David Brooks The Wall Street Journal Has already kicked up more reaction than any social?science book this decade.

Peter Brimelow Forbes Long-awaitedmassive, meticulous, minutely detailed, clear. Like Darwin's Origin of Species -- the intellectual event with which it is being seriously compared -- The Bell Curve offers a new synthesis of researchand a hypothesis of far-reaching explanatory power.

Following the 1878 murders of British aristocrat Lord Littleby and his servants on Paris's fashionable Rue de Grenelle, Gustave Gauche, "Investigator for Especially Important Crimes," boards the double-engined, six-masted Leviathan on its maiden voyage from England to India. He's on the lookout for first-class passengers missing their specially made gold whale badges--one of which Littleby had yanked from his attacker before he died. However, this trap fails: several travelers are badgeless, and still others make equally good candidates for Littleby's slayer, including a demented baronet, a dubious Japanese army officer, a pregnant and loquacious Swiss banker's wife, and a suave Russian diplomat headed for Japan. That last is of course Fandorin, still recovering two years later from the events related in The Winter Queen. Like a lesser Hercule Poirot, "papa" Gauche grills these suspects, all of whom harbor secrets, and occasionally lays blame for Paris's "crime of the century" before one or another of them--only to have the hyper-perceptive Fandorin deflate his arguments. It takes many leagues of ocean, several more deaths, and a superfluity of overlong recollections by the shipmates before a solution to this twisted case emerges from the facts of Littleby's killing and the concurrent theft of a valuable Indian artifact from his mansion.

Like the best Golden Age nautical mysteries, Murder on the Leviathan finds its drama in the escalating tensions between a small circle of too-tight-quartered passengers, and draws its humor from their over-mannered behavior and individual eccentricities. Trouble is, Akunin (the pseudonym of Russian philologist Grigory Chkhartishvili) doesn't exceed expectations of what can be done within those traditions. --J. Kingston Pierce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Akunin writes like a hybrid of Caleb Carr, Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters in his second mystery to be published in the U.S., set on the maiden voyage of the British luxury ship Leviathan, en route to India in the spring of 1878. Akunin's young Russian detective/diplomat protagonist, Erast Fandorin, has matured considerably since his debut in last year's highly praised The Winter Queen, set in 1876, and proves a worthy foil to French police commissioner Gustave Gauche, who boards the Leviathan because a clue suggests that one of the passengers murdered a wealthy British aristocrat, seven servants and two children in his Paris home and stole priceless Indian treasures. The intuitive, methodical Fandorin, who joins the ship at Port Said, soon slyly takes over the investigation and comes up with an eclectic group of suspects, all with secrets to hide, whom Gauche assigns to the same dining room. The company recite humorous or instructive stories that slow down the action but eventually relate to the identification of the killer. Gauche offers at least four solutions to the crimes, but in each case Fandorin debates or debunks his reasoning. The atmospheric historical detail gives depth to the twisting plot, while the ruthless yet poignant arch villain makes up for a cast of mostly cardboard characters. Readers disappointed by the lack of background on Fandorin will find plenty in The Winter Queen.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Copyright 2001 Cahners business Information, Inc.

This text is available in two versions, one with, and the other without coverage of the criminal justice system. For schools that retain the traditional criminology course, which includes criminological coverage of criminal justice, Criminology, third edition, is the ideal text. For schools that have expanded their offerings by adding an introductory course in criminal justice, Criminology: The Shorter Version, 3/e, is probably more appropriate. The Shorter Version omits Part IV (A Criminological Approach to the Criminal Justice System). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Bruce Jacobs has selected an eclectic cross-section of compelling readings. The book's theoretical coverage draws from classic as well as contemporary approaches (e.g., lifecourse, general strain, institutional anomie, feminist), with an emphasis on the latter. The empirical selections on forms of deviant behavior are engaging, ethnographic, and timely.

Coverage includes:

*Child Prostitution

*Robbery of Drug Dealers

*Impersonal Homosexual Sex

*Internet Pornography

*Petty Shoplifting

*Eating Disorders

*Life on Death Row

*Racial Profiling

*Ritalin and the Drugging of children

*Sex Tourism

*Athletes with Physical Disabilities

*Violence Beyond the Law

*Cyberspace Crime

*Use of Cameras, Drug tests, and DNA Analysis to Monitor Deviants

*The section on deviant identity management emphasizes the acquisition and management of stigma.

*The researching deviance section features the process by which scholars conduct deviance research (both ethnographic and survey) - as well as how they identify and infiltrate settings, negotiate dilemmas and contradictions, and secure valid data.

*The section on deviance and social control covers profiling, life sentences, judicial discretion, and surveillance.

*Gender is incorporated throughout the book as a crucial mediating variable. Feminist perspectives, as well as approaches that focus on masculinity and deviance, are both included.