Product Description
A collection of fifteen original, humorous whodunits includes stories by Carolyn G. Hart, Margaret Maron, Nancy Pickard, and the editor, whose ""Cremains of the Day"" shows how mad a cat lover can be when her kitty is burgled. Original." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great book...worth reading
This book is one that you will want to read again and again.Joan Hess wrote it in such away that allows the reader to completly "get in" to the book and ignore the outside world for a while. ... Read more

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Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Author

In the title novel, The Deadly Ackee, retired florist Theo Bloom lucks into what appears to be a perfect situation -- escorting his teenage niece and her five friends to lush Jamaica, where he can study the tropical flora to his heart's delight. But there are serpents in paradise; his squabbling charges are enough to drive even mild-mannered Theo to drink, and when an old friend from the CIA turns up, it's more than coincidence. But when a body is found floating in the resort pool, Theo's vacation turns murderous, and only he can solve the mystery before another victim is found.Also included is a selection of short stories, including one from The Maggody Files.

Joan Hess lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great writer--Excellent stories
"The Deadly Ackee".Nadine calls up her brother Theo, a retired florist, to chaperone his niece, her fiancé and four other college students on their Jamaican vacation.Theo says no since he is still recovering from his last frolic with Dorrie in which Israelis tried to kill them and Communists tried to indoctrinate them.Fun and sun in the Caribbean proves tedious for Theo as the sextet drives him crazy with their antics.However, Theo soon finds himself in a deadly situation as someone poisons the pool boy with rum spiked with deadly unripe ackee and one of his charges has been kidnapped.The adolescent humor is amusing at first, but like Theo becomes a bit tedious until the homicide and the abduction take center stage.Theo, in his second appearance (see The Night-Blooming Cereus) is a fine amateur sleuth who would prefer to find exotic flora, but acts responsible even if it is dangerous.Tongue in cheek, this is an amusing reprint of a late 1980s tale that is fun to read.

The Other Stories.The four accompanying short stories blend humor with murder and mayhem to include a return to Maggody, Arkansas for one tale.The four contributions are amusing, contain a twist or two, and enhance the fine lead title in providing readers a taste of Joan Hess' properly cooked ripened ackee mysteries.

Harriet Klausner ... Read more

Product Description
These candid conversations capture the difficulties ofreporting during crisis and war, particularly the tension betweengovernment and the press. The participants include distinguishedjournalists—American and foreign, print and broadcast—andprominent public officials, past and present. They illuminate thestruggle to balance free speech and the right to know with the need toprotect sensitive information in the national interest. As theInformation Age collides with the War on Terrorism, that challengebecomes even more critical and daunting.

Cosponsored with the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics andPublic Policy at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Provocative Discussion About Embedded Reporting!
This is a superb collection of essays, first-person observations, and recollections of so-called embedded reporters and photographic journalists, edited jointly by Marvin Kalb, a former CBS reporter turned Harvard resident scholar, and Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institution. Written in the first person, each of the collected essays takes the reader up-close and personal and shows how difficult it is to know the degree to which such observations are typical or representative of what is going on the overall conflict in which they are embedded. And therein lies the rub, for to some extent it is apparent that even embedded reporter can be manipulated and co-opted by the military, and in several cases that is apparently the case for the individual reporters recounting their war tales.

The pieces are both candid and raw; in the sense they somehow manage to catch the very essence of the intricate dance between accurate reporting and the tension with the host army to whom they owe their sustenance and their safety. This tension between the ostensibly objective reporters, on the one hand, and the very partisan military representatives overseeing them, on the other, is what drives the considerable insight the correspondents manage to extricate from the madness of the ongoing battle they cover. This is especially true for electronic media journalists, whose products are almost immediately available to the general public, and who still find themselves both physically and existentially with the troops.

The latest tendency to meaningfully embed reporters with elements of the shock troops racing across Iraq, seen in context, is just another of many such attempts by the military to deftly manage the reporting from the front, and indeed, to prejudice the reporters by forcing them to live alongside the often valiant and sometimes suffering soldiers, whose personalities and sacrifices do indeed win the reporters over to see the war through their eyes. The experience in Iraq, upon reflection, will likely show that reporters and journalists were kept "on the reservation" by sequestering them into small groups seeing only limited actions, and seldom allowing them to see aspects of the conflict not consistent with military goals and objectives. Once again, the omnipresent tension between the needs for security on the one hand, and the rights of the citizens of a free society to know what is being done in their names, on the other, is all too apparent here. Enjoy! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

OK
NOT ONE OF JOAN HESS'S GREAT ONES BUT STILL OK.GOT KINDA LACKING IN THE MIDDLE AND A LITTLE SILLY. ... Read more

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LOVE A GOOD MYSTERY? LOVE PUZZLES? DO YOU HAVE A DARK SIDE? THIS NEW INTRIGUING PUZZLE & MYSTERY COMBO WILL HAVE YOU OCCUPIED FOR HOURS! ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 174 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Signed essays ranging from 500 to 2,500 words, written by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries include subject-specific bibliographies and textual cross-references to related essays. ... Read more

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Word count: 1403. ... Read more

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A mystery anthology follows the first appearances and first short stories of several favorite characters and includes contributions by such authors as Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, and John Lutz. Reprint. PW. AB. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting for Historical Purposes
"First Cases" is a collection of the first short stories by classic private eye writers featuring their heros (or heroines).That should be the book's caveat, as many of the protagonists had already appeared in full length novel form before these stories were published.The lineup includes such luminaries as Loren Estlemen's Amos Walker, Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder, Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" and Editor Robert J. Randisi's own Miles Jacoby.All of the series characters featured are currently ongoing (or at least were as of 1996, when the book was published).Editor Randisi knows his stuff, having been the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America.

All that said, the quality of the stories varies.Some of the writers had yet to really find their voice and some (especially the older) stories are somewhat by-the-numbers.Nevertheless, the book is an inetersting historical artifactfor those who want insight on how their heros developed.My personal favorites are Block's and Estlemen's.They show again why they are, for my money, the two best and most consistent private eye writers currently working in the genre. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of mystery stories by noted female authors includes contributions by Amanda Cross, Mary Higgins Clark, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Antonia Fraser, Sara Paretsky, Ruth Rendell, and Joan Hess. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

NOT MY FAV.
I have read many short stories from my favorite women authors and these are not them.The stories seem to drag along

Don't Miss It
By far the best of the women's collections. Ruth Rendell's "A Pair of Yellow Lilies" is the best story I've read in years. ... Read more

Product Description
Fourteen spine-tingling stories of suspense include P. D. James's ""The Victim,"" in which a gorgeous celebrity uses her infatuated ex-husband as a murder weapon, and tales by Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith, and other authors. ... Read more