Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103260024
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If you thought Susan Isaacs' other novels - "Compromising Positions," "Almost Paradise," "Shining Through" - were good, you won't believe how wonderful "Magic Hour" is. This talented author has set her skills to a murder mystery and it's one of the best I've ever read.
A movie producer is murdered while making a film in the Hamptons, and Steve Brady, local cop, is assigned to the case. A brilliant, burnt-out recovering alcoholic, Brady is trying to put his own life together while he tries to discover who ended Seymour Spencer's. As he struggles to solve the convoluted case, he also finds himself in love with the major suspect instead of the very appropriate young woman he's already engaged to. The plot is engaging; Brady is a fascinating character; "Magic Hour" is a magic piece of work. - JUDY KWELLER
Celtic: Design and Style in Homes of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. By Deborah Krasner. Photographs by Ken Kirkwood. Design by Kathleen Herlihy-Paoli. Viking. $35.
Is there such a thing as a "Celtic" style? Deborah Krasner says so, and though she never quite tells us what it is, she finds it in texture, materials, placement against landscape, etc. She may be right, but what is undeniably right is this beautiful (and expensive) book, with its dozens of extended tours through houses great and small, pretentious and casual, planned and accidental, across the Celtic lands of Great Britain - if you prefer, the British Isles. The castles of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy are balanced by the humblest shepherds' cottages, and in each of them photographer Kirkwood finds the perfect angle of vision to recreate ambiance, light and color. If you like houses, and house books, here is a fine look. - PAXTON DAVIS
Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacles. By Mark Sloan. Villard Books. $25.
This is one of those books that you open, thinking you'll browse through a few pages, and then realize that an hour or more has passed. And, you're not about to put it away until you've looked at all of it.
Mark Sloan has collected old photographs of a variety of curiosities. His chapter headings tell the story: "Giants, Dwarfs, And Siamese Twins," "Daredevils And Flirts With Death," "Feats Of Strength," and more. His subjects range from people involved in improbable hoaxes (unearthing the "Cardiff Giant"), inexplicable displays (21,000 soldiers forming a portrait of Woodrow Wilson), and unlikely activities (smelt wrestling).
My own favorite is the Dalton Gang, four dead and one wounded, pictured after the ill-advised Coffeyville robbery, with a small boy's face peeking out through a hole in the wall behind the bodies and apparently looking at someone behind the camera.
Sloan's captions are witty and, wherever possible, informative. He scoured archives and private collections to come up with these pictures, and the result is delight for anyone interested in popular culture and history. My only quibble is with the jacket copy, which states that the author has "curated over 100 exhibitions." Though the art community regularly misuses the word, "curate" is not a verb. - MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
by CNB