Miss Glamora Tudor! Is a major literary event.

As most readers know, Anthony Trollope developed the fictional County of Barsetshire, England, and devoted six magnificent novels to its inhabitants. Years later, in the 1930s, Angela Thirkell decided to use the descendents of these characters for her own series of books. She was popular and was considered highly entertaining, erudite, and intelligent. Thirkell continued writing about Barsetshire for almost thirty years. When she passed away, she left an unfinished novel, which was completed by her dear friend, C.A. Lejeune, and published in 1961. Since then, much research and study of her work took place, under the leadership of the two scholarly societies in both England and in the United States. Thirkell was also republished by various publishers. However, no one has ever attempted to write a sequel to her books. That is, until now. The distinguished Angela Thirkell Society of North America requested one of its devoted members, Ilil Arbel (author of Maimonides, a Spiritual Biography, The Lemon Tree, and a few other books) to write the first full-length sequel to the body of work left by Angela Thirkell and Anthony Trollope. And I was requested to review it.

 Since I am not a reader of Angela Thirkell, I did not exactly know what to expect when I started reading Miss Glamora Tudor. I am an avid reader of Anthony Trollope, however, I do know England and English history pretty well, and I was told that the book can stand alone and be read on its own without any trouble. That was an understatement. Two pages into the book, and I was so hooked that I could not put it down, and spent much of my reading time laughing. This is a glorious romp, charming and witty, with a plot that never lets you down. Surprises, hints, and allusions lead to an incredible finale that I challenge anyone to have guessed. The character development is outstanding. I am not sure who are the Thirkell characters and who are the new ones invented by Arbel, but it does not matter in the least because they interact perfectly. The development of the character of the actress, Glamora, is particularly good. She starts out as a silly starlet, and grows into someone who touches your heart and soul. And the language! Arbel weaves her way through three types of speech, which since I am a linguist I could not miss. She uses the speech of the British upper classes, the speech of the servant class, and the speech of an American group, and she does it with seamless ease which I found enchanting. If this is what Angela Thirkell was like, I am determined to start reading her books right away. And in my opinion, Miss Glamora Tudor! is as good as any Anthony Trollope novel. The wit, charm, and elegance of The Warden and Barchester Towers is recalled by it.

The most important point, however, is the fact that after forty years of silence, the book gives new life to Barsetshire. It is going to be extremely well received, there is no doubt of that, so I expect Miss Arbel to write additional Barsetshire novels, hopefully creating a body of work of her own. A whole new era is opening up! Therefore, for readers of Trollope and Thirkell, or for anyone who truly loves English literature, Miss Glamora Tudor! is a major literary event. –Reviewer: Maximillien de Lafayette

Police chief to Spenser: "We played it by the book. Straight down the line. By the book. And, by God, we kept a tragedy from turning into a holocaust.

Robert Parker's novels featuring a Boston private detective named Spenser got off to a slam-bang start in the 1970s. But since then, the series has grown in popularity but deteriorated in quality, the plots becoming as thin as negligees and the wisecracking detective turning into a parody of himself. It's not that Parker forgot how to write. Double Play, his fine 2004 novel about baseball, race relations and redemption, proved that he still can. But the Spenser series appeared long past saving. Occasionally, Parker would perk up enough to write a few chapters reminding us of why we liked Spenser so much in the first place, but he never got around to writing another good book. So School Days, the best Spenser novel since Early Autumn (1981) comes as a welcome surprise. This time, Parker has given his hero a case that is worthy of him: Two boys armed with four semiautomatic handguns gun down seven teachers and students in a suburban high school. The cops catch one of the boys in the act, and he rats out another, Jared Clark, who promptly confesses. Jared's grandmother hires Spenser to prove his innocence. It doesn't take long for our hero to realize Jared is guilty as charged. The best Spenser can do is dig up extenuating circumstances that could get Jared into a less unpleasant prison _ or, as Spenser puts it, "the easiest room in hell." So Spenser seeks to answer two questions: How did two suburban kids get their hands on semiautomatics? And why did they go on a killing rampage? Aside from the prosecutor, a good guy who cares as much about justice as his conviction record, no one is much interested in helping Spenser find the answers _ not the school officials, or the local police, or Jared's lawyer or even his parents. They all just want to forget and move on. Or are they hiding something?

The more they stonewall, the harder Spenser digs.

Before long, the digging gets a couple of kids killed, one by Spenser's hand, prompting a bit of characteristic Spenser soul-searching: "When I eventually figured out why Jared shot up his school, what would I have? The truth? Was that worth two bodies? The world had probably lost more for less. But they were alive, and now they weren't. Maybe the truth wasn't worth dying for. Or killing for. Maybe it never had been." There is a bit of bad news. Spenser's menacing friend, Hawk, one of the more appealing characters in modern crime fiction, fails to make an appearance, even though there were several moments when Spenser could have used his help. But Parker more than makes up for this by sending Spenser's insufferably precious girlfriend, psychologist Susan Silverman, on an out-of-town trip. Big strong Spenser whimpers his love to her over the telephone and she returns to leap into his arms in a superfluous final chapter, but we are thankfully spared the streams of Silverman psychobabble that have marred so many other Spenser novels. Throughout, Spenser is, as always, a smart mouth, or, as his elderly client puts it, "a wisenheimer." Police chief to Spenser: "We played it by the book. Straight down the line. By the book. And, by God, we kept a tragedy from turning into a holocaust." Reviewer: B. Silva

THE SECRET MULRONEY TAPES: Peter C. Newman Thanks to the headlines splashed across the front pages this week by the bombshell launch of The Secret Mulroney Tapes, we now know a great deal of what Brian Mulroney was thinking while he was prime minister, and a lot of it isn't pretty.  But a more careful reading of the explosive, profane book reveals it as more than a hatchet job. ..