Naked in Death - JD Robb (****)

An exciting first novel in an imaginative series!

Damn! I wish I hadn't done that!

"Naked in Death" is the first in JD Robb's popular Death series which is now almost two dozen novels strong ... and I loved it! My pocketbook will protest and my bookshelves will be groaning under the ever increasing load as I begin the quest to accumulate the rest of the series.

Eve Dallas is a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department. The story is set in 2058 - a future near enough to be entirely recognizable but far enough away that Robb can postulate some very interesting technological and cultural developments - guns have been banned; prostitution is legal and completely regulated; cars have an auto-pilot setting; VR simulations have advanced to a heart-stopping, palm-sweating, gut-wrenching reality that is light years beyond the technology we know of today; smoking is almost a thing of the past; police weaponry consists only of lasers and high powered stun guns with handguns firing real bullets available only in museums and private collections; and, would you believe it, recreational "hotels" for the über-wealthy are actually in continuous orbit above the earth!

On the other hand, the murder, sadly, is one with which we are all too familiar - the violent, gruesome, almost ritualistic slaying of a sex trade worker, now known by the euphemism "licenced companion", which is only the first of an intended series by a serial killer. He left behind a note ... "ONE OF SIX"! This particular licenced companion, Sharon DeBlass, just happened to be the grand-daughter of a US Senator and you might well imagine the political pressure that is being brought to bear on Dallas and NYPD to solve the case. When the investigation points in the direction of Roarke, a self-made reclusive billionaire, the heat and passion in the novel is turned up a notch as Dallas finds herself in the unenviable position of falling for a man who just might be the killer she's looking for!

I don't think I can give Robb top marks for the plot - the solution is just a little too predictable and can be seen a fair distance from the end of the novel. But "Naked in Death" certainly earns both thumbs well turned up in every other way - dialogue, characterization, setting, humour (the side plot about the husband's murder by Hetta Finestein, a lovable little gray haired old lady, is a positive hoot), imagination, novelty, creativity and more. And I have to hand it to Robb ... she writes a mean sex scene. Whew! They're footloose, they're well-timed, they're playful and they're plenty hot enough to raise a little sheen of sweat on your brow! Highly recommended!

Romance, police procedural, mystery, science fiction ... you name it, they all fit. If you like a lightweight, easy-going enjoyable read in any of those genres, you'll enjoy "Naked in Death".

The Overlook - Michael Connelly (*****)

A hot Harry Bosch thriller!

Having begun life as a 16 part serial for the New York Times, "The Overlook" has a dramatically different flavour than the preceding 12 novels in the continuing, exciting Harry Bosch canon with which Connelly has thrilled his legion of fans. Less grim and foreboding, less atmospheric, less prone to the philosophical meandering that we've come to expect from the angst-ridden backcountry of Bosch's psyche, "The Overlook" is much more of a plot driven novel - a shorter, snappier, purely action oriented police procedural but no less successful and enjoyable for the differences!

Dr Stanley Kent, a medical bio-physicist who had access to radioactive materials used in the treatment of cancers at hospitals throughout LA, has been found murdered - executed, in fact, with two bullets in the back of the head - on a Mulholland Drive overlook. Bosch, assigned to the murder with his new partner, Iggy Ferras, immediately begins to bump heads with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, called in on the case as a result of the potential terrorist involvement with the assassination. The case is mere minutes old and Kent's body has barely begun to cool when Bosch discovers that the crime also involves the theft of a case of potentially deadly radioactive Cesium-137. That the FBI agent assigned to the case is Rachel Walling, Bosch's love interest who we met in Connelly's last novel "Echo Park" complicates matters immensely but certainly doesn't prevent the inevitable inter-organizational war over case jurisdiction.

Bosch, true to the mantra "Everybody counts or nobody counts" which we first heard in "The Last Coyote", focuses on people and is intent on finding Kent's murderers. The FBI, not too surprisingly, treats the murder as incidental and is intent on treating the theft of the Cesium as a threat to national security.

There is no doubt in my mind ... Connelly is brilliant! Even with a purely plot-oriented novel, he has made sure that Bosch loses none of the flavour or depth of character so carefully built up in twelve previous novels. His interaction with Walling is both hot and heated (if you understand the subtle distinction). The jurisdictional squabbling and in-fighting has a definite tinge of realism and, frankly, it is difficult as a reader to sit in judgment in this particular case and take sides. Bosch and Walling, the FBI and the LAPD were all right and wrong at various moments in the novel!

And what can one say about the ending? There is no way that any reader is going to see this fancy twist coming! If you're a Bosch fan, you're gonna love it! If you haven't read any of Bosch's previous novels, don't start here ... go back and read four or five of the earlier novels (try to pick them up in chronological order - start with "The Black Echo") so you can get that underlying feel for the character first. Then come back and enjoy this one with the rest of us.

Highly recommended!

Beneath a Marble Sky - John Shors (****)

A monument to undying love!

A romantic reconstruction of imperial life in 17th century India, "Beneath a Marble Sky" recounts the turbulent story of princess Jahanara, the daughter of the emperor who commissioned the construction of the Taj Mahal as a fabulous testament to the overwhelming love of his wife. Well educated, literate, a wily diplomat, savvy political advisor and a bright, witty conversationalist and companion at a time when Muslim women were held in particularly low esteem, Jahanara has been well taught by her mother who bequeathed the solemn responsibility for the care of her ailing father to Jahanara on her death bed.

Now an elderly woman herself, the story is told in the form of a flashback narrated from Jahanara's point of view as she relates the fascinating, complex, violent and disturbing history of her family to her grand-daughters. Her soft spoken, pacifist eldest brother Dara, the rightful heir to the imperial throne dreams of the day he can see the Muslim community in peaceful co-existence with those professing the majority Hindu faith. In complete contrast, her younger brother, Aurangzeb, is so consumed by jealousy of his brother's position as heir and the deep hatred of Hindus whom he labels godless heretics, that he spends his entire life plotting the coup and the civil war necessary to steal the throne from his father and brother. Jahanara's story, set against the backdrop of the construction of the Taj Mahal also tells of her unrequited impossible love for Isa, architect of the Taj Mahal and a commoner that Jahanara can never marry and the exquisite pain of her arranged, political marriage to Khondamir, an ugly, evil, conniving merchant with some very sleazy, distasteful sexual proclivities.

"Beneath a Marble Sky" is many things for many readers - an accomplished historical fiction with lots of savory details for time and place; a compelling political page-turner loaded with intrigue, violence, passion and pathos; as well as a powerful moving romance that tells of three distinctly different but heart-warming relationships that come to fruition in ways that will draw a sigh and a smile from even the most romance-phobic male readers.

My taste in historical fiction would have enjoyed more time spent on the context of the story - more background, for example, as to the religious tensions that were so central to the story and perhaps a little more detail describing the common man's daily life in a setting which to us is so completely exotic and foreign. But, to his credit, Shors did not overstate his case or overstay his welcome by producing a needlessly padded heavyweight door-stopper which, sadly, is often the case with contemporary historical fiction authors.

Highly recommended.

A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (****)

Dr Watson ... I'd like you to meet Mr Sherlock Holmes!

As Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" introduced a grateful reading public to Hercule Poirot, perhaps the second best known fictional detective of all time, Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" marked the debut appearance of the acknowledged master of detection, the one and only Sherlock Holmes!

John Watson, a medical doctor recently retired from the British military to recover his health and recuperate from wounds received in Afghanistan, is looking to stretch his limited budget by finding another gentleman with whom he can share accommodation. When a mutual friend introduced him to Sherlock Holmes, one might slyly suggest that the game was afoot and the rest, as they also say, became history. Already characteristically melancholy and moody, a jaded Holmes, who labeled himself the world's only consulting detective, is invited by Scotland Yard's Lestrade and Gregson to assist in the investigation of a baffling pair of murders.

With "A Study in Scarlet", Doyle is clearly new to the craft of writing mysteries and the great detective's debut outing suffers from characteristic first novel and new character jitters. The style itself is markedly different from everything that follows in the Holmes canon with the story being told from a third-party perspective. The background to the mystery is revealed through the mechanism of a flashback to the western USA at the time of the Mormon migration to Utah. Feedback from the reading public must have been immediate and - we'll have to hand it to Doyle - he must have been a quick learner. Watson was thereafter appointed official narrator and diarist to the master and Doyle never looked back.

I leave it to others smarter than I to judge whether or not Doyle's historical characterization of the Mormons is justified or accurate! Suffice it to say, that the mystery is entertaining but the details are, quite frankly, entirely unimportant beside the overwhelming fact that this was the first time the world heard the name "Sherlock Holmes". It took Doyle only a few pages for example to treat us to an aphorism that we would come to hear over and over again,

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence."

This novel is a cornerstone in the annals of crime fiction, an extremely important piece of the history of English literature and a darned good read! Enjoy it!

Lost - Michael Robotham (****)

Ruiz is London's very own Harry Bosch!

Michael Robotham is definitely an author who bears watching!

DI Vincent Ruiz, debuted as a supporting cast member in Robotham's first novel, "Suspect", is rescued from the Thames wounded, bleeding, hypothermic and a good deal more dead than alive. Suffering from transient global amnesia brought on by the trauma of the night's events, Ruiz is initially unable to recall anything at all about what he was doing on a motor launch cruising the Thames in the middle of the night. But it's clear that something very important was going down as he is immediately harassed by Internal Affairs who are treating him more like a criminal than a police officer wounded in the line of duty. With what few clues are available about the shooting and with the help of psychiatrist Joe O'Loughlin, Ruiz begins to painstakingly reconstruct his memories and to pick up the threads of his search for the truth about the kidnapping of seven year old Mickey Carlyle.

Ruiz quickly discovers he is the only detective who believes in the possibility that Mickey Carlyle is still alive despite the conviction and imprisonment of Harlan Wavell, a sexual predator convicted three years earlier for the kidnapping and murder. A blue wall of official obstruction is erected in the path of Ruiz's investigation as the department believes that Ruiz's efforts may lead to the possibility of the killer's release on a technicality. The painful Byzantine process of re-constructing the investigation and filling in the blanks of his memory loss piece by painful piece leads Ruiz on a tortuous path through London and Europe - down through the sewers of London and back into the river Thames; into the repulsive thoughts of a "grooming pedophile"; into a confrontation with Russian crime-lord, Alexei Kuznet, who is looking to recover a cache of diamonds worth over two million pounds; and even to London and Thailand's drug and sex sub-cultures.

Despite a plot with lots of twists and turns and a surprise ending that very few readers will suspect before it actually arrives, much of the quality of Robotham's "Lost" is cerebral - atmosphere, characterization, dialogue and psychology - the scion of a loving marriage between a police procedural and a psychological thriller. Those readers searching for comparisons need look no further than Michael Connelly's successful Harry Bosch novels. Like Bosch, Ruiz is a dark, brooding, mature hero with an in-your-face attitude who's toting lots of mental baggage! But I was also pleased to find that Robotham did not neglect to fill in the story with some very interesting technical asides - transient global amnesia; the complex engineering of London's vast and ancient sewer system; the police treatment of kidnapping and ransom demands; some peeks into Sikh family culture, and more.

Most enjoyable and definitely recommended. One tiny tip - if you haven't yet read "Suspect", go find it first and enjoy both!

"By the Decades" Challenge 2007 (Update)

I've made one substitution in order to consolidate some of the reading I'm doing and make a title do double duty. "Triplanetary", written by EE "Doc" Smith and first published in 1942 will take the place of "The Robe" by Lloyd Douglas as my choice for the fabulous forties. That way I get to make a notch in the belt of my Classic Sci-Fi New Author Challenge at the same time. That will also put my count for consecutive decades covered at nine. Hip, hip, hooray!

Here's the link to 3M's blog for a detailed explanation of the rules and a list of participants. Completed titles appear in red italics.

1870 The Law and the Lady - Wilkie Collins
1880 A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1890 The Well at World's End - William Morris
1900 First Men in the Moon - HG Wells 1
1910 The Poison Belt - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie
1930 Burmese Days – George Orwell
1940 Triplanetary - EE "Doc" Smith
1950 The Voyage of the Space Beagle – AE van Vogt
1960 The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
1970 Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
1980 West of Eden – Harry Harrison
1990 Plum Island – Nelson DeMille
2000 Ptolemy's Gate – Jonathan Stroud

Earthman's Burden - Poul Anderson & Gordon Dickson (****)

Life imitating art imitating life imitating ...

"Earthman's Burden" is simply hilarious.

When Ensign Alexander Braithwaite Jones crash landed on the planet Toka, 500 light years from earth, he encountered the Hokas, a cuddly race of aliens that (would you believe it?) resembled oversized, overstuffed teddy bears. The Hokas had the ability to absorb any trace of Earth culture they encountered, whether it be film, radio, television, music or books and reproduce it with devastatingly unpredictable and laugh-out-loud funny results. You'll see an entire world converted into the rootin', tootin' wild west, boffo grand opera in the Italian style starring Don Giovanni, a gaslit, atmospheric Victorian England featuring Sherlock Holmes stalking Grimpen Mire on the lookout for the Baskerville teddy bear, space patrollers, pirates and French legionnaires.

As I read the opening chapters, my initial reaction was to shake my head, blink twice and ponder whether Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson had taken leave of their senses. Surely, this couldn't be serious science fiction! But sure enough, there it was ... the pearl - that serious message of biting satire buried under the flesh of a mountainous oyster of vaudeville and slapstick! Jones was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary to Toka and saddled with what an arrogant government top heavy with self indulgent bureaucratic stuffed shirts labeled "Earthman's Burden" - the responsibility "to raise the primitive". Earth's Chief Cultural Commissioner, referring to himself with the ever pompous royal "we", advised Jones:

"to be patient with the innocent sub-civilized being. We shall often find his attitude uncosmic, his mind naively fumbling in its attempts to grasp the nuances of that which we teach him. He gazes at us with clear, unknowing eyes that plead with us to show him the right way - the civilized way."

How delicious - a double-barreled satire! Two targets for the price of one. Anderson and Dickson impales the arrogance of humanity in its estimation of our importance in the universe while, at the same time, lustily lampooning the idiocies of government bureaucracy.

Enjoy! You couldn't possibly read this without feeling uplifted and entertained.

Classic Sci-Fi New Author Challenge 3

As a general comment, whoever dreamed up this notion of challenges to focus reading in a desired direction was brilliant. More specifically, my Yahoo reading group Classic Sci-Fi has gifted me with a veritable cornucopia of new and exciting reading.

Here's my progress on the challenge so far. Completed titles are highlighted in red italics:

1. Lest Darkness Fall - L Sprague de Camp
2. The Voyage of the Space Beagle - AE van Vogt
3. A Mirror for Observers - Edgar Pangborn
4. The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum - Stanley Weinbaum
5. Earthman's Burden - Poul Anderson & Gordon Dickson
6. Triplanetary - EE "Doc" Smith
7. Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
8. Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
9. Cities in Flight - James Blish

Next up will be "Doc" Smith's "Triplanetary".

Earth is Room Enough - Isaac Asimov (*****)

"Earth is Room Enough" is an anthology of Asimov's early short stories centered on the theme that anything can and probably will happen right here on earth. It's likely that Asimov and his editors probably had their collective tongues firmly planted in their cheeks and grins on their faces when they tweaked the noses of Asimov's contemporary authors by proving that you didn't need rocket ships and space opera to write great science fiction.

While he didn't wander too far from home in terms of setting, Asimov used his fertile imagination and probing intellect to weave stories that will touch you in a wide variety of ways. Like all good SF authors, Asimov used his craft to question government, human emotions and fears, our development of and reliance on technology, humour and imagination.


Perhaps a couple of examples will serve to whet the appetite of those who have yet to savour Asimov's talent! What collection of Asimov's short stories would be complete without at least one from his vast repertoire of Susan Calvin's robots? "The Dead Past", like most of the stories he wove around his famous three laws of robotics, is a clever logic puzzle but it also probes deeply into the human psyche and our potential interactions with robots. Asimov's "Multivac", a computer character he returned to over and over again in an enormous variety of stories, appeared in "Jokester", a clever tale that probes the very nature of humour and "Franchise", which takes a very well-aimed poke at political pundits and pollsters. "The Immortal Bard", undoubtedly drawn from Asimov's well-documented non-fictional study of Shakespeare, is a clever jibe at our modern interpretation of this master playwright's work. And on and on it goes ...


For those that have yet to sample science fiction in general or Asimov's work in particular, this would be a fine place to start. Intellectual, thought-provoking, and deeply questioning yet humorous and lightweight enough to be entirely unintimidating!


Highly recommended.

The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman (***)

A puzzling and ultimately unsatisfying ending!

"The Geographer's Library" has aspirations to that lofty genre, the literary thriller, which is attracting so many hopeful authors and readers of late. For a debut novel, Fasman's efforts come very, very close indeed to success but ultimately a puzzling and cryptic ending left me feeling like I had just dined on that proverbial gourmet Chinese food - you know that old one about eating lots and enjoying it but, when the ending arrives, you're not really satisfied and a few minutes later you're hungry!

The story begins as Paul Tomm, reporter for a small town Connecticut weekly, is assigned to write the obituary for Jaan Puhapaev, an Estonian professor of Balkan history at the local college, who died alone in his rooms. Tomm's questions, initially aimed only at fleshing out the bones on the life of an old man that nobody really knew, quickly began to disclose a much more shadowy past.

Fasman ekes outs the details of Puhapaev's shadowy past and its mystical connection to the shadowy arcane science of alchemy by interweaving a series of fourteen thoroughly entertaining historical vignettes with the main body of the plot. Each story tracks the life line of a different artifact, some now priceless and others barely distinguishable from garage sale junk, all stolen in antiquity from the collection of twelfth century geographer Al-Idris to their resting places in the modern era.

The writing was sharp; the malevolent and stomach-churning plot-line of the thriller was well-paced and compelling; the historical asides were entertaining and informative; the characterization was enjoyable; and the stereotypes - the tweedy college don, small town cops, the laid back weekly newspaper editor, the church-going music teacher and even a Russian mobster - were all spot on and used with wonderful effect. But when the climax arrived and it was time to resolve the thriller and tie the present to the past that magic dissolved in a puff of smoke.

I'm a reader that needs a little more resolution in a novel's ending and this one is anything but - puzzling, cryptic and unresolved with entire futures and relationships left hanging in the balance! I enjoyed the book but I was certainly left with the feeling that it could have been so much more.

Death Match - Lincoln Child (***)

Enjoyable screenplay but not up to his usual standards!

Eden Incorporated is not your run-of-the-mill matchmaking service. For the rather lofty price tag of $25,000, Richard Silver, the company's brilliant and reclusive founder and Liza, the computer and its state of the art artificial intelligence software that is more person than machine, will guarantee to find you a "perfect" lifelong soul-mate. Well ... not quite perfect, but so close mind you that the paired partners certainly aren't complaining. So nobody was more surprised than Silver and Eden's management when Liza, despite overwhelming odds against such a match, found six absolutely perfect pairings.

But when Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe, the first of Eden's starry-eyed perfect couples, are found dead as the result of an apparent double suicide, Eden's corporate alarms sound wildly and Christopher Lash, a former FBI forensic psychologist is hired to quietly investigate the death from the inside. Lash, struggling with demons from his own past and memories that the investigation has brought to the surface, finds himself faced with a situation spiraling completely out of control when another perfect couple is also found dead - a bizarre second double suicide!

"Death Match" is first-rate brain candy when it's compared to other plot driven thrillers that seem much more screenplay than novel - James Patterson's and Iris Johansen's recent factory driven voluminous output comes to mind. But by comparison to the rather high standards that have been self-imposed by his own previous work - the Pendergast canon in conjunction with his partner, Douglas Preston, and his first solo effort, Utopia - "Death Match" falls well short of that mark.

There were so many opportunities for those technical addenda, side-bars and essays that I think of as part and parcel of Child's and Preston's writing - forensics, artificial intelligence, the computer dating and match-making industries, the psychology of suicide, computer security and corporate espionage, for example. But, sadly, all of them (not to mention character development in the bargain) were virtually ignored and the only motive for turning the pages was a plot. Creative and well-crafted, to be sure, but rather naked and lonely!

Well, I enjoyed it and I'll certainly look for more of his work. It just wasn't quite as cerebral a thriller as I had hoped for. Recommended for those looking for a fast-paced lightweight summer read. Three stars and a thumb-and-a-half!

The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr (****)

Rough and Tumble Late Nineteenth Century New York!

In "The Angel of Darkness", Caleb Carr returns his readers to the atmospheric, intriguing, rough and tumble world of late nineteenth century New York. The story is told through the eyes of Stevie Taggert, a former young thug rescued from a miserable life and almost certain early death as a street kid already up to his eyes in street crime and drugs by his guardian, Dr Laszlo Kreizler, the famous psychiatrist first introduced to us in "The Alienist".

During the politically troubled era preceding the onset of the Spanish-American War, the wife of a Spanish diplomat, whose baby has been kidnapped, frantically appeals to Sara Howard, a private detective and proud feminist who specializes in helping troubled women, for help to rescue the child before it is murdered. Sara in turn appeals to her friend, Dr Kreizler and their colleagues for their assistance in this most puzzling case - Stevie Taggert, Cyrus Montrose, Kreizler's faithful man-servant, Jonathan Moore, crime reporter for the New York Times, and Lucius and Marcus Isaacson, the brilliant yet comedic Jewish twin brothers hired as NYPD detectives by Teddy Roosevelt when he was chief of the force. When the kidnapper's identity is discovered relatively early, the tale changes from a whodunit into that more modern complicated breed of thriller that explores the "why" of the crime!

As the story is told completely through Stevie's eyes, the reader is treated to a wonderfully smooth, linear narration that is both complete and straightforward to follow from the plotting point of view. But that simple statement belies the scope and depth of this wonderful story that includes discussions of the birth of modern feminism, the ravages of cocaine and drug addiction, the growing use of modern crime-fighting tools - forensics, psychological profiling, fingerprinting, ballistics, microscopic matching of hair and fiber samples - and the psychology of that most puzzling and disturbing of criminals, the female serial killer!

For good measure, Carr also treats his readers to appearances of real-life historical figures that are substantially more than tossed off cameos - Theodore Roosevelt as pro tem head of the US Navy prior to his election as president leads a group of feisty sailors in a brawl against a brutal street gang; Clarence Darrow is observed in a thrilling courtroom drama establishing his reputation as one of the most brilliant defense lawyers that the US has ever seen and Elizabeth Cady Stanton whose early musings formed a substantial part of the basis of modern feminism is called upon as a critical witness for the defense.

Four stars and two thumbs up. Lovers of historical fiction will thoroughly enjoy "The Angel of Darkness" and cross their fingers that Carr will deliver on the rumour that there are more "alienist" novels in the works to be narrated by some of the other members of the team.

Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz - Edward Burger (****)

Making Light of Weighty Ideas!

What a wonderful motto for learning! To understand deep things simply, investigate simple things deeply.

In "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz", Burger and Starbird take that motto to heart and bless their readers with an entertaining, irreverent, always amusing yet eminently readable and completely understandable exploration of some of the frontiers of mathematics.

In the opening chapters, real-life numbers - the roulette wheel, nature vs nurture studies of twin's characteristics, e-mail stock picking scam and spam artists, air safety standards, HIV testing and the puzzle of coincident birth dates at a party - are used to put meat onto the bones of the familiar saying "lies, damned lies and statistics" and to introduce the modern concept of mathematical chaos.

A simple straightforward chapter on the nature of numbers that almost effortlessly leads us into a basic understanding of much more complex topics such as cryptography, the Goldbach and the Twin Prime conjectures closes with the interesting comment,

"... our instinctive desire to wonder about the world of numbers has paid enormous practical dividends in the past - abstract ideas about primes and factoring unexpectedly led to public key cryptography and security in Internet commerce. Somehow human curiosity about numbers from ancient times to the present seems to be in synchronicity with the universe."

Counting spirals on pineapples and sunflowers and the simple act of folding and unfolding a strip of paper is used as a springboard to take the reader, who is now thoroughly engrossed in the enjoyable style of the book, to a basic understanding of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, chaos and fractals. But for me personally, the most interesting section was the last one. Burger and Starbird used extremely simple notions of counting, matching and a hotel with an infinite number of rooms to guide the unsuspecting reader to a brilliant "aha" moment - a concise, clear understanding of Cantor's ideas regarding the cardinality of infinity, the completely counterintuitive idea that some infinities are bigger than others.

Mathematics is fun and beautiful and this wonderful little book will show even the most math-phobic reader why! Highly recommended.

Mars - Ben Bova (****)

A realistic vision of the first manned mission to Mars!

The theme of "Mars", Ben Bova's extraordinary vision of a first manned expedition to Earth's planetary neighbour, is hardly unique and imaginative. In fact, it's been pounded into submission on hundreds of previous occasions. Bova succeeds nonetheless and has served up a particularly compelling and realistic entry into the pantheon of space exploration sci-fi that unflinchingly explores the politics, the psychology, the emotion and humanity as well as the danger and excitement of an extended exploratory space mission that would in fact last almost two years. A healthy serving of science and day to day scientific realism rounds out this exciting and eminently readable story of a group of planetary explorers that are ultimately shown to have "the right stuff".

Nominally the hero of the tale, Jamie Waterman is a Navajo geologist selected to be part of the multi-national scientific ground team that will explore the red planet. The story opens as Jamie steps onto the surface of Mars and, overwhelmed with the power and emotion of the moment, he utters his first words to a waiting populace on Earth in Navajo instead of the carefully scripted English he was supposed to use. The resulting political firestorm that erupts on Earth is somehow sadly predictable in its powerful and dramatic realism.

Told primarily from Jamie's perspective, the main plot line unfolds around a debilitating and almost certainly fatal illness that every single member of the ground crew except the doctor contracts. While the forensic medical investigation into the illness is told with an urgent drama that will have every reader on the edge of their seat right to the literally cliff-hanging climax, it's the ultimate discovery of its cause that will leave readers slack-jawed with amazement at Bova's brilliant imagination and the almost absurdly humourous irony of the problem.

The Iron Curtain and the US-Russian Cold War are now relegated to the pages of history so the political structures and international rivalries portrayed in the story clearly date the writing of "Mars" to the latter part of the 20th century. But that takes nothing at all away from Bova's masterful development of full, complex characters whose well-being and success will matter to the readers. What more could a happy science fiction fan ask for - characters, plot and a heaping plate full of informative, entertaining and realistic science!

Highly recommended.