Great review by Susan Wingate for "The Bait Shack" by Harry Hughes

Hi all,
I've just been told about this cracking review for "The Bait Shack" by Harry Hughes, written by the author Susan Wingate.
Glad to see that someone else agrees with us!

Cheers,
Alex

Review: Until the Skies Fall by Liza Granville

England is a post-apocalyptic condition. Genetic engineering has proved disastrous to human civilization. Laz is a young man who must save the world from the imminent threat of a true Death Star. As he sets out on a quest Laz encounters very strange (and hostile) remnants of previous genetically transformed societies with each one of them utterly convinced that they are the true representation of an authentic humanity. An original and superbly crafted novel, "Liza Granville's "Until The Skies Fall" is a thoroughly entertaining read from beginning to end, and highly recommended for community library collections, and science fiction fan reading lists.

Margaret Lane, Midwest Book Review

Review: Until the Skies Fall by Liza Granville

Delightful book, very interesting and provides a good idea of where genetic engineering is going to take the world. Too bad the scientists don't consider the future when they begin playing god.

At a future time, after our world is nearly destroyed by genetic experimentation, it is now faced with the possibility of destruction by a Death Star. Arthur, who has no surname and who looks the perfect human, is sent out into the world to search for four beings who have the ‘fire’ ability that will wake the Magic Stone. The Magic Stone will in turn destroy the Death Star and result in the earth being saved. When Arthur reaches Homestead West, Laz, part animal, part human, learns he has the ‘fire’ and must go with Arthur back to the far North where the Magic Stone rests.

Laz’s brothers and Ferrik, Laz’s adopted father, insists on accompanying them. A friend of Laz’s, Dann, and an old female healer, Wyc, decides to go with them. Time is short and confusion is rife, but the group sets out on the long journey. On the way, they must look for others who have the ‘fire’ ability. Death, heartbreak, near starvation, battles involving earth elements gone awry decreases the number in the group, yet they trudge onward. The entire world depends on them now.

I really liked this story. Not only does it involve a group of people and what happens to them on a long trip, but it also explores the ways various people react to the same incidents, the same danger. It explores the innermost feelings that can fill the mind as a result of these happenings. Liza Granville does a great job bringing Laz and his brothers, mentally, from youth to adulthood and yet leaving them with the sense of playfulness that makes life so much fun no matter how old one gets. She shows the dirty side of discrimination and how it hurts us and others. A good book for those who like to read of family trials with a touch of magic and the weird.

Lucille P Robinson

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If I had more than 5 stars to give, I would give them to this book.

Lisa Granville has written a wonderful story in which she has created a totally believable alternate world with characters for whom the reader develops a real affinity.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world. At some time in the past, scientists began to experiment with genetic engineering, creating many people and animals which were very different in appearance from the norm. People and animals with extra limbs and wings are commonplace, but looked down upon, in this world, by people known as Perfects or Near-Perfects, those who are genetically most like humans once were. At some point, a huge battle arose between the religious right and the scientists, which caused the destruction of most of civilization.

Now, the earth is threatened again, this time by a "death star" from space. Only a few people can stop the death star and save the earth, and among them are Laz, his father Farrik, his brothers Rom and Longshanks, his friend Dann, and an old wise woman named Wye. Together, they set out on a quest to save the world, led by a perfect human who turns out not to be "folk" at all, Arthur, who must be an android.

At no point does Granville give us a full description of Laz, his family or friends. She gives us tantalizing hints as to their looks, but the only way we know how truly different they are is by the reactions of others to them. To themselves, they are just "folk," and differences in appearance mean nothing.

Every detail of their actions and personalities are perfectly suited to the setting and the story. The travellers encounter places called Yell and Purgtree, and travel through land inhabited by creatures called Howls and Ships. They endure hunger, loss, injury, and high adventure.

In the end, Granville leaves plenty of room for a sequel. I, personally, can't wait to read it. Any time a writer leaves a reader hungry for more of the story, that is a book worth more than 5 stars.

starmac at ijustfinished.com

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Read an excerpt

Click here for more information about Liza Granville

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Review: The Jealousies by Benjamin Stainton

About two years ago I was asked to write something that might be used for publicity purposes for a forthcoming book of poems. I think I was supplied with a sample of ten poems to be included in the book. I obliged and forgot about it. The other day, I was sent a copy of the book The Jealousies by Benjamin Stainton. We published some of Ben's poems in Issue 21 of The Cannon's Mouth (September 2006).

Perhaps because I was so surprised to find my own name on the cover and the piece I had written quoted in full, I sat down and read the 145 page book from cover to cover. I usually flick through and read at random, but this time was different. I found I couldn't put it down.

The first poem is titled 27th December 1978, probably Ben's birthday. We also know that he was born in Bury St Edmunds and now lives in Suffolk. Locations vary. We find ourselves in Spain, Venice, Istanbul, Bristol, possibly Birmingham, but mostly in rural or coastal locations evoked with an incisive nostalgia.

As the last poem Ebb indicates, Ben has a "country mind". His poems are riddled with rustic country settings, cottages, flowers. As you read, you begin to pick up on repeated words or images like black, smoking, potato eaters, skin and references to parts of the anatomy being eaten. His style seems to baffle the senses. We think we know, but we don't. I wanted to discover his secret. I would like to be able to write like this. Does he simply write a line and jumble the words, or insert words to unhinge the meaning of the line to produce such rich imagery? Why does it work so well? What is the secret to being to write this way?

"...the sounds of floating sobs unwind / My wounds consume this ache like water." (4th April 1998)

Ben said in a recent interview* that "poetry comes more easily than prose, for me. I prefer to write in a non-linear, abstract way, but keep it accessible, hopefully retain an emotional point of contact with the reader, somehow."

He said his major influences were Arthur Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath along with "Keats, Berryman, Eliot, Hemingway, maybe Dylan Thomas"; but he also has influences outside literature - "Van Gogh, and the abstract expressionists; a huge range of music, films, adverts... I also think poetry, and other artforms that may rely on the subconscious, draw on influences already forgotten by the artist."

Asked about his writing style, he said his poems have "surreal elements, but my stuff now tends to be rooted in reality. Maybe a deformed version of reality..."

Yes, I still think "life, death, location, the inner workings of the body, blood and skin are all seamlessly accessed, sometimes all at once." Perhaps that's his secret.

Greg Cox, The Cannon's Mouth

* [Interview] Benjamin Stainton, author of "The Jealousies", New Writing International, 11 December 2008
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The Jealousies excerpt

Click here for more information about Benjamin Stainton

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Review: Silent Actor by J. Michael Wahlgren

Reading J. Michael Wahlgren’s first collection of poetry, Silent Actor, is a simultaneously frustrating and rewarding experience. On the one hand, Wahlgren is a writer whose work evokes a strong, unapologetic sense of his identity. On the other, we get the sense that his seemingly inexplicable obsession with certain single words and images frequently prevents the collection from developing beyond a scope that is in some ways limited by that very persistent sense of self. The final stanzas of the opening piece, “Problem Child,” set a somewhat petulant and disaffected tone:

I refused to pick up my toys, never mind
bring in the barrels, mow the lawn or
the hardest task of all: emptying the dishwasher.

I lash out.

I’m unemployed,
not a child anymore, but a poet, an aspiring
artist on writer’s Aspirin.

We are speaking, then, with a young man whose past is still very much present — and whose present is, if the painkillers are any indication, drifting in a kind of numbed limbo.

From here, one might expect some elaboration upon Wahlgren’s hinted-at childhood that flows compellingly into what eventually becomes a vivid picture of who he has become. Instead, the next handful of poems, as the first piece accurately suggests, “lash out” in erratic, almost random directions: the author likening himself to numbers on a rating scale (”Prime”), natural and linguistic imagery too coy to evoke a clear focus (”Vulnerable” and “Games”), a teenage party game gone not so much wrong as exactly the way we expected it would (”Spin the Bottle”), and undergraduate ruminations on the futility of cram-sessions and dormitory life (”College”). It is not until “Candles” that we feel the collection has truly begun to state its intent:

No more foolish love, but serious

enervated love escalated, elevated to the top.
The candles in our eyes blew out,

after a shout, goodbye. We placed our hands in our pockets,
and eloped with stars in our pockets, our lips a red carpet

we each longed
to walk upon.

In this passage, the collection’s title begins, poignantly, to make sense. So, too, do we get a first glimpse at Wahlgren’s true strength: he has the ability to show love for what it is when the lights go out. In “Familiar,” he asserts,

…Difficult to say
now to what we can attribute
your looks, but without much clue,
you detect a way to see through
all the fame, in an attempt to
remember your God-given name.

This dark lady (or ladies, for we can never be sure) persists as a through-line of she for the remainder of the collection, providing a satisfying sense of love’s ultimately elusive nature. As it does for Wahlgren, it wears many faces down the years for all of us.

Previously mentioned in my introduction, Wahlgren’s peculiar single-word obsessions pop up early. Origami first manifests in “Spin the Bottle” (”locked lips, origami in flight”) and appears no fewer than five more times throughout the remainder of the pieces — sometimes parenthetical and always unexpected, although not necessarily illuminating. In folds that should be intricate, we find only muddled shadows. Jazz, on the other hand, is accorded a more active and effective role, as seen in “Unique Time”:

Waiting for your departure, we hold
hands for the first time—

(You must wonder)
how jazz is composed of laughter & pain,
without a refrain. In Monk’s time

we detest symbols,
straightforward piano keys of pain & mercy…

Tied up in this, too, is Wahlgren’s indelible sense of identity. This is music that he likes — no, loves — and, for a little while, he’ll see to it that we love it, too.

Amongst these ruminations on passion and music, we stumble across occasional moments of semi-transcendental glory. In “The Toy,” we find

The fire
in her palms
is dedicated
to wine

upon which revelation Wahlgren asks,

Which of these
timepieces
has your name
written on it?

As to whether it’s reassuring when he tells us “We all have one,” I’ll let the reader decide. From this point onward, Silent Actor’s poems possess a dreamlike, lyrical quality. Wahlgren shifts his focus from acts of love to thoughts of love, persistently haunted by the enigmatic, personified phrase of you know who. Whether this specter is a past lover or (from moment to moment) his present lover’s ex, that, too, we can only begin to guess.

Ultimately, Wahlgren ends on a note not dissimilar to the one on which he began. In “Rise Up,” the final poem, we find these by-now unexpectedly flippant lines:

I rise up. Catch me if you are kind. Salute your buttocks.

I give an appearance of conceit,
chutes or ladders nowhere to be found
I hide the clues next to my genitals. Perhaps you’ll seek.

What we’ll seek, perhaps, is not so much a clue as some sense of resolution. Still, for all its quirks and occasional inconsistencies, Silent Actor is both a compelling self-portrait and a thought-provoking treatise on the myriad permutations of human relationships.

Adrienne J. Odasso

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Read an excerpt from Silent Actor

Click here for more information about J. Michael Wahlgren

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Review: The Jealousies by Benjamin Stainton

Light a candle in a cave and it provides an all-round light that creeps into crevices – this is what came to mind when I read The Jealousies. Ben Stainton is not shy about holding a naked flame up to his body and mind. Birth, womanising, hangovers, love, states of mind and much more are all re-created in flickering images.

What do I mean my flickering images? Well, reading these poems is almost like reading stream of conscious writing – but well edited. The poems seem to recall real events but the writing juxtaposes them with subconscious connections. So the poems manage to be simultaneously both real and abstract. The connections mostly work to create beautiful poems that are both strange and accessible, such as ‘Ella’:

Like the coiling mouth of the evening sea,
my love for her light opens and closes,
she cracks open the sullen heart of mine.

Ben is a master of metaphors and uses them effectively to unpeel honesty without banality. ‘Walnut Tree Lane’ is a tender poem about pregnancy which manages to be in the present while using images that both reference the mother’s changing body and look forward to the baby’s arrival and associated paraphernalia:

Flutter your humming bird heart
my delicate root-flower,
flooded by amniotic stars.

Your vessel is sheltered
by cradles and warm milk.

There are some poems I ‘don’t get’ but that’s probably because I’m just not seeing the connections – but maybe you will. The collection reads as autobiographical although the section entitled ‘Films’ is about famous people. Overall this is an exciting and original collection for those who enjoy modern poetry. It’s full of originality embedded in emotional energy.

Carillon Magazine

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The Jealousies excerpt

Click here for more information about Benjamin Stainton

Purchase: paperback | eBook

Review: Junkyard Dog by Sean Parker

"Junkyard Dog" is as close to real life as it can get.

Peter Walsh, author of the best-selling Gang War

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Junkyard Dog: there are many platitudes that I could lavish upon it, but having seen so many well-known authors use inane banalities to publicise each other's novels I believe Sean Parker deserves better. The story is a brutal, well constructed account of life on the streets of Manchester, and each of the characters has a presence that I find most appealing. However, in Charlie and Burnett, Parker has managed to create two people who install both fear and expectation, and it is this that kept me turning pages.

The character of Liverpool Wally Thom makes The Godfather's Luca Brasi look like an assistant at Mothercare. If Parker has plans for a follow up novel I cannot wait to see how he is going to turn out.

... many thanks for a terrific story.

Ian Allison

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A fantastic read; rough and tough stuff.

Paul Kilduff

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It was a cracking read. Very good characters that if you are, or were in my case, from Manchester you could very easily relate to the characters.

I really liked Charlie (a character like so many who have passed through many of our lives in Manchester - sheer intelligence along side of sheer brutality) and Burnett was quality and as a half brother worked well along side of Charlie. But despite the two main characters - the ones you created along side of them worked in unison very well.

The story was well told and the way in which you kept bringing past details back into play worked very well. I can almost envisage the process taking place with certain scenarios falling into place. It was a quality read and I look forward to reading the next one when it is published.

Chopper

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Having spent most of my life at sea, a good book is a must. Now retired, a good book is even more important. Junkyard Dog is the first novel in over twenty years that I have read without putting it down, except a couple of times to replenish a glass of cognac which, I am sure, you will forgive me for.

It is years since I read Mickey Spillaine but your novel prompted the thought of him. But I do not believe that even he was as good as you when it comes down to describing graphic violence. You have a way of doing it that makes it real, as opposed to most authors who pay scant heed to the fact that anybody on the receiving end of violence is going to get hurt quite badly.

Many thanks for a wonderful story, one that contains such believable characters that, even now, I can still see them in my minds eye.

Peter J. Harris, Master Mariner (Capt Retd)

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Long after half-brothers Charlie Collins and John Burnett have gone their separate ways, fate intervenes and their paths cross again with devastating consequences. In mid-nineties Manchester, at a time when gang warfare reached unprecedented heights of fearsome intimidation and horrendous violence, certain individuals reign supreme.

The all-night revellers who frequent the many bars, pubs and nightclubs rarely catch a glimpse of the intense brutality that goes on in this dark and murky world. Manchester can be a scary place for unwary souls, or those bent on dirty deeds.

From the dangerous alleys of Manchester to the violent streets of Paris and London, Junkyard Dog is an explosive mix of raw power and brutal energy that heads like an express train to its final confrontation.

Read an excerpt from Junkyard Dog

Click here for more information about Sean Parker

Review: Two Days in Tehran

I'm always interested in reading books about Iran. I would like to know what others write about my country and I get disappointed most of the time because they are not showing the true Iran… they just write some stereotype stories to have their books published.

This book was different. The story just took place in Iran and had some Iranian characters but I was very happy to find out it's not like the other books. Airyaa
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I am not a user of superlatives, so I shan't be exactly mirroring the reviews of other readers of this new Michael J Hunt novel. However, I can echo one comment: when told that a story is "based on a real life journey" I too wonder what aspects of the novel are thus based.

It doesn't matter, however, as I feel that in this novel Michael Hunt has reached a new level of conviction. His first person narrative reads just as you would expect from a genuine journal - it has an almost homely touch, no obtrusive "literary" tricks and devices. Incidentally, however, I did relish his occasional italicised "Thinks-bubble" comments, one-sentence soliloquies, reminding you that behind the narrative there is a narrator.

One element that readers enjoy in any kind of fiction is the provision, in the earlier stages of the narrative, of hints about significant detail - details that will be crucial later on. This is a well-known feature of the best detective stories, but its importance generally is evidenced by one's irritation when the final "solution" to a plot involves a deus ex machina - the introduction of characters of whose existence one has had no hint preciously. In Two Days in Tehran, Michael Hunt actually draws attention to details that will, or may, have significance later on. Unfortunately my memory is so poor that I forgot the detail and so could not mentally say "Ah, so that's what ....."! On the other hand Hunt makes skilful use of the author's licence to spring surprises - on characters in the story as well as on the reader.

Bucking current trends, the novel earn a very favourable rating from me on sex and violence. The inevitable violence is reported but not dwelt lovingly on, and the reader might be (dare I say?) as disappointed as one of the characters in the studied avoidance of physical intimacy!

The central figure is presented as modest about his own role, correctly, one feels. So the triumph of Good over Evil is a shared achievement, multi-national at that. This is just one of the pleasantly distinctive features of a very readable, and increasingly gripping, tale. DJ Gosden
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Normally a slow reader I read this book in 4 days. It keeps you interested and keen to turn the next page. Michael obviously knows the area and history. A perfect piece of fiction which also gives an insight in to the history of Iran. V J Croft
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This adventure calls upon the author's extensive foreign travel and intimate knowledge of the turbulent era when the Shah of Iran was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The main character in the book, Greg, also on a cusp in his life gambles on a new travel business by taking five westerners on an overland Land Rover trip across Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran to India. Caught up in the Iranian revolution the group see sights too horrible for the usual touristy trip, but worse, they are kidnapped and held in gruesome conditions. Poor Greg realizes he should have researched his geopolitics more carefully but tries to look after his clients even though he becomes suspicious of each one's real identity and motivation. That's all the dry plot summary I'm giving but don't go yet.

Few travel fiction books carry the reader along on the journey as well as Michael Hunt does in his books and in this one you feel the heat, the tension, see the landscape and take away the feeling you've been there in person. You smell the odours and feel the fear in this page turner; a damned good read. On the other hand, do they reach India? Does Greg grab the woman he fancies on the trip? Why does he have to endure the stench of blood for hours at a time? What is a VIP woman doing on a trip to a volatile part of the world, and can Greg keep her safe? Does anybody believe him when he finally tells the truth although does he really know what that is? Read Two Days in Tehran to find out. Geoff Nelder
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Starting your own adventure vacation company – good idea. Wandering into Iran as it's about to experience a massive revolution – bad idea. "Two Days in Tehran" follows Greg Alexander as he finds himself caught between two sides of the revolution, and may be facing a third side of hostility from the very crew he was guiding. His only goal is to escape with his life and his passengers' lives intact- a goal that's more trouble than it seems. An intriguing tale straight through, "Two Days in Tehran" is highly recommended. Midwest Book Review
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An elegantly written thriller. As each page turns faster than the last, the tension is palpable and claustrophobic. The only disappointment is that the book has to end. I would recommend it as the perfect novel for readers who enjoy a meticulously crafted adventure of epic proportions. If you enjoyed the twists and turns in the film "In Bruges ", this is a must read. Sue Plover
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Michael J Hunt's new book 'Two Days in Tehran' takes him from his usual stomping ground in Africa to the wilds of the Iran-Afghanistan border. Wherever he chooses to land though, Mr Hunt has an unerring ear for a good story.

This first person romp follows the Adventure Tour operator Gregory Alexander on an overland trip to India with a Land Rover full of fellow travellers. As the title suggests, it's when they arrive in Tehran that things go awry and they all get a lot more adventure than anyone would ever have dreamed of.

Mr Hunt's fast moving narrative keeps you on the hop right through to the very last page with the exciting twists and turns of events surrounding the revolution of the Ayatollahs and what happens when innocent European travellers become involved ... or are they? By my book, it's the read for this summer. Ray Busa
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Greg Alexander is taking a party of five on an overland journey by landrover to India. Plenty of scope for incident and adventure you may think, but you could not imagine what befalls the group in terms of alarm, excitement and terror.

They journey across Europe to Iran. Prior to entering the city of Tehran they have no knowledge of the imminent revolution, leading to the deposition of the Shah. The party find themselves unwittingly caught up in the morass of Middle Eastern politics and the dichotomies of opposing factions. Problems swiftly arise, compounded by the mistrust that arises amongst themselves, Greg hardly knowing who or what to believe.

Despite Greg's efforts to continue the journey, the expedition falls foul of the Shah's secret police, in the shape of Saktari, who is fond of saying 'things may not always be as they seem' - and so it is, throughout this remarkable story.

As well as a story of high adventure, it is also revelatory about events in Iran at that time, which previously you may not have been aware of. Michael Hunt's knowledge of foreign politics and foreign countries is extensive, as we learned from his previous books. Read this well written novel yourself, with it's unrelenting pace and tension. Kate Edwards
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Michael Hunt is a well known exponent of the narrative art who has written a fast moving story with sufficient twists and turns to keep the reader fully engrossed. The story is set against the backdrop of the fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent horrors and turmoil that beset the region. The story follows a group of holidaying adventurers who are inevitably caught up in the frightening uncertainties. However, as the story unfolds we discover that the holiday makers are not all they seem.

Michael Hunt has led an adventurous life and has travelled in the volatile Middle East on numerous occasions. It is clear that he knows the area and the trails that traverse it. And if you read this book you will travel those trails with him. Highly recommended. Peter Tomlinson, The Petronicus Legacy
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was drawn into a story of dangerous subterfuge where the central characters, on the surface seasoned travellers, are innocents abroad at the mercy of murky factional wrangling. Suspense mounts as they learn some hard and brutal lessons. I was struck by the beautiful descriptions of the desert landscapes in which the heroes must act or die. s6456
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Brilliantly written adventure book with vivid characters, which grabbed my attention from its first pages till the last one. Middle Eastern history, politics and culture are well presented, the author definitely knows the subject.

I felt like undertaking the journey together with Greg on his the Land Rover tour. My husband and I love traveling and we may possibly consider going to the Middle East next year (booking our trip through a proper travel agency though :-) Natalya Popova
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A huge welcome to Michael J Hunt's latest book. It is different from the previous two but it is most definitely equal to them for excitement and interest. It is a good, gripping, adventure yarn and, as always, very well written.

Michael obviously knows the area and has a good understanding of the politics of Iran at the time of the Revolution and removal of the Shah.

The story builds slowly as we get to know the characters, all of whom are well drawn and believable. It then explodes into action. I had to read the last seventy-five pages in one sitting (much to the annoyance of my wife!)

I am left wondering which bits are the true story and which the fiction!

Well done, Michael, and I'm looking forward to your next one. Marcus Woodhouse
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Having read both Michael J. Hunt's previous novels, I was determined to read the next as soon as it was released. I have just finished Two Days in Tehran and it is every bit as exciting as its predecessors.

I knew very little about the geography, politics and machinations in the Middle East but now I know a little more, painlessly, sustained by a tense, thrilling narrative.

The characters are real, believable, with human flaws; bluff and double bluff is subtly conveyed as we doubt the motives and allegiances of each as the plot develops. I was engrossed to the end. Michael Hunt is a master teller of tales. G Wood
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Greg Alexander sets up the ultimate adventure vacation company ... and accidentally treks into the bloody revolution to overthrow the Shah of Iran.

Not only does Greg face treachery on either side of the bitter struggle for power and survival, he soon finds that he can't even trust the seemingly innocent western travellers in his own party.

His life and those of his passengers swing in a precarious balance as Greg tries to make sense of the murky and muddled politics, alliances and feuds of the Middle East and navigate the twisting road to safety.

Based on a real life journey and a bloody revolution that changed the face of Islam, sending out shockwaves that rock the world three decades later.

Read an excerpt from Two Days in Tehran

Watch Two Days in Tehran book trailer

Click here for more information about Michael J Hunt

Also by Michael J Hunt: Matabele Gold | The African Journals of Petros Amm

Review: Back There by Howard Waldman

Howard Waldman can write. This is a man in superb control of his material. A man who knows his characters inside out and who can bring them across to us with a sense of reality that is quite beautiful. He is also very funny. At times he has a wicked turn of phrase that can bring the reader from a smile to a laugh, usually at the expense of Harry .

Chris Williams

Howard Waldman’s Back There reverberates long after it’s been devoured and put back on the bookshelf. A novel too unashamedly individualistic and underivative to be easily squished into a genre pigeonhole, it offers a litfest of walking-talking-breathing-emoting characters set in the fuggy café ambience of mid-century Paris and country dacha retreat.

The protagonist, Harry, l’étranger from New York, is a memorable character. Howard subtly insinuates the reader into Harry’s convoluted thoughts and ambivalent heart. Arriving in la gaie Paris by a bizarre twist of fate, Harry engrosses himself in photography and at times his vision, or weltangshauung, is so warped that it seems as if he’s viewing life through a distorted lens. Ineffectual in the art of basic survival, Harry is – until self-made disaster strikes – an English tutor. There is much understated irony in his escapades, such as a pedantic grammar lesson serving as the springboard for steamy erotic foreplay.

Harry falls in lust, which he typically interprets as love, with a coldhearted but très belle mademoiselle. He eventually infiltrates himself into the belle’s home and we are given an almost voyeuristic insight into the private folds of a French mid-century family. The mother, the kindest woman and the worse cook in France, lavishes samples of her goodness and cuisine on Harry. The father sings opera arias at the dinner table and anoints his body with malodorous cod liver oil to achieve immortality. And not to forget the little grey sister who, with the passing of time, proves herself to be Harry’s eternal love. While this is a transatlantic love story, there is no suggestion of mawkish violins or hand in hand swoonishness.

Harry’s philosophical meanderings wend their way in and out of the narrative. This is done so sensitively that his quite profound and alarming thought patterns enhance the storyline rather than detract from it. Harry, while he is undoubtedly his own very idiosyncratic person, at times echoes and shadows Albert Camus’ unforgettable existential hero Meursault.

Back There is, without question, a literary tour de force which deserves a wide readership in English-speaking countries and, also, it would be a compelling and enlightening read for French bibliophiles.

Rebecca Latyntseva

Five decades ago I fell in love with a brick wall. Next to a bus stop I had ample opportunity to admire its colours, finger feel the rough texture, track the scurrying insects and over the years be astonished at how the mosses, lichens and miniature trees would burrow their roots in the desert-like substrate. Three decades ago I had my first article published. Yes, it was on walls: Detective work on the physical geography of sandstone walls. Thank you, Howard Waldman, for obliging these memories to flood back by having Harry Grossman be equally obsessed – in his case, photographing Parisian walls.

Harry is presented as such a self-deprecating anti-hero that I’m not sure I am supposed to care, but I do. It is tricky because we are not treated to his appearance until deep into the story. This is curious because we are regaled with vivid characterisation of others, including the liquid green eyes of his beloved’s brother.

There is no understating the plot. Waldman is a master of the ennui. His deep knowledge of mid-century France, both in the capital and in the sticks, oozes from the pages admirably. The American Harry, rudely bludgeoned by the police, discovers he has fallen in lust with a French beauty when his bleeding being recovers in her home. Does hapless Harry clutch his angel? One of Waldman’s writerly skills I am addicted to is his use of the conceptual double negatives in this book. Harry is after one goal but scores in another, then another. Linguistically too, he employs opposites brilliantly. For example ‘Addition is subtractive in the strange emotional mathematics of her language.’ Je t’aime is weakened to I like you when you add bien. Stop trying so hard, Harry. His girl knows this: It was always something else for you. This wonderful play with words permeate the whole novel in such delectable morsels.

Speaking of treats. Harry worms his way to the family’s rural farm. His New York life is poor preparation as illustrated with this gem: Where he comes from strawberries, once thawed, were in season all year round.

I will not spoil the ending, but it is both a crucial key and confusing, as is the beginning. I collect recursive stories, and this novel is one. A self-referential essay extraordinaire. I recommend the reader to skip the prologue until the last chapter is read, twice. In fact I am reminded of that joke where a local is asked directions: If I were you, sir, I wouldn’t start from here. The smoothest flowing prose is in the middle, and the beginning is a mosaic of confusion, much not really needed.

This is a beautiful book, so close to being perfect. As it stands it should be recommended reading for all lovers of English, with French dressing. I have no hesitation giving it an 85% rating.

Geoff Nelder

Back There is a deeply moving quixotic story that leaves even the most hardened cynic smiling at love's foolish ways. This book is destined for greatness and I would not be at all surprised to see the name Howard Waldman on the bestseller list.

Alastair Rosie

Harry Grossman sees his world through the viewfinder of a battered camera. And he photographs it all, from the peeling posters and graffiti on grubby city walls to the most intimate moments of his mysterious French sweetheart. He becomes a permanent guest at her family’s ramshackle country cottage, thirty miles and a century away from modern Paris. Harry, the New York outsider, calls it paradise and photographs the Model T Ford on the roof, the archaic well and scythe, the top-secret wild mushroom spots, and the reluctant Lauriers themselves.

They assume that outsider Harry will soon be a member of the family, but the strange photographer with his growing mountain of prints and negatives and imperfect French is not a man for snap decisions. Aren't things already perfect in this paradise? Someone once said, though, that the only paradises are lost paradises.

Back There is a touching and powerfully nostalgic transatlantic love story, sometimes verging on the comic, sometimes on the tragic. France and the French, too often caricatures of their own special reality, are presented with absolute authenticity.

With soft-focus subtlety, Howard Waldman shows that Europe and America are two continents divided by a perceived common culture of art and love – and that light-years separate Paris and Manhattan and the lives and values of the Lauriers and the Grossmans.

Excerpt

A few years after the purchase of Manhattan from the Indians, Howard Waldman, then aged 22, left his native island for Paris and freedom, and in less time than it takes to say Je t'aime found himself married to a lovely Parisian. To feed his growing Franco-American family he taught European History for a France-based American university and later American Literature to suffering French students.

He lives thirty miles outside Paris in a once rural area undergoing deplorable suburban transformation. He spends his days enjoying his wife's cooking, listening to chamber music in his chamber and trying to grow old roses in inappropriate soil.

Review: The Bait Shack by Harry Hughes

In Harry Hughes first murder mystery novel, The Bait Shack, I found myself emerged into Dan and Lacy’s life. Mr Hughes manages to spin an intricate weave with intriguing characters, suspense, and sprinkles of humor to add dimension.

In The Bait Shack, Dan Cooles decides to change his life by quitting his job, relocating, and marrying Lacy Chamblet. What he does not realize is with this decision, he will find himself and Lacy struggling to keep their unstable marriage together while surrounded by unsavory characters and macabre events.

Lacy is a secretary for a shrewd real estate owner, Henry Meredith. He will stop at nothing to obtain what he wants. Henry is diabolical and rude beyond words. He also employs Twist, a brain damaged boy who does odd and end jobs and is a whiz with acronyms. Both Lacy and Twist find themselves on the receiving in of Henry’s verbal abusiveness. Previous workers of Mr.Meredith’s have met an untimely end and Lacy feels she may be the next.

Lieutenant Revels, a conservation officer, seeks revenge on Henry for killing off a protected species of birds. Connie Jablonski is a maniacal ex-con who brings intimidation and pain to those around him. Johnny Avalino is a mobster who will stop at nothing to increase the value of his beachfront property. Nancy Littlecrow is an unscrupulous lawyer who doesn‘t mind working the “gray area“, especially if it benefits her. Seymour Bram is a retired, depressed Air Force Major looking for the easiest way to become rich. Duncan Slochbauer, an amateur videographer stumbles upon the murdered remains of Karen Kern, a previous employer of Henry’s.

All the characters come to life in the book, bringing with them a variety of personalities. Somehow Mr Hughes manages to tie them all together with a superb story that kept me guessing to the end. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more novels from this author.

Renda Romanus

A stunning first novel. An up-to-date take on the classic American murder mystery. Harry Hughes tells his suspenseful story in quick-paced and colorful prose and creates dozens of sharply drawn characters, including Dale Cooles, an unforgettable anti-hero in the Philip Marlowe tradition.

Michael Lydon. Author. Co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine

The Bait Shack is an intriguingly entertaining and engaging murder mystery that demonstrates a vivid imaginative gift on the part of author, Harry Hughes. In his debut novel, Hughes expertly creates a small but complex cast of characters whose quirky persona and relationship dynamics lend much to the novel's appeal.

Dale Cooles, a mathematician/number cruncher walks way from his university position to begin a new life with his bride, Lacy Chamblet. He is content to stay home, cook and clean while Lacy goes to work for the property management firm of Meredith Holdings and its less than reputable owner, Henry Meredith.

Meredith is known for his unsavory business practices, his sleazy relationships, and his employ of undesirable characters to do his bidding. But Meredith's life gets complicated when a key business deal doesn't pan out and he hires an unsavory goon to collect unpaid rent on the properties. All this aside, living in a cottage situated behind one of Meredith's old empty homes has its advantages for Dale and Lacy. That is, until they slip into the main house and find evidence that points to unsolved murders. Angers flair and egos collide but the pace never lets up until the very end.

Hughes has crafted a solid read around a twisted tail that explores the dark side of the human soul and peppered it with his own brand of deliciously dry humor. The Bait Shack is a fast read that will easily hold the attention of any murder mystery buff. I definitely look forward to more from Harry Hughes.

Marta Stephens, author of the Sam Harper Crime Mystery series

Dale Cooles is a mathematician ready to tie up some messy ends. He's quit his fancy university job, said goodbye to his last fling, and applied himself to his new life as unemployed, kept husband of Lacy Chamblet. Lacy is secretary to robber baron Henry Meredith, who makes his living cheating his tenants, avoiding tax, and hiring low cost street kids too unemployable to blow the whistle on him. But this time, he's teamed up with mobster Johnny Avalino, and his plans take a nasty turn. Are Dale and Lacy smarter than Meredith thinks they are? Is thwarted conservation officer Calvin Revels able to pay Meredith back for destroying an endangered species of bird, along with Revels' career? And just who is the vicious Connie Jablonski, and what is his relationship to Meredith's other employee Twist Van Houghten - a boy with a face twisted from Bell's Palsy, a head twisted from a run in with a concrete slab, and an odd ability to turn people's names into fully expressed acronyms?

The Bait Shack opens like a Stephen King thriller, and keeps up the pace, but it soon becomes obvious that this is a very funny read: humour overpacing the horror. Dale and Lacy are super quick on the comebacks - the witty one liners keep coming, alongside an omniscient narrative voice with a vocabulary to rival Umberto Eco's. The two protagonists are almost too clever, but their toe tripping insecurity, bumbling, and honesty keeps everything real, and provide a slapstick counter to the rapid pace of their minds. They're only klutzes after all: not evil or manipulative like everyone else. It's a rollicking ride to the surprise denouement, and the murder mystery keeping everything rolling along.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss this book as `feel good', light-hearted beach reading just because it's fun and fast. Both Dale and Lacy are serious, believable characters Between the whine and the wine, Dale often expresses profound insights on the nature of modern society. At other times he'll explore the nature of man's existence against an aging body and midlife crisis. The exploration of themes like how we deal with midlife, love, and hate in the 21st Century - in the wake of the sixties - makes this a book that resonates long after the fun stops. Hughes' descriptive powers are exceptional, from the Dickensian characters carrying the full range of quirks - both charming and obnoxious, to the rich natural world of its Long Island setting. In The Bait Shack, Harry Hughes takes noir to a new level. Wry, classy, compelling and utterly hysterical. Think Iain Pears crossed with Martin Amis. Dale and Lacy make an endearing team of anti-heroes in a world showing its true colors. Read it for pleasure and and then re-read it to find surprising richness in the depths of its insights.

Magdalena Ball. The Compulsive Reader

If you're looking for lyrical prose to pull you through a captivating story, lending the characters a spark of vitality with real life dialogue unrivalled in modern day literature, The Bait Shack is for you.

Johnny Nys

An amazing read, I didn't want to put down. The graphic imagery held you right there in the moment with the victim and the killer.

Jan Coad

Philosophical dilemmas, dead bodies, greed, sex-you can't stop reading! Tough times demand tough heroes-Harry Hughes' The Bait Shack satisfies. Explosive, racy, and, charming.

Mary Zuzan

A convoluted, twisting read filled with unusual characters, strange locations, murder, mayhem and an ending of such unexpectedness as to be totally unprepared for.

Ruth Woolsey

Dale Cooles has quit his job and recently married. He moves into a cottage owned by his bride's employer who has several land holdings. That this is a strange place is understated as every character has quirks and foibles that take them out of what we call normal.

Dale is content to hang around the house even though he is very educated. He seems to be very satisfied with very little. Dale's wife, Lacy, works for a man who insults her too often and one wonders why she stays. The pay doesn't seem to be very good. And she shares the office at times with Twist, a man who seems to live up to his name. Henry Meredith seems to suffer from terminal greed among other things.

This curious cast would make a great adult film for Halloween. The story starts on a rather sunless note and slowly sinks into the shadowy darkness of the mind where a killer lurks. Yet, the reader will only slowly be aware of the danger some characters may be in. Fans of Psycho will be right at home with this tale with its suspense and tension and the mysterious mansion the owner does not want visited

There are several subplots at play, cleverly tied into the main story as the reader begins to guess at what will happen, what motivates these people and why they do some of the things they do. Talented author Harry Hughes will slowly twist all the strands into one while holding out attention from page one to the end.

I'm pleased to recommend this book as a fun read for anyone who likes houses that creak in the night, shadows that pass windows and seem to peer in, and likes strange characters whose crudities and rawness make them very lifelike.

Enjoy. I did.

Anne K. Edwards

Dale Cooles does what many men would like to do, but haven't worked up the courage to do: he quits his job, breaks the romance off with Marilyn, and heads for Long Island in the truck with all his worldly possessions to marry Lacy Chamblet. At the same time Dale is caught in tying up loose ends prior to moving, Lacy is spending the early morning hours having one mishap after another while trying to get dressed for work.

Humor smoothes the way from a Prologue filled with murder to a scenario of a sane man [supposed to be sane anyway] trying to come up with the ideal insanity plea to get him out of trouble.

Where other mystery/suspense novels start with a lot of action that keeps building until the climax, Mr Hughes builds suspense and mystery slowly throughout a delightful tale of romance between an out-of-work young man and a secretary to finding several cadavers buried beneath the porch of an old house that Meredith has been trying to purchase. I kept asking myself just where is the crime, the mystery in this tale, and who was the lady being killed in the Prologue, but w hen I reached the height of danger for Dale and Lacy I found the story totally satisfying in every way. The Bait Shack is added to my list of must-reads.

Lucille P Robinson

Unemployed whiz kid Dale Cooles struggles to save his marriage and his sanity when his previously charmed life's turned topsy turvy by a cadre of killers and clowns.

Dale and wife Lacy - daughter of an eccentric but filthy rich Tennessee lumber magnate - unwittingly adopt into their domestic wrangle Twist, the brain-damaged orphan, and Lieutenant Revels, the beat-weary yet determined conservation officer seeking revenge for Lacy's unscrupulous boss's part in the mysterious extinction of rare birds on a prime piece of real estate.

And then there are the other extinctions ... the human ones.

In the parade of offbeat characters in Hughes' ingenious and '90s-set street smart black comedy of crime, we meet cutthroat businessman Henry Meredith, out for what he can get, psycho hitman Connie Jablonski, out for what he can hurt, mobster Johnny Avalino, greedy to enhance the value of his beach-front property by any means, Nancy Littlecrow, the shameless and cagey Native American attorney who gives new meaning to the term 'Indian Affairs', Seymour L. Bram, the retired and retiring Air Force Major suffering from chronic depression and delusions of easy money, Duncan Slochbauer, the slovenly and obsessed amateur producer of grisly news videos ...

And we don't quite meet poor Karen Kern and the faceless others who might have crossed the path of a crazed and kinky serial killer nobody seems to have noticed lurking somewhere in Hughes' uniquely colourful dramatis personae.

Excerpt

Author Harry Hughes is a Viet Nam and Woodstock vet, an award winning popular song writer and a professor of psychology. Seven years of his life in New York is the subject of the National Book Critics Circle Award nominated book, Homefires; An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America, by Donald Katz (Harper Collins Press, 1992). Harry's short story, A River Too Distant, was published, along with works by Edward Albee and Joseph Heller, in Hampton Shorts, Vol. 3, 1998. He currently lives in Utah. The Bait Shack is his first novel.

Harry's blog

Review: The Jealousies by Benjamin Stainton

Ben Stainton's new collection The Jealousies published by BeWrite Books is a collection of restrained and evocative poems that cover everything from childhood reminiscence to nostalgia for a past that never was. There are echoes of Eliot, Pound, and other famous poets here, and their heritage is well continued.

We fought in a vacuum,
like Hamlet & Ophelia,
juveniles made godlike.

You were a totem stick,
several blurred heads
skewered like lamb-meat

& the salacious night
closed over your mouths.
We smoked liver, & sang.

Them were the abusive days,
grinding our love to dust.
I am a longing, for your rust

to mend me, mend me, mend me.
(Memoria)

Parts are touched by a tinge of threatening evil, the blackness and moral void behind everydayness -

Uncertainty is the only guarantee.
I shoot hopeful arrows into space.
Am I the frozen January fields
that Gainsborough painted, in love?
Or the crushed ice in a sugared glass?
Our feral search will last forever.
We scrape the leathery sea for clues
& urge the booming clocks to stop, or run
& never read the news. All calamities.

Mr Slaughter, buried in the yard
of the red house. Mrs Slaughter pruning.
Perhaps I am the flourishing lilacs?
(Sea of Stones)

The best parts are the passages that display fresh and vigorous use of words to illumine moments of life. These poems are of life and drawn from life, and as the book progresses the voice becomes more enriched and deeper, more fluent. It is a book one can read to watch this development in the three sections that precede Journal, the fourth and best part and culmination of the book.

The Jealousies is a very good specimen of a sort of poetry worth preserving, one with an explicit sense of being situated within a tradition. It is poetry that depicts life as she is lived, rather than exploring questions of metaphysics or political engagement; in fact, it is part of the historical tradition of great poetry. Stainton's development will be of interest. This book holds promise of a new voice in the canon of UK writers.

David McLean, author of Cadaver's Dance

Benjamin Stainton seems to have achieved the distinction of being both modern and traditional simultaneously in The Jealousies. There are moments of poetic purity, several examples of refined, wonderful verse. Each piece is infused with drama and subtle twists of language -

The tall windows remain tight-lipped
in my plum-coloured room.
(Sea of Stones)

At times romantic, visceral, elegiac, violent; there is an instinctive poet at work in these pages.

Brian Howard

It ebbs & flows with a very elegant word choice, imbued with color. It delivers a punch, a "frayed sanctity."

J. Michael Wahlgren

In Benjamin Stainton's The Jealousies, birth, womanising, hangovers, love, states of mind and much more are all re-created in flickering images. Stainton is a master of metaphors and uses them effectively to unpeel honesty without banality. The poems manage to be simultaneously real and abstract; both strange and accessible. This is a first collection full of originality, embedded in emotional energy.

Carillon Magazine

Ben Stainton's incisive poems take us back to what we think are familiar places … There seem to be no barriers. Life, death, location, the inner workings of the body, blood and skin are all seamlessly accessed, sometimes all at once … These tasty, gourmet poems satisfy our less familiar appetites.

Greg Cox

All our preconceptions are upturned and buffeted... there seem to be no barriers.

The Cannon's Mouth

A poet unafraid of truth, able to portray lust without apology

Marysia Wojtaszek, The Open University

Review: The Adventures of Alianore Audley

... set during the Wars of the Roses, with Alianore acting as a spy for Edward IV and Richard III. I am not sure how to classify the book, for it is not a historical novel in the true sense. It is a spoof, I suppose, but a very clever one and done from a Yorkist perspective, so naturally I enjoyed it! I realize it may not be to everyone’s taste, so I am going to quote a few passages to let you judge for yourselves. Here the tart-tongued Alianore is speaking of her husband (whom she loves).

“Roger wore his collar of golden Yorkist suns to show that he was one of the king’s knights, ludicrous piked shoes to show that he was fashionable, and a massive codpiece to show that he had a vivid imagination.” And here she describes Elizabeth Woodville (whom she does not love) as “Elizabeth too-sexy-for-her-hennin Woodville.” And this is her “take” on the third marriage of Margaret Beaufort (the mother of Henry Tudor) to Thomas Stanley. “She and Stanley having fallen deeply in love with each other’s money.”

The author, Brian Wainwright, has also written a “serious” historical, Under the Fetlock, set in the reign of Richard II, and I have it on my To Read List. You have to be knowledgeable about a time period to be able to spoof it successfully. As for Alianore’s adventures, if you like Monty Python, you’ll like Alianore.

Sharon Kay Penman

A wonderful romp set in 15th-century England. The machinations of the Wars of the Roses and life at the court of Richard III are seen through the eyes of royal spy Alianore Audley. Told with zest, a deep love and knowledge of the period, not to say a wicked sense of humour and plenty of tongue in cheek, Brian Wainwright deserves far greater recognition than he currently gets.

Elizabeth Chadwick's Top 10 Historical Novels, The Guardian

…Wainwright's Alianore Audley holds a place in my heart. What an endearing heroine, if ever there was one. Alianore, by pure mischance (or perhaps great good fortune), leaves her quiet, boring existence in the convent that her brothers have summarily dumped her in. (Where else can a girl in 15th century England go?) Clearly, Alianore is not meant for the contemplative life. The alternative is natural: she becomes a spy for her cousin, Edward IV. Natural? It does seem that way as events unfold. Despite the fact that Alianore is initially sent to the North to gather intelligence for Edward so that she is prevented from getting into mischief, she becomes an invaluable asset to the Yorkist cause.

Alianore's riotously funny insights into the obnoxious and abusive Warwicks, tongue-in-cheek barbs at Margaret Beaufort and Lord Stanley, disrespectful comments about everyone from "Cousin Edward" to the "Tudor Slimebag" (Henry VII), and loving remembrances of Richard and Anne liberally pepper this all-too-brief book. Wainwright has a feel for the period and presents it in a unique and enjoyable fashion.

How to give you who read this review a flavor of the times as seen through Alianore's wickedly funny but loving perspective is tantamount to impossible. You've just got to be there. Read it.

Ilysa Magnus, The Historical Novels Review

Roger wore his collar of golden Yorkist suns to show that he was one of the King's knights, ludicrous piked shoes to show that he was fashionable, and a massive codpiece to show that he had a vivid imagination.

Alianore Audley is a good, submissive, demure woman of the fifteenth century … and if you believe that, you'll believe anything. But she is a spy in Edward IV's intelligence service, and the author of a chronicle that casts - well, a new light, let's say, on the times of the Yorkist kings. History will never be the same after Alianore. Nor will most other novels.

Brian Wainwright's debut novel The Adventures of Alianore Audley is a brilliantly funny, subversive spoof.

Reviews: Earthdoom! by David Langford and John Grant

The ideal book if ever you're lost for words - just open Earthdoom and you'll find lots of them Exeter Advertiser

An oasis in the ocean of literature Bob Shaw

The greatest contribution to English literature since the invention of the semi-colon Ansible

... sounds like an amusing idea ... Isaac Asimov

Does for the disaster genre what Ludd did for the Industrial Revolution Roy Tappen

Fills a long-needed gap Eve Devereux

Could this be the finest book ever written? White Dwarf

The trouble with Earthdoom! is that you really have to grope through a host of books with titles like Tapeworm! and Sludge! and plots like – well, like episodes of Earthdoom! to appreciate just what Langford and Grant are sending up. By then, of course, either your brain has rotted away from disuse or you're so paranoid that the next time the gerbils nip your finger you come down with psychosomatic rabies and infect half the neighbourhood.

Even if you forego the study of literary influences, however, you'll still enjoy Earthdoom! You won't, of course, be able to read another Disaster Novel without giggling (but don't you, anyway?) as what we have here is a scenario for just about every end-of-the world novel possible, starting with the earth tilting on its axis and taking in Hitler cloning himself on a Devonshire farm, the Loch Ness Monster, comets and Horrible Slimy Aliens on a collision course with earth and sub-critical-mass bits of plutonium doing likewise in the London Underground – and I won't even mention the lemmings and the superglue save to say that you'll probably never want to go to the lavatory again. It's all held together with a plot line involving Death, the Antichrist, various sets of incompetent scientists as two-fistedly gung-ho as any Doc Smith character (but randier) and numerous knock-knock jokes ...

If you don't get a copy of this for your collection of skiffy blockbusters there isn't much hope for you.

Andy Sawyer for Paperback Inferno

In the mood for something so outrageous, so epic, so wildly funny, something so common, but yet filled with personality that it reads differently, so differently that it is addicting?

Earthdoom! is the book for you.

The world is going to end, but not in a flash; it will be long and slow and take millions of lives in the process. The main concern is an antimatter comet heading straight for the sun that will set the Earth off, but that is just the tip of the iceberg; throw in some melting polar icecaps, werewolves, vampires, the loch ness monster, chemical warfare, terrorism, and alien invasion.

Through these chains of events, we are introduced to and suffer with a group of individuals who try to save the world.

Up in space, Colonel Bart Malone, a closet homosexual and brazen American astronaut, and Adrianna Dimpla, Russian cosmonaut, run a parallel course with the comet, intending their doom as well. Can Dimpla stop the comet and ward off Malone's sexual harassment?

On Earth, Junior Finkelstein, a 6 year old who has premonitions of Earthdoom!, puts together a Think Tank of doctors and scientists who could save the world. There is his mother, Nadia, a Nasa boss; Mark Tampion and Lise Pranther, mathematicians trying to decode an lien message; Gwyntor Bjorstrom, a climatologist; Lucious Apricot, a drunken particle physicist; and Al Bran, a psychologist; to name a few.

Then there is Adolf Hitler who has escaped into his time machine back in 1941 to the present (1991) where he begins cloning himself to form the 4th Reich with the help of Farmer Loam''s cattle cloning machine.

Oh, there is also Death who wanders around and a race of aliens called Cygnan.

As you can see, this is a very busy novel, but really quite simple in plot. The authors manage to keep their head on the ground and not forget what they are trying to accomplish: as wacky as the end of the world is, it is still scary as hell.

The heart of the novel lies in the 2 dimensional characters' simplicity. Mostly, the men are sex starved idiots even though they have powerful and intelligent positions in their career, and the women, although extremely beautiful, are intelligent and often manipulating the men. This dynamic often had me rolling with laughs and shaking my head in disbelief; and art that is tough to pull off and I''m sure it is something that you have to be born with.

Sharp, witty dialogue, overblown imagination, and just plain fun, Earthdoom! is a hell of a ride.

Mike Purfield