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Book Reviews in March 1994 Issue

Savage Messiah
by Laver Kailaha,

368 pages $28.95 TC
ISBN: 0385254407
Descent into Madness
by Vernon Frolick,

361 pages $34.95 TC
ISBN: 0888393008
Book Review
Stranger than Fiction
by Eric McCormack
Truth may be stranger than fiction, butt it's not as satisfying -- witness the emptiness at the core of these real-life characters. I must admit I prefer the way fiction fills the void and makes the world cohere.
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Life after Billy
by Brian Vallee,

352 pages $7.99 MM
ISBN: 0770426220
Book Review
Death of a Victim
by Ellen Roseman
Brian Vallee ends the book with a list of women's shelters across Canada and some useful suggestions for reforming the criminal justice system.
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Killers
by Laurence Gough,

256 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 0575057823
Book Review
High on Plot
by Richard Perry
If Gough seems a tad distracted by his cops, love life, he nevertheless has not lost his sense of humour or his tensile style.
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Blood is Thicker Than Beaujolais A Wine Lover's Mystery
by Tony Aspler,

206 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 189562925X
Book Review
Nouveau but not Riche
by Pat Barclay
We live in a literary world where, broadly speaking, fiction garners the accolades while non-fiction makes the bucks.
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Fatal Mistakes
by Kevin Marron,

240 pages $27.95 TC
ISBN: 0385254393
Without Conscience The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us
by Robert D. Hare, Judith Regan,

Pocket Books
256 pages $21 TC
ISBN: 0671732617
Book Review
I'm Okay, You're Not
by Fraser Sutherland
Was Yeo a psychopath' Impulsive and hungry for violent excitement, deceitful and manipulative, good at feigning mental illness when it suited him -- one can tick off Robert Hare's check-list.
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MacArthur Must Die
by Ian Slater,

Donald I.\Fine#Books
336 pages $21.95 TP
ISBN: 1556113838
Book Review
Keeping Us Guessing
by John Doyle
Ian Stater has succeeded in writing another skilful, efficient thriller that is satisfactorily suspenseful. It isn't credible, but it does move along with enough grace and speed that any hint of hokum disappears.
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Deadly Silence
by Edwards,

pages $24.95 TC
ISBN: 0771590172
Book Review
A Parallel Universe
by Matthew Kudelka
Organized crime in Canada is a parallel universe with tenuous connections to reality as law-abiding people -- including the vast majority of Italian-Canadians, who hate the various forms of the Mafia at least as much as anyone else -- recognize it.
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Eighteen In - Eighteen Out
533 pages $27.95
ISBN: 2921552019
Book Review
Coming Up the Hard Way
by Alexander Craig
Pollock's authority, both inside and outside prison, seems due to his native intelligence rather than his organizing skills -- his record, like that of so many of his fellow inmates, was one of very disorganized crime.
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A Sherlock Holmes Handbook
by Christopher Redmond,

254 pages $29.99 TC
ISBN: 0889242461
Book Review
The Game is Afoot
by Michael Coren
It is this tantalizing autonomy, this streak of anarchy engendered by the best literature that makes Holmes what he is, made Conan Doyle what he was, and makes this Volume Such a poignant addition to the subject.
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Deadly Encounters True Crime Stories of Alberta
by Barbara Smith,

224 pages $16.99 TP
ISBN: 088882162X
Crime Wave Con Men, Rogues & Scoundrels from Nova Scotia's Past
by Dean Jobb,

160 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0919001688
Book Review
Provincially Piquant
by George Kaufman
These two collections serve to flesh out and personalize the history of this country. They show that this country's history is just as "exciting" as any other country's when it comes to colourful characters and crimes.
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Memoirs of a Maverick Lawyer
by Webster Macdonald, Peter V. MacDonald,

237 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 1550590685
It Takes Two Judges to Try a Cow & Other Strange Legal Twists
by Barry Seltzer,

pages $19.99 CT
ISBN: 1895856000
Book Review
It Happened in Court
by Barbara MacKay
Both of these hooks could be classified as true crime, but perhaps more accurately they should be called "true law."
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Interviews
Murder, He Wrote
by Anne Denoon
In Peter Robinson's novels, the combination of mystery, suspense, and police procedure makes for criminally entertaining fiction.
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Letters to Editor
Letters to the Editor
Letters may be edited for length or to delete potentially libellous statements. Except in extraordinary circumstances, letters of more than 500 words will not be accepted for publication.
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Essays
Homicidally Ours
by Jack Batten
Canada's crime writers are doing a fine job of rounding up some unusual suspects.
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Prose/Poetry
A Touch of Panic
by L Wright
;He hung up, still smiling, and took his coffee out to the sun-porch. From here he could see down the hill into the town of Gibsons, and the small harbour where he kept the 'Sea Nymph', his 27-foot sailboat.
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Profiles
Scenes of the Crime
by Pat Barclay
Maggie Siggins reports on true stories that compel our belief.
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Schlepping the Exile
137 pages $14.95
ISBN: 0889625425
The Third Infinitive
by L. Gill,

pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 0920661335
Triad Moon
by Gillian Chase,

L P C/InBook
192 pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 0921881282
Grogan's Cafe
by Peter Trower,

240 pages $17.95 TP
ISBN: 1550170716
Cut-Out
by Riley,

pages $14.95 PF
ISBN: 1550500538
Wisteria A Novel
by Victoria Stoett,

pages $14.5 TC
ISBN: 1551280000
A Little Bit of Heaven
by Honor Books Staff,

176 pages $23.99 TC
ISBN: 1562921061
First Novels
First Novels - Touching Their Lives
by Gary Draper
While the story holds some sociological and historical interest, it is not impressive as fiction. The use of father and son to symbolize and contrast the older, more idealistic struggle and the current mode of criminal warfare is a bit too obvious.
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Field Notes
Field Notes - Notice of Eviction
by Rhea Tregebov
Writing really is an odd occupation, falling mostly outside the market system that dominates our cuIture's set of values.
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Field Notes
Field Notes - Pushing Crime
by David Skene-Melvin
The CWC is organized in regional chapters, each of which holds regular meetings that feature speakers on topics of interest to crime writers.
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George Fetherling
Last Words - Along Parallel Lines
by Alec McEwen
'A Calgary Herald' columnist named the 49th parallel "the longest undefended border in the world."
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Summer's Idyll
by Don Gutteridge,

pages $25.95 TC
ISBN: 0887509363
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Ayse Tuzlak
'Summer's ldyll' can he frustrating to read -- we are eager to satisfy our curiosity about many things that simply don't interest this boy. But it could not have been otherwise: this is the way he will remember this summer, and that is all that matters.
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Nicolette
by Robert Zend,

pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0921870213
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Roger Mason
Few novels succeed in conveying the nature of obsessive love as well as 'Nicolette'; and Zend's non-traditional techniques are instrumental in elucidating the way such a love begins, develops, and has its conclusion.
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Foreigner
by Robert J. Sawyer,

304 pages $5.99 MM
ISBN: 0441000177
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Clint Burnham
What is it about reading a mediocre novel that that gives me the illusion there's objective I can point to that makes the difference?
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King's Cross A Story of Regicide
by D. G. Courtney,

384 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 1550820826
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Roger Mason
'King's Cross' is often gripping, but it requires a lot -- an awful lot -- of willing suspension of disbelief: saviours turn Lip as villains are about to press the trigger and enemies penetrate security cordons at will.
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Blood & Belonging Journeys Into the New Nationalism
by Michael Ignatieff,

pages $33 TC
ISBN: 0374114404
Brief Reviews
Brief Reivews - Non-Fiction
by Janice Keefer
This is merely one man's overview of countries to whose languages and cultures he remains a stranger, a skeleton key opening only a vestibule -- rather than the complex heart -- of that house in which we must all, somehow, live and let live together.
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The Golden Lotus
90 pages $9.95
ISBN: 0919417310
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Alice Wart
Brebner works well in the long form, and there are a number of extended sequences here. One sequence deftly and subtly explores child abuse, another charts the nuances of a summer canoe trip.
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Riding the Long Black Horse
by Raymond Souster,

pages $23.95 TC
ISBN: 0887509029
Steam-Cleaning Love
by J.A. Hamilton,

pages $11.95 TP
ISBN: 0919626688
This Desert Now
by Yves Prefontaine, Judith Cowan,

64 pages $10 TP
ISBN: 0920717667
Inside Passage
by Doug Beardsley,

64 pages $11 TP
ISBN: 1895449154
Mall
by Anne Swannell,

pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 1895836034
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Bruce Whiteman
'This Desert Now' is the first of his books to be translated. It would be wonderful to have more of his work available in English.
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Ping & Pong
by Dennis Lee, David McPhail,

pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 0002239965
Tell The World
by Severn Suzuki,

Doubleday
32 pages $10.95 MM
ISBN: 0385254229
Some of the Kinder Planets
by Tim Wynne-Jones,

144 pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0531094510
Brewster Rooster
by Berny Lucas, Russ Willms, Russ Wilms,

32 pages $7.99 TP
ISBN: 0590748351
Little Tiger in the Chinese Night An Autobiography in Art
by Song Nan Zhang,

Demco Media
pages $15.15 TC
ISBN: 0606088059
If You're Not from the Prairie . . .
by David Bouchard, Henry Ripplinger,

Simon & Schuster Children's
32 pages $5.99 MM
ISBN: 0689820356
A Dozen Million Spills
by Sean O. Huigin,

24 pages $4.95 TP
ISBN: 088753967X
Estelle & the Self-Esteem Machine
by Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet, Leslie Bell,

32 pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 0889950970
In the Company of Whales From the Diary of a Whale Watcher
by Alexandra Morton,

64 pages $16.95 LB
ISBN: 1551430002
Children's Books
Children's Books - What's Their Motivation?
by Rhea Tregebov
The first question we may be inclined to ask about any book being offered these days is: why has this book been written? What is the motivation? I think a book becomes merely and exclusively a commodity when it is written primarily for market reasons.
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The Night Hazel Came to Town
by John Ibbitson,

pages $18.76 CT
ISBN: 0029540984
The Golden Aquarians
by Monica Hughes,

192 pages $20.5 MM
ISBN: 0671505432
Flying Ghosts
by Shirlee Smith-Matheson,

176 pages $5.99 MM
ISBN: 0773674004
But Cows Can't Fly And Other Stories
by Marilyn Halverson,

160 pages $5.99 TP
ISBN: 0773674039
Voices on the Bay
by Virginia Russell,

156 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 0888783434
Yuit
by Yvette Edmonds,

12 pages $6.95 PT
ISBN: 0929141202
Children's Books
Bye Bye, Blues
by Janet McNaughton
We are, with any luck at all, entering the post problem novel era of young adult literature. Virtually everyone agrees that the problem novel, like Eastern European Communism, has outlived its usefulness.
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At Large
At Large - Let the Children Speak
by Michael Coren
Consider this: a man knows what a woman likes to read, he knows as well as she does what a woman appreciates in literature and in fact is probably better able to judge women's literature than a woman herself.
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Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - A Pioneer Theorist
by Douglas Fetherling
One of her most memorable descriptions concerns the time that Brown, having been educated at Toronto, the Sorbonne, and Cornell, was teaching at Cornell.
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First Novel Award
First Novel Award Shortlist
We're not telling until the next issue, but we can confide that the following have been selected as finalists for the 1993 SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
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