DWD's Reviews

  Tedium followed by tedium. Did I mention the tedium? Synopsis: 83-year old Benjamin Stillman dies and leaves $8 million to a local synagogue in his will. No big deal, except that no one can figure out where this bookkeeper for a brokerage house got $8 million. Oh, and there's one other little fact: Stillman was not Jewish and had never even set foot in the synagogue. A legal wrangle develops and everyone "lawyers up": the synagugue, the brokerage house, Stillman's doctors come up with another will leaving all of the money to their cancer treatment center and there's even a class-action lawsuit is filed by a sleazy lawyer looking to make a name for himself. The Review: Undue Influence  was tedious. It started out well but I soon got very tired of all of the legal wrangling. It just got irritating to me and it made me very glad that I did not become an attorney. This book's genre was legal "thriller" but I was tempted just to skip to

Disappointing So,  Speedweeks: 10 Days At Daytona is yet another coffee table book. See, what it is is that I have a friend who knows I am a NASCAR fan so he didn't know what else to get me for Christmas so he got me 3 NASCAR books. One of them was this one and I was fairly disappointed, mostly due to the fact that the title does not accurately describe the book. Nor does it accurately describe Speedweeks, which lasts longer than 10 days. For example, the 2011 Speedweeks events have one event in early January and then really go hot and heavy for about 3 weeks beginning on January 27 and culminating in the Daytona 500 on February 20. See, Daytona Speedweeks is a racing happening. There are a dozen motorsports events, culminating in the Daytona 500. There's a 24 hour race, an ARCA race and literally a half-dozen NASCAR races. Check their website ! This book, however, focuses primarily on the Daytona 500 (90%) and barely mentions the other non-NASCAR events. In fact

 As the title suggests, America's Strangest Museums: A Traveler's Guide to the Most Unusual and Eccentric Collections  is a tour of more than 100 bizarre little museums people (and a few corporations) have set up across the USA ( and a couple in Canada). Some include: -The Museum of Menstruation (started by a single man in his 50s) -The Tooth Fairy Museum (now closed) -The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices (closed now, unfortunately) -Spam has a museum -So does Combat, the bug spray company. They also have a contest in which you can send them dead roaches dressed up in dioramas. -The Bull Hall of Fame. Since I am a proud Hoosier, I'm pleased to note that Indiana offerings include: -The Old Jail Museum in Crawfordsville -The Dan Quayle Center and Museum in Huntington -Drake's Midwest Phonograph Museum in Martinsville -The Bird's Eye View Museum in Wakarusa. My favorite is The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)  in Massachusetts. Anyway -

                      Not so hot . Nest of Vipers features Sarah Jensen, a young, gorgeous, exceedingly bright (When are we going to have a book about an ugly, old not-so-bright heroine?) currency trader who is asked by the British version of the Federal Reserve President to go undercover at a trading house and see if they are using inside information to make millions of pounds. Much trouble ensues. Linda Davies The female lead is a little too well-connected (she always knows just the right person to help her when she needs something) and I was kind of bugged that the characters used dollars and pounds interchangeably in their financial wheelings and dealings. Maybe that's the reality of international currency exchange and the power of the United States. If so, "Go USA!" Back to the book - It's better than reading nothing, but you might want to read an old National Geographic instead.   I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazo

           Great book, except for the end. Lizard Skin  features veteran Montana state trooper Beau MacAllister, a wise-cracking good ol' boy who has great instincts and is not too concerned with protocol. Beau is called to a truck stop to stop a robbery in progress - but the whole thing seems fishy to him and he ends up shooting the supposed victim in the butt during a 3 way fight between Beau, the "victim" and several Indians using compound bows. Beau suspects something is amiss and tugs on this loose thread until he finds the conspiracy. The characters in this story are well-written - Beau is particularly well developed, especially for a cop novel. The DA character (Vanessa Ballard) is quite memorable and "feels" like a real person, rather than a caricature. Even McAllister's nemesis, Dwight Hogelan, shows signs of growth during the book. Carsten Stroud All of this makes the end of  Lizard Skin  very disappointing. The first 90% of the book

A formula book with some redeeming features. First things first. Lawrence Sanders wrote formulaic murder mysteries. The Fourth Deadly Sin  one was also formulaic, but better than most of his stuff. A New York psychologist gets murdered with a ball peen hammer in his own office and a dark and stormy night. A retired detective is pressed back into duty to lead an interesting team of detectives that is sorting through some of his patients, friends, employees and wife to try to figure out who did this dastardly crime. Lawrence Sanders (1920-1998) The old cop, Delaney, has one interesting vice. Rather than drinking when depressed over the progress their making, he eats cold sandwiches made of leftovers over the kitchen sink, which irritates his wife to no end. An interesting theme is developed - Delaney asserts that truly beautiful women (in this case the wife - literally everyone comments about her striking looks ) often are (self-)limited in other capacities because they