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Beyond the Great Snow Mountains by Louis L’Amour (1999) – BR00050 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of ten short stories.

What I Liked

  • Crash Landing — A great twist story, about a crashed plane and the man who takes charge to get everyone off before the plane slips off the edge of the snow-covered cliff.
  • Sideshow Champion — A brawling boxer gets the championship fight of his life, but he knows the ones backing the champion are all crooked and will stop at nothing to bring him down. And he knows he has to get out of the limelight to train, so he goes back to the circus as a sideshow boxer to practice for the weeks before the fight.
  • The Money Punch — Another boxing story about a kid who’s up against the rackets and an ex-trainer who is more than a little crooked. Add in a missing new trainer, and the fact that he needs training — he’s got a great right but his left needs to be developed so he can be a better fighter. Oh, and he wants the girl who owns the fight farm.
  • Roundup in Texas — A typical western story where cattle rustlers are lowering cattle estimates, and the foreman looks to be a chump who simply over-estimated. Gun battle at the end, and lots of story in a short timeframe.
  • Under the Hanging Wall — A private-eye story about a man hired to go to a town and find out why his brother would have killed a mine owner. The Sheriff is no help, and there’s a woman who belongs in the big city, not in a bus-stop town along the highway. Set in the early 20th century.

Other stories include: By the Waters of San Tadeo (town bully holds village hostage on island); Meeting at Falmouth (ambushing a traveling gentleman); and Beyond the Great Snow Mountains (woman taken prisoner in Chinese mountains by a tribe).

What I Didn’t Like

Two stories weren’t that great — Coast Patrol (WW II story about a freighter captured by Germans and an Allied pilot) and Gravel Pit (thief gets extorted and wants to kill the extortionist).

The Bottom Line

Decent but eclectic bunch of shortstories.

The Best of Sisters in Crime by Marilyn Wallace (Editor) (1998) – BR00055 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of shortstories from the members of Sisters-in-Crime, the association primarily for women mystery authors.

What I Liked

  • Elizabeth George: The Evidence Exposed — An Agatha-Christie-type story, with an excursion to study British architecture. Stereotype characters but with great twists, and lots of Christie-like turns for explaining possible motivations;
  • Carolyn G. Hart: Upstaging Murder — A mystery weekend starts to look a little more sinister when one of the guests tries to get a jump on the competition with a little sleuthing, and sees one of the actors replace blanks in a gun with real bullets;
  • Sarah Shankman: Say You’re Sorry — A terrible vengeance is exacted for a horror committed years before between two friends, one with money, and one without who is forced to follow the oldest profession to support herself;
  • Marilyn Wallace: A Tale of Two Pretties — A woman facing imprisonment finds a way out, another woman who could be her twin. Simple solution: pay the other woman to just change lives until the imprisonment is over. And the other woman is willing because she’s looking at waiting for her lover to get out of prison himself, and she can’t stand being alone. Something about the best laid plans though;
  • Carolyn Wheat: Life, For Short — A woman in the hospital wants to die, and an angel-of-death orderly on a mercy mission stalks the hospital. Will they meet before its too late? Or will they meet too early? A little darker ending; and,
  • Joyce Carol Oates: Extenuating Circumstances — This is a strange story, both in tone and in format. The story is a list of reasons that a woman has left her husband so he will know why she did some nasty deeds. Somewhat disturbing.

Other good ones in the collection include Mary Higgins Clark (Voices in the Coalbin — suicidal wife hears voices in the coalbin); Dorothy Cannell (The High Cost of Living — siblings against their step-mother); Sara Paretsky (The Maltese Cat — missing sister and her cat); Wendy Hornsby (Nine Sons — woman with nine boys is pregnant with 10th kid); Margaret Manon (Lieutenant Harald and the Impossible Gun — bullet from gun that has an alibi); Sharyn McCrumb (A Predatory Woman — reporter interfering with child murderer about to be paroled); and Dianne Mott Davidson (Cold Turkey — caterer with a body in her fridge).

What I Didn’t Like

A few of the stories are just not quite as good as the rest of the collection including Nancy Pickard (Afraid All The Time — skittish city girl living in the country); Marcia Muller (All the Lonely People — private-eye investigating dating service); Julie Smith (Blood Type — holographic wills and imminent deaths); Gillian Roberts (Hog Heaven — an aging but forgetful Romeo); Susan Dunlap (The Celestial Buffet — gourmands after death); Joan Hess (Too Much To Bare — woman wants revenge for cheating); Sue Grafton (A Poison That Leaves No Trace — death of a sister who competed with daughter); and Gabrielle Kraft (One Hit Wonder — ex-singer, now bartender, is tempted by couple up to no good).

The Bottom Line

Eclectic but solid collection.

Get Your University Degree at Home by Kevin Paul (1999) – BR00051 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
June 8 1999

Plot or Premise

Having met the author when I was a student at the University of Victoria when he was the Director of Graduate Admissions, I had a lot of confidence in his ability to present a no-nonsense approach to the idea of Distance Education. And for the most part, he delivered. [Note: This review is of the 1999 edition, vastly out of date now 20 years later).

What I Liked

The book does a pretty good job of giving an overview of those universities where it is possible to do the majority of the degree through distance education (correspondence, audio tapes, video tapes, fax, e-mail, internet lists, etc). And there are some sections for the uninitiated to figure out if distance education is right for them. Some notable highlights, in my opinion, include:

  • Athabasca University: its primary method is distance ed;
  • California State University (Dominguez Hills): it has an interesting MA in Humanities (Art, History, Lit, Music, & Philosophy are the core courses);
  • City University: some campus centres around the world;
  • Heriod-Watt University (Edinburgh Business School): one of the UK systems with solid academic credentials but only for the truly independent learner;
  • Ohio University: offers two methods: independent study (with interaction and support) or truly independent study (with little support, no interaction but at half the cost);
  • Open University (Open Learning Agency): a strong presence in British Columbia;
  • Queen’s University: Only three BAs available by this method, but a strong MBA program offered through regional centres throughout Canada;
  • Regents College (University of the State of New York): perhaps one of the better “”credit for life”” univs.;
  • University of London: Similar to HWU in Edinburgh, this offers a great deal (financially and academically) but is for the serious learner only who can work alone;
  • University of North Dakota: Offering an MSc in Space Studies, which alone is enough to be worth noting;
  • University of South Africa: Has a huge selection of courses available, perhaps more than any other univ in the book, and has reasonably solid international credentials;
  • University of Waterloo: as always, a solid choice regardless of the medium; and,
  • Vermont College of Norwich University: has an interesting mentoring program tailored to adult learners, but the residency requirement might be difficult;

What I Didn’t Like

The majority of the book are all-too-brief overviews of each university. He covers them all — but the most useful tool is missing from the book. There are appendices that list, for example, the universities offering each degree. However, what is missing is a simple table that would help the reader narrow down the search. The table would list:

  • degree available, perhaps broken by section?;
  • estimated cost of the degree? (the overviews list the cost of a unit/credit, but then fails to tell you how many units/credits it takes for a degree);
  • if there is a notation on the transcript that the degree was obtained through distance education?;
  • if there is a residency requirement? (many people would eliminate a huge number of places solely on that basis alone); and,
  • if they give credit for life experiences? (this would aid those who would select/deselect on that basis from both sides of the argument)

The overviews give you a lot of info, but a nice index would improve the process.

Disclosure

I used to know the author as Director of Graduate Admissions at the university where I was a student.

The Bottom Line

No-nonsense approach to distance education.

The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00057 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
June 5 1999

Plot or Premise

Connor Fitzgerald is an assassin for the CIA. Black ops at its best. But when the CIA director orders a hit, and then wants to hide her involvement from the President, she tries to send Fitzgerald on a one-way futile assignment to Russia to prepare an assassination of the Russian Premier. Fitzgerald’s ex-mentor gets involved and figures out the plan, but too late to save CF from getting caught. A couple of twists later, however, and Fitzgerald is back in the States with the same mission — kill the Premier while he sits next to the President.

What I Liked

The storylines were inventive and well done. Not quite at the level of Clancy or De Mille, but well done still. The writing is first-rate and the story moves along at a good clip.

What I Didn’t Like

The relations between the CIA and Fitzgerald, and between the CIA and the Oval Office are not sufficiently fleshed out, leaving the story as having a little too light touch for the genre. Also, a couple of the twists are too well-telegraphed and you see them a mile off. And a small twist at the end, although expected, is handled far too lightly for the likely reality of the situation.

The Bottom Line

The story moves along at a good clip.

Riding the Snake by Stephen J. Cannell (1998) – BR00054 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
June 5 1999

Plot or Premise

Stephen J. Cannell is a writing success on TV and this book is no exception. It takes a wealthy playboy (who never measured up to his father’s standards) and a black female cop (who came from the streets) and throws them together to investigate a crime committed by Asian tongs. About the only thing missing from the demographics are gays because we also have Russians and international intrigue. The short plot summary is that playboy Wheeler Cassidy loses his seemingly straight-laced brother to an Asian tong war involving immigrants “riding the snake” to America and the “free” elections in Hong Kong as it reverts to Chinese rule. Along as his investigative partner is a black cop, Tanisha Williams, being investigated for having ties still to her “hood”, and therefore assigned to a desk in the Asian bureau of the LAPD. She investigates the death of Cassidy’s brother and the brother’s secretary, and it all leads to Hong Kong — taxi to the airport!

What I Liked

A weird series of events leads from Hong Kong back to L.A. and more fights with the tongs, and a Russian nuclear bomb that has been smuggled into L.A.

What I Didn’t Like

Basically, the writing is fine, but the book is what happens when you take a Tom Clancy-type story, replace the spooks with characters from your average cop story on TV, and run it along the same TV format plot lines. No depth here, but it hits all the major story headlines from the popular press.

The Bottom Line

Holes all over the place but a fun ride.