Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130276
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Harvey edits a magazine and writes television scripts in England. In this, his first venture into crime fiction, he introduces Charles Resnick, a laconic detective who keeps cats but will otherwise remind you of P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh. Charlie and lesser characters are interesting people, and the plot is orderly, although a bit cluttered. The big problem is an abrupt, illogical, unclear ending that leaves you wondering if Harvey is all that good after all. - TOM SHAFFER
The Fall of Pan Am 103 By Steven Emerson and Brian Duffy. Putnam's. $21.95.
On December 21, 1988, Iran retaliated for the destruction of a commercial airliner carrying 290 passengers by a U.S. Navy vessel. The retaliation cost the lives of 275 passengers and crew members of Pam American flight 103 from London to New York; and 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, a village of 3,000.
In this fact-filled account of the event, the authors - both staffers of U.S. News and World Report - trace the investigation from Lockerbie to Damascus to try to explain how such a tragedy could have occurred. The authors point to Iran for the motivation; to the General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for planting the bomb; and to intramural rivalries between law enforcement agencies of the U.S., West Germany and Israel for not discovering the plot. The authors also point out that unless the lessons of Lockerbie are remembered, the pain will be revisited. - LARRY SHIELD
Island of Steel By Stephen Paul Cohen. Morrow. $17.95.
Cohen's Eddie Margolis is getting better but he is still too cocky. Margolis is immature; so are Cohen's plots. He ends them too quickly, with too much violence and not enough thought. The idea here is a complex, clever scam that takes advantage of Cohen's past as a big-firm New York real estate lawyer. It's great material. I wonder what George V. Higgins would have done with it. - TOM SHAFFER
In the Arena By Richard Nixon. Simon and Schuster. $21.95.
After reading this latest effort of Richard Nixon, I began to sympathize with the ancient Egyptians when Moses came to town. Once again readers are plagued with another attempt by Nixon to show how news organizations and other enemies have conspired to tarnish his historic image.
Using a litany of examples punctuated by Greek Chorus-like invocations of what he understands as major crossroads in his public life - The Hiss Case (1948), The Fund or Checkers Speech (1952), The Silent Majority Speech (1969) and The Watergate Scandal (1972-74) - Nixon explains why the positive achievements of his public life will be denigrated by the petty jealousies of others. He begins even before Chapter One with this Theodore Roosevelt quote used in the frontispiece: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles . . . ..." Maybe Moses was the wrong biblical metaphor. Job would better fit the tone of this apologia. - LARRY SHIELD
by CNB