Acclaimed for his Elvis Cole mystery series (L.A. Requiem, etc.), Crais deserves further garlands for this stand-alone crime novel. The book features one of the most complex heroines to grace a thriller since Clarice Starling locked eyes with Hannibal Lecter, a deliciously spooky villain in the person of a mad bomber known as Mr. Red, and an aggressively involving plot. Carol Starkey was a rising light in the LAPD Bomb Squad until, two years back, a bomb blew up in her face, maiming her and killing her lover/partner.
What makes Tuition Rising so valuable and so much fun is its combination of facts, analysis, and administrative war stories. So, for instance, the importance to a college of national rankings, like U.S. News and World Report, is supported by careful econometric analysis , put under a microscope to understand the reasons for their often-quirky rankings, and then followed into Cornell's business school to see how 'managing to the rankings'--the collegiate version of 'teaching to the test'--can make sensible university-wide administration very difficult.
Added by: miaow | Karma: 8463.35 | Fiction literature | 14 February 2010
2
Greg Mandel 1 - Mindstar Rising
Mindstar Rising is a novel by Peter F. Hamilton, published in 1993. It is the first book in the Greg Mandel trilogy. The novel introduces the major characters in the series, most notably Greg and Julia Evans. The novel combines elements of classic detective novels with science fiction.
Discover the origins of one of the most feared villains of all time in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Rising, a novel that promises to reveal the "evolution of Hannibal Lecter's evil." Thomas Harris first introduced readers to Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, a tale wrapped around FBI agent Will Graham (the man who hunted Lecter down) and his ability to "get inside the mind of the killer." Graham consults Dr. Lecter (the man who nearly killed him) on the case, and the legend of the nefarious Dr. Lecter was born...
