Class Acts : Elizabeth George – “A Great Deliverance” and “Payment in Blood” (Linley and Havers #1, 2)

Elizabeth George's "A Great Deliverance" is 1st in the now classic Thomas Linley / Barbara Havers series. A Yorkshire farmhouse beheading unearths all those hideous secrets every small British town seems to have by the score. Re-reading this I got a sharper sense of stultifying Brit classism that went over my head when I first …

The Time of the Cathedrals, Again : Mario Vargas Llosa – “Conversation in the Cathedral”

Mario Vargas Llosa sure likes his city dogs. As the monumental "Conversation in the Cathedral" opens, rabid dogs roam the streets of Lima, Peru, the canine manifestation of a national malaise. Santiago Zavala is an reporter from an upper-middle class family, cranking out editorial columns on the mismanagement of the rabies outbreak. When his little dog, Rowdy, …