ita, I plan to read the book: yours is the second recommendation I've had lately, and the movie was excellent.

Yay! Now go see the movie and tell me if it will make me mad. Or if it stands enough on its own that I won't get nitpicky.

This is just damn cool. Keep your bookpile online for all to see! Like Flickr for books. Kind of.

I just came across this line in a review of the new Takeshi Kovacs book ( Woken Furies ):

On Kovacs's home plant, Harlan's World (an allusion to Ellison, perhaps?), for example, still-functioning Martian satellites automatically destroy any aircraft that rises above a certain altitude.

Did I miss something? I didn't think those satellites were Martian; I thought they were an artifact of the fighting back in the Quellcrist Falconer days?

Of course, it took me three tries to not type the new title as Woken Furries, so there you go.

If you like Constant Gardener it's worth trying any of the '70s le Carres: They're more institutional, but have the same sense of outrage and detail.

I have a terminology question -- how do you describe the PoV when you get to hear every character's thoughts? Is that third omniscient? Is it completely unrelated to third omniscient?

I recently read Deception On His Mind which was much edgier than the TV episode (Detective Lynley), but IRRITATING. We get to hear everyone's thoughts, but no one thinks of anything until the police have discovered it. So we're in the minds of people with secrets, but they handily never think of these secrets until Havers works them out.

Yeah, that's third omniscient, although I always just call it omniscient.

I'm reading her newest right now, With No One as Witness, and really, really not liking it. Sob. Elizabeth George used to be one of my all-time favorites.

I remember seeing somewhere that the TV Lynley wasn't like the book Lynley, and made a quick-forgotten note to check the books out. Then this book lands in my lap, I recognise Havers, get excited, and then realise that the TV people inserted him into the episode, because he sure doesn't show up on the page.

So I still don't know what he's like on paper -- is there a particular point at which you'd recommend me stopping reading her? I mean, before With No One As Witness?

I didn't mind Deception, but I'd read the whole series and gathered Lynley wasn't going to show up. I think they made huge mistakes with casting the PBS mysteries, by the way.

My advice is to start at the beginning, which is...I'd have to go look it up, because my brain is a sieve. I think it's A Great Deliverance.

But the last couple books after Deception -- which are A Traitor to Memory and A Place of Hiding -- have been really meh for me.

I liked With No One as Witness better than the two or three before it. I think they started to go downhill to me after about the first seven or eight. How much angst can Lynley have without his head exploding? Barbara Havers is my favorite character, though.