on tour. He's interested in speaking to their group. Derek Alton plays the masher over dinner with Lizzy, but he seems remorseful as he arrives unannounced at her house the next day to prepare for questions. He's hinted about plans for a revealing sequel to his one successful book, but while Lizzie is tacking up mistletoe, a bullet smashes through the window and kills him.
A possible motive appears as the buzz begins. When Lizzie finds out that Derek lived in Ashton Corners many years ago and had a lecherous reputation, her antennas tingle. But he changed his name, so it's impossible to ask around. Still, she manages to unearth more information and locates a few suspects.
Her romantic interest, Police Chief Mark Dreyfus feels that Lizzie herself might be a target. Who would want to harm the young and personable literacy teacher, who devotes so much time to her students and is a loyal friend to all? Lizzie is warned off personal sleuthing, but she rationalizes her actions to circumvent her police supervision. What can a few officers do with a town full of possibilities? It's Lizzie's civic duty to lend a hand.
Meanwhile, it's nearing Christmas and it's impossible to stay home as everyone celebrates the season with choir concerts and festive suppers. Lizzie is her mother's guardian, a woman with growing dementia who lives in a care home nearby. Folks are hoping for a dust of snow so that they can sit around their fireplaces in greeting-card style. The last thing anyone needs is a shooter hiding in the dark and firing at picture windows.
Ashton Corners has a lively mix of eccentric characters who can't help stirring the pot. No matter how they try not to snoop, it's impossible to miss what might be going on next door. Tempers are growing short, and even Lizzie with her tact and politesse finds herself rebuffed rudely when she persists in her investigation. She's getting frightening phone calls by women who fear that their shameful past with Derek may be exposed. Did he come back to blackmail them? That's only one motive Lizzie unearths.
Author Erika Chase once ran a famous mystery bookstore in Ottawa, and she knows her field. She peppers the chapter headings with timely quotes and provides comprehensive reading lists tailored to each book club member. Visiting with Lizzie and her mischievous cats, Brie and Edam, is a real pleasure. Bright and witty with an honest self-confidence, she's fun to hang around with. But do keep looking over your shoulder.

Stephen Legault's first entry in his Red Rock Canyon mysteries strikes a double blow in the first pages with the murderous torpor of the desert and the fatal terrors of a flash flood. Silas Pearson is a man with one tough mission. His wife disappeared on a hiking trip near Moab, Utah, in one of the most rugged and unforgiving places in the US. He will not rest until he finds her, dead or alive. And if anyone's to blame, God help them before he arrives.
Silas was a philosophical and enigmatic man, a lover of the Ivory Tower. His wife preferred the outdoors, and visited desert places threatened by the outside world before they were destroyed. Her disappearance not only left him heartbroken, but also a prime suspect. Believing that she was with friends, he waited a few days before reporting her missing. The FBI, involved because of the national park status, still regards him with suspicion. Perhaps on his travels, he will "discover" her body.
Leaving his soft life as a literature professor in Flagstaff, he holes up in the desert in an adobe hut. He also runs a broken-down bookstore in Moab as he tries to piece together the remains of his shattered life. Local gossip suggests that his wife left him for another man, but Silas can't believe it. Methodically, he forages out nearly every day with little more than snacks and water, and often sleeps in his wreck of a car.
Back with his maps, he graphs his progress square inch by square inch as he combs the desert, up a draw here, across a mesa there, squeezing through a defile in the brutal heat.
"Despondent, he pulled up the total for his three and a half years of journeying: 4212 miles....he could have strode from San Diego, California, to Bangor, Maine...He did the calculation for elevation: just over three hundred thousand feet....He could have climbed Mount Everest ten times." To Silas it's worth every blister and broken bone to bring her home as he teeters on the edge of madness.
"Penny" is "not here," and "not here." Even helicopters and search parties couldn't help. The red rock canyon country hides many secrets, often behind a scrabble of fallen rock or a shadow of scree. The land last mapped in the US has no pity. No water, no cell coverage, 112F temperatures, and a rattler around every corner.
Legault's impeccable research paces Silas on every foot of his journey. Like his character, he knows its curves, planes, and shadows like a lover. Guided by the lines of her favourite book, Abbey's DESERT SOLITAIRE, a popular memoir that as an academic he once scorned, Silas homes in on sentences which haunt him in the night and lead him to places like Courthouse Wash, where the flood envelops him. He's alive and battered, but he discovers a skeleton lodged under a cottonwood in the mid. Has he found Penny at last? The law is both mystified and annoyed at this joyless hermit.
This may be no man's land, but there is money to be made, not only from wealthy tourists ready to shell out for views to die for, Puebloan artifacts worth hundreds of thousands on the world markets, but from valuable mineral and gas/oil resources that lie beneath the rough skin of this country. As he turns over rocks in more ways than one, Silas makes himself an unwanted guest at an expensive party. Nature is amoral, but there will be no helping hand for a misstep.

Margaret "Maggie" Spencer and her partner Nat Southby have a penchant for finding interesting cases for their detective agency in Sixties Vancouver. They are vacationing in romantic Victoria on the mainland when they encounter two sisters, one a recently bereaved widow, who ask them to look into an apparent suicide. Artist and gallery owner Jonathan Standish left behind a dubious, typewritten note. In only one inspection of the logistics of the shooting vs. an old injury of Jonathan's, Maggie and Nat jump into the case. What better reward than to see that his widow receives her due from the insurance that would result from a crime instead of suicide?
There is no shortage of suspects, the couple discovers, from the prickly gallery manager to many penurious artists, to the victim's rogue preacher living with his family in the outback. He's only too happy to spew vitriol about his stepmother, now in charge of the gallery. One obvious clue is the old picture of a woman and her daughter. They look like the subjects of Jonathan's own iconic ceramics. Someone is leaving flowers on the grave. Could a family secret be returning to wreak havoc?
For a couple on the outer edge of their "prime," Maggie, divorced from a wealthy lawyer, and Nat, a former lawman, have a modern partnership which extends to the bedroom and raises eyebrows. They're perfect compliments, one taking the cerebral and the other the corporeal as they match wits with each other and fend off the ever-present Inspector Farthing: "What are you sticking your nose into now, Southby?....I told you to keep out of police business."
As if Maggie didn't have enough to do, her daughter Midge is getting married, her other daughter is more pregnant than a duplex, and time is running out. As she and Nat pursue their own investigation with the medical examiner, the lawyer, the family, and the less than cooperative starving artists at the gallery studio shop, she wonders if she hasn't bit off more than she can chew.
A more innocent and younger Vancouver as well as the evocative scenes of Galiano Island and interior Mission, BC, form an attractive backdrop. Southin lives in Sechelt, so her heart is joined with this scenic part of Canada, and her convincing details contain the meticulousness of a long-time resident. "They were halfway to Galiano Island when the rain began petering out and a light wind ruffled the small whitecaps that now glinted in the sun. Maggie, leaning over the ferry's rail, watched fascinated as masses of jellyfish, their transparent bodies pulsing in and out, swam in the clear depths."
It's always a pleasure to ride along with Maggie and Nat as each adventure sweeps them into intrigue. The classic puzzles contain clues sprinkled with perfect timing and a thoroughly satisfying denouement. Secondary characters are drawn with precision and love, such as Henny, their Dutch girl Friday, who adds a touch of wry humour to the office. Pull up a comfortable chair and have a cuppa as they tackle their latest case.

Pregnant Iris Oakley, devastated by her husband's recent murder, must earn her bread by working at the Finley Memorial Zoo in Vancouver, WA. Plucky Iris loves the job, but not the management issues at the small facility. As the scene opens, she finds her supervisor on the floor in the elephant's cage. The two pachyderms are fingered for the job, but why? They're peace-living creatures, even though one came from an abusive background.

"It looked like a man. Was he alive? Blood smeared the straw beneath and around him, with a dark, thick dribble on his head and down his face. I had to get him out of there before they killed him. If he weren't already dead."

Littlewood worked as a zoo-keeper for a dozen years before starting this series, and her expertise shows. She juggles a convoluted plot like a master and manages to plant fascinating and authentic details about the nuts and bolts of animal management as well as the warring philosophies about the role of zoos in the modern world.

Give this series a try and meet one amazing woman, a realistic and compassionate heroine for our time.

Investment advisor Pat Tierney has enough on her hands as a widowed mother of two young women. Imagine her surprise when stranger Jude Seaton enters her office and begs her to take her seven-year-old, Tommy, for a few days. Their lives are threatened, but the details aren't forthcoming. Jude seems respectable, a teacher at a parochial school working hard to pay the bills. As Pat refuses, a blockbuster revelation rocks her reality. Her dead husband, the love of her life, was the boy's father.

"I got up, went over to the window and looked out on the Toronto night. Christmas lights twinkled on Eglinton Avenue. The street looked exactly as it had for the past few weeks, but my world had changed beyond recognition.
Twisting the rings on my left hand, I studied my reflection in the glass. I saw a green-eyed blonde, hair artfully disarranged. Businesswoman, mother, a wife for nearly twenty years. A woman so stupid she didn't know her husband had been sleeping around. I swallowed back the bile that was rising in my throat."

Frantic Jude tosses down Tommy's belongings and disappears, pursued by her own demons. Or are they real? Pat is left to juggle slender clues as she first tries to find Jude and then must bargain with Seaton's wealthy family, who are reluctant to take the boy.

Flitting around the perimeters is the theme of international refugees. One of Pat's employees has Somalian connections. Pat encounters Sister Celia, who runs Safe Harbor to accommodate the refugees with shelter and legal help for their cases. Not only are they strangers in a strange land, but they may carry dangerous secrets from their previous lives. The sister seems a godsend, but other figures are stalking Pat as she tries to find a safe harbor for herself and the boy. In the background is Pat's new love interest, Devon. After betrayal by her once-beloved husband, can she share her heart and faith again?

Never have the bustling streets of Toronto or the quiet lakes of cottage country felt so sinister. Is the law powerless in the face of those who would bring violence and terror to a peaceful nation acting out of selflessness? Is it money, revenge, or something beyond comprehension? Picking up a newspaper sheds light daily on this ugly 21st century dilemma. Havens have their price. Kindness may bring danger in its innocent wake.

McCracken ramps up the action from paragraph one and never hits the brakes in this dynamic thriller. The intrepid Pat is an ideal lead for an expanded role of mother, protector, and hero. Her behaviour rings true, whether parenting her girls, taking care of her dog, or venturing into a problematical romance. She's smart and savvy, but does she trust too much?

Who wouldn't love to live in the quaint and charming Alabama town of Ashton Corners? Neighbours look after each other, kids drink soda and say ma'am, there's no Mafia, and hard-working reading specialist Lizzie Turner helps reluctant teens. What's missing other than a book club?
Widow friend Molly Mathews is thrilled to volunteer her own plush Victorian mansion to the first meeting of the Mystery Readers and Cheese Straw Society. The table is set with delectables sweet and savoury as the friends settle in. Romance may be on the menu with the handsome new male lawyer in town, a surprise guest of one of the members. Scarcely have they commenced arguing companionably about what book to choose first than a strange man is standing in the hall. Car trouble, so he says, and makes a phone call. Before the evening ends, he's found shot outside in his vehicles, far down the long driveway. And with an old gun that had been in the house for decades. How did he get it? Is this a suicide or a murder? What would Poirot do?
Once identified, the stranger may have had distant connections with the town, but any main players are now dead. Matters turn complex in the ongoing investigation when it's discerned that some book club members may have left the room for a few minutes each in the course of the long meeting. But they're all such upright citizens, and they say that they've never seen him before. The handsome but untested chief of police has unfinished dating business from high school with Lizzie, which intrigues her, but the retired chief doesn't trust the young pup to do any job right.
What was the dead man doing at the mansion? The car excuse seems to have been a total ruse. Everyone starts pitching in on the sleuthing, some traveling together to nearby towns where the dead man may have had a family. Everyone but the law seems to be turning up clues, but the new chief and his crabby second in command issue warnings for the amateurs to back off before they get hurt.
As things heat up, Lizzie is tasked with a new mystery. Who is dropping off successive parts of a manuscript in her mailbox in the middle of the night? Is it a shy student? A reclusive town citizen with a secret past? What do they want from her? A critique or just validation? Chapter One has a regional charm, as if it came from a talented if unschooled local. "There wasn't much money to be had doing anything in small town Alabama in the early 1960s. But that Mr. Jenkins Parker had a good run of cotton and was raking in his own bankrolls, so the good luck spilled right over and Pops got himself a loan." Then the storyline turns dark. And darker. In the midst of her own problems with the murder and her growing attraction to the chief, Lizzie is hooked. She wants to know what happened, but she's afraid of the consequences of unearthing ugly secrets.
Even worse, she starts getting midnight calls hinting that her respected reporter father, who died decades ago in a car accident, was working on a newspaper story that may relate to the present murder. Lizzie's always regarded her father as a hero. Connecting the dots will make him proud of her. Then again, perhaps he had been cheating on her mother in making mysterious trips.
Lizzie is a spunky new heroine with two aristocratic feline furballs, Edam and Brie. She's single and choosy enough to stay that way for now. Every dedicated teacher will identify with her quest to find ways to steer modern teens into a book which suits their needs and interests, even if the path starts with a graphic novel. "I've got an idea, Lizzie...why don't you just do, like, brain surgery or something on me. Slice me open, pull out my brain, squish all this Shakespeare stuff into it, put it back and sew me up like new," one of her charges pleads. But even with her soft spot for the young and old, such as her confused mother in a nursing home or problems like teen pregnancy, Lizzie has a backbone of steel, and will rush to the side of her friends in trouble.
Not only reading classes, but mystery reading itself is the theme of this exciting new series, and rumours have it that in another life the author "Erika Chase" ran her own mystery bookstore. "The trouble with mornings is that they come when you're not awake," according to Rex Stout. Every chapter begins with a crafty quote from Lizzie's mystery lore, and Dame Agatha or Janet Evanovich punctuate the conversation. This cozy with a clever edge sets a perfect stage for further adventures in this iconic little town with more "characters" than a Russian novel. And good news! The Ashton Corners Book Club will detect again with the included sample of the upcoming Read and Buried.

Inspector Ricardo Ramirez can't shake the ghosts which tormented his dead grandmother. They follow him everywhere, sending mute messages from beyond the grave. How can he tell his wife and children that he suffers from the same rising dementia?
"That policeman should be more careful where he stands," Ramirez said to the dead woman sitting at the medical examiner Apiro's desk....She wore a frilly southern-belle dress and a wide white bandana....The several strands of beads around her neck revealed who she was -or rather had been--a follower of Santeria."
As a nation waits for a new era at the end of the punishing embargo, citizens walk a narrow line on ten pesos a month. The tourist hotels and destinations are off limits to Cubans unless they work there. Soap is impossible to buy, and coffee comes with sugar only. To manage to find a chicken for the Christmas holidays is a triumph.
Suddenly Ramirez's holiday goes on hold. Major Crimes has just picked up a vacationing Canadian lawman for the rape and murder of a young Cuban boy. Mike Ellis gave the kid spare change earlier. But he has no memory of the evening. His quarreling wife left him to return to Canada, and he was alone in a bar, drowning his sorrows in too much rum, wandering from the safe tourist paths into the dangerous back alleys of a raw but tempting world. Forensics from his hotel room look bleak for his case. Unless he can find an advocate, he'll soon be in jail at the mercy of hardened criminals who would welcome the chance to teach a lesson to someone on the other side of the law.
Canadians find Cuba a popular winter destination, but the pleasures of mojitos and white sands mask danger for thrill-seekers. The price is high for Cubans who would break the rules for a few US dollars: the forbidden Internet, closed doors, and a brush with the netherworld. To bribe or not to bribe? It may be the only chance, especially for an innocent.
Under the Cuban system, an indictment must come before seventy-two hours have elapsed. So everyone's under the gun. Help from Canada may be too little too late. Ellis has a high profile, but the beleaguered country is out to show the world that it isn't a mecca for sex tourism. Justice will be swift, but will it punish the right man? Does Ellis, disfigured and wounded from a previous tragic case, have an additional secret or does a monster walk unchallenged through the dark streets of the once exotic city? The horror may twist far into the past.
Talented lawyer turned author Peggy Blair places herself in the forefront of crime fiction with this stellar entry, which came close to snagging the Debut Dagger in Harrowgate. Her characters move with the surety of canny locals or the naiveté of a visitor. The plot advances with the ticking of the clock and the scenes shift seamlessly while maintaining maximum suspense. Whether strolling the crumbling streets of one of the world's most enigmatical cities or moving into the dangerous countryside, the way is smooth and sure. Grabbing life by the throat, the characters are as full-bodied as Cuban coffee and as beguiling as confiscated anejo rum. In the background, along with the ancient African gods that still colour the imagination of this cultural melting pot, is the shadowy figure of Fidel Castro, amid a thousand jokes, orchestrating for the eventual re-entry of his fabled country into the challenges of the 21st century.