Customer Comments

Geoffrey Homes was the pen name for Daniel Mainwaring who was an all purpose writer in Hollywood during the height of the studio system. Using the Homes name he published hard boiled detective fiction--the most famous of which is "Built my Gallows High" (1946) which was the basis for the classic film noir "Out of the Past" (1947). In "No Hands on the Clock" (1939) Homes demonstrates all his skills at character, plot and particularly setting to weave a real corker of a story. I am particularly impressed with his ability to involk the unique and often surreal reality that was Reno at the height of the Divorce Era. Homes skillfully blends fact and fiction to paint an wonderful picture of the characters and environment of this odd corner of Nevada just before World war II. He really knows his stuff, using elements such as the piano player who really did live in a six-sided Chinese pagoda house with a revolving bed! If you are a fan of Hammett or Chandler, give Homes a try. You will not be dissapointed!

George Martin continues on with his vast saga of intrigue and mystery with Vol. 5. I confess that I did have to refer back to previous volumes at times to remind myself what had happened to various characters and would love for these books to be indexed. Nevertheless, I am hooked and will continue to follow this series no matter how many books and how many years it takes. I just hope Martin can finish it off himself. With luck we won't have to wait an eternity for the next one.

Well, this is not the first thing that pops into most folks mind whan looking to buy a summer beach book. But for anyone who is interested in buildings, and particularly in historic buildings, this guide is a must have. Granted there may not be millions of people out there who want to know the proper name for a particular bit or piece of a Gothic Cathedral, but the entries are so complete and the illustrations are so rich that any building person will find themselves just surfing around in the book for the pleasure of it. My only beef is that it does not include a style guide which puts all the elements for a particular style together in one place. As such if you want to know the proper name for a bit or piece of a Gothic Cathedral, you have to cruise the whole dictionary looking for that particular thing rather than go to a page on Gothic architecture and spotting the bit you want and exclaiming "Oh, so that sticky-uppy thing is called a crockett is it?" Small beef. SO anyway, if you ever wanted to know what a metope is, this is the book for you.

Brilliant!