Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 24, 1993 TAG: 9310240195
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Sacred Clowns" is not Tony Hillerman's best novel. It's slowly paced; the mystery elements are so secondary to Hillerman's real purposes that they're almost nonexistant; and his prose isn't as crisp as it's been in earlier works. But, as his fans know, those criticisms mean nothing. People read Hillerman for his continuing exploration of Navajo life and culture. In that respect, "Sacred Clowns" is excellent, and since it also concerns Hopi traditions, it's something of a departure for Hillerman. As usual,
his two protagonists, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn are working on two seemingly unrelated murders, one of a shop teacher, the other of Hopi clown. Those two crimes are "solved" after a fashion, as is another death, but not in any conventional sense. This isn't so much a novel of good guys and bad guys as it is of good people who do the wrong things and then must live with the situation. The personal lives of Chee and Leaphorn are also important to the novel. They actually play a more significant role than they have in some earlier books and there's nothing wrong with that.
So, even if `Sacred Clowns" isn't any great shakes as a mystery, it's vintage Hillerman. MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
\ Future Wars: The World's Most Dangerous Flashpoints. By Trevor N. Dupuy. Warner Books. $21.95.
A well-respected military theorist, Col. Trevor Dupuy should be familiar to television watchers. He was an outstanding commentator during the Gulf War, and he appeared before the House Armed Forces Committee to discuss his Gulf War strategies. Some believe Dupuy's plans were the basis of General Swatzkopf's strategies.
In "Future Wars," he tries to predict where wars will take place within the next five years. According to Dupuy's research, we should expect to see tensions erupting into conflict with a third Gulf War, the fourth India-Pakistan War, the Sandinista War, war for Transylvania, the Libya-Egypt War, the second Korean War, the second war for Africa, the sixth Arab-Israel War, the Russian Civil War, and the Sino-Russian border war. He documents his thinking on each area and presents the reader with a short background on the area and the war's probable outcome. Dupuy makes his points
strongly and with some measure of authority. Unfortunately, he ignores the Bosnia situation and several other conflagrations that are currently in the news. And, of course, the PLO-Israeli accords might change some things in the Middle East. Perhaps even the most knowledgeable military prognasticator can make a mistake or two. ROBERT I. ALOTTA
\ Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM. By Paul Carroll. Crown. $24.
The breakdown of IBM has created a full employment plan for financial and management researchers. Here is another view of what went wrong with Big Blue. The author - he covered IBM for The Wall Street Journal - points out all the failings of the corporate culture at IBM, and all the positive of the corporate culture at Microsoft, the company which, in Carroll's analysis, single-handedly brought the giant down. What really brought down IBM receives only cursory attention.
What really brought down IBM was the ten-year antitrust investigation the company had to endure. The requirements that all major decisions made by the company during those years be so thoroughly documented prevented any quick response to market changes. The defensive middle managers of those years became the defensive upper managers of the turbulent 1980s. They could not respond quickly because they lost the ability over the years. This sad commentary on governmental interference more than the brilliance of Bill Gates and Microsoft caused the collapse. Better books than this have been written about the subject by authors less sycophantic toward Microsoft than Mr. Carroll.
LARRY SHIELD
\ Robert I. Alotta's most recent book is `Signposts and Settlers."
Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.
by CNB