Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305160214
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Ed McBain. Warner Books. $19.95.
This is a surprisingly weak entry in a series of inventive crime novels. Unlike the previous books, it's a conventional courtroom drama in which lawyer Matthew Hope has to defend a client before a judge and jury. While the various bits of legalistic business all appear to be accurate enough, the characters tend to sound alike in the long question-and-answer sections, and about the best that can be said of the ending is that it's a mistake.
Mary Barton, a retired schoolteacher, has been accused of brutally murdering three little girls and burying their bodies in her extensive backyard garden. Hope accepts her case despite a mountain of evidence against the woman. First there are several eyewitnesses who claim to have seen her with the girls, and then there's Mary herself, a curmudgeon of the first rank. She adds little to her own defense as the prosecution builds its case. Of course, Hope has his people at work, too, and they discover some odd gaps in her background.
The requisite number of red herrings are tossed in, but there's a certain rote quality to them, as if McBain were running on cruise control there. But those flaws and some less-than-taut, repetitious dialogue are relatively minor annoyances, because McBain has a reputation for strong conclusions. But not this time. It's not giving too much away to reveal that the big finish depends on one character's withholding information for no reason when there is every reason to reveal it. As an key element of a crime novel, it's unbelievable, almost insulting.
-MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
Total Baseball.
Edited by John Thorn and Pete Palmer. HarperPerennial. $35.
Now in only its third edition, "Total Baseball" has quickly established itself as the ultimate source of baseball information under one cover. And the price, in paperback, for these more than 2,300 pages is reasonable.
Here are not only reams of statistics on hitting, pitching and fielding, but also page after page of text on history, the players, highlights, baseball leagues in other times and places and "the game off the field" - baseball and the law, the commissioners, collecting, etc., etc. Here too are explanations of sabermetrics, the role of computers in the modern game, "Phantom Players" and other arcana.
A puzzle is that while "Total Baseball" gives some player nicknames, it omits some of the more colorful. 19th century fielder Bob Ferguson's there, but not his sobriquet, "Death to Flying Things." Missing also are notations about blood relationships among players found in "The Baseball Encyclopedia." But these are quibbles. If you love the game - and what thinking person does not? - "Total Baseball" belongs in your library.
-BOB WILLIS
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.\ By Ben Carson, M.D., with Cecil Murphey. Harper Paperbacks. $5.99.
Ben Carson grew up black and poor in Detroit. His mother, educated only as far as the third grade, threw her bigamist husband out of the house, and then raised her two sons alone. Carson's studies, spurred on by his mother's encouragement and by the insight of some special teachers, led him to Yale for undergraduate work, to the University of Michigan for medical school and finally to Johns Hopkins for training in neurosurgery. Now he heads the division of Pediatric Neurosurgery there and his contributions to patient care and research are extraordinary.
The book's jacket includes a laudatory quote from Reader's Digest and that is most appropriate. Reader's Digest is the place where this book belongs. The prose is simple and direct; the message relentlessly upbeat. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome by prayer and hard work; everything works out fine in the end.
Young adults or adolescents might find this interesting reading. More sophisticated readers probably would search for a different telling of the same tale.
- SIDNEY BARRITT
Bob Willis recently retired from the editorial page of this newspaper.\ Sidney Barritt is a Roanoke physician.
by CNB