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8.10.02 - This is a book based on the 'Silent Witness' series on the BBC featuring Amanda Burton as pathologist Dr Sam Ryan. It is about two suspicious deaths and how Dr Ryan's meddling nearly causes a catastrophy. It's main characters are Dr Ryan, a Detective Sergeant Stanley Sharman with questionable work ethics and Chief Superintendent Adams who happens to be an ex-boyfriend of Sam's. Other important characters are; Kate, Sharman's prostitute girlfriend; John Clarke, the local MP in Cambridge; Peter Hudd, a student doing a PhD at Trinity; 'Claire', a murdered drug addict and Sophie Clarke, the murdered wife of John Clarke. There are old arguments between Sam and Adams who left her for a younger woman. This leads to Sam making a couple of mistakes and 'withholding information from a police investigation.' If you like crime fiction or watched and enjoyed 'Silent Witness' on the BBC then I recommend this book. ISBN 0-671-03325-5 Price £5.99.

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Illuminati were, allegedly, a secret society of artists and proto-scientists suppressed by the Church during the
Counter-Reformation; they have featured in paranoid theories and thrillers ever since. Art historian Langdon is called in when a
leading nuclear physicist is robbed, murdered and mutilated; along with the scientist's beautiful adopted daughter Vittoria, he finds
himself involved in a treasure hunt against time. A lethal assassin has kidnapped four cardinals to torture them to death, and has
planted an anti-matter bomb in the Vatican--at midnight, the Papal Conclave and the Sistine Chapel and the whole of Vatican City
will go up in a flash of light, the vengeance of the Illuminati. Full of loopy conspiracy lore and some radical reinterpretations of the
history of art and architecture, Angels and Demons is a switchback ride whose occasional absurdities never for a second reduce its
high-adrenaline intensity. The bookish, brave Langdon, the clever Vittoria, the saintly young papal chamberlain who becomes their
principal ally, the venal and yet oddly savvy BBC stringer who starts getting the killer's communiqués--all of these are involving
and attractive characters who make us care about people and issues as much as we do about an ingenious plot. --Roz Kaveney

Reviewer: A reader from N Ireland. I'm so glad I read this book. It was both upsetting and uplifting. Upsetting because of the horrors inflicted on the African people by so-called civilised people; uplifting because of the strength of character and determination of those who suffered unimaginable horrors and indignities. Slaves were considered sub-human; I think it's fair to say that such a label is more applicable to those who bought and sold them. Descriptions of rural Africa, through the eyes of the young Kunta Kinte, showed a close-knit community with a proud history, as described by the wise men (griots). Particularly moving was the description of how Alex Hayley went back to the village of Kunte Kinte and heard that history being repeated as it had been over the centuries by the griots. It was like the story coming full circle.