The Globe and Mail
Sept 6 2004
Classic match-up is set
Venus Williams meets Lindsay Davenport, while Agassi-Federer showdown
looms
By TOM TEBBUTT
NEW YORK — Week two of the U.S. Open begins today with the classic
match-up of Venus Williams against Lindsay Davenport and the strong
possibility of an Andre Agassi-Roger Federer blockbuster looming for
Wednesday night.
After their wins on Saturday, Williams and Davenport will play this
afternoon for the 25th time. Their career head-to-head competition is
deadlocked at 12-12. Williams returned to action at the Australian
Open in January after six months out with an abdominal strain.
Then she suffered a bad ankle sprain before the French Open and a
wrist problem this summer.
“I’m just now starting to get healthy,” she said on Saturday after
beating Chanda Rubin. Ranked No. 12, Williams, 24, resents that
injuries have made her vulnerable and implied that she had no choice
but to play the Athens Olympics, where she lost to Mary Pierce.
“It’s a terrible thing,” she said of her current status. “I mean, I’m
a former No. 1, Grand Slam champion. I’m Venus Williams. People come
out and start to think that they can win because I’m not on top. If
I’m playing well, normally I’m going to be in the winner’s circle.”
Davenport, 28, has had her injuries woes as well — right knee
surgery in 2002, toe surgery last October and continuing knee
cartilage degeneration — but is on a roll. She has won four
tournaments and 22 matches in a row as she winds down a career that
could be in its final few months.
“There’s not a lot of pressure,” she said of today’s showdown. “Maybe
that’s because I feel I played so well all summer. I just have a
belief in myself.”
That showed on Saturday when she coolly saved two set points in the
tiebreaker of a tense 7-6 (9-7), 6-2 win over red-hot Elena Bovina of
Russia.
The women’s event lost Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova on Saturday
when her shortcomings on hard courts were exposed in a 4-6, 6-2, 6-3
loss to Pierce.
The 17-year-old Russian does not get the rewards for her power play
on hard courts that she does on grass and does not make any
adjustment to compensate.
Her loss removed a possible quarter-final match-up with top seed
Justine Henin-Hardenne, but the highly anticipated Jennifer
Capriati-Serena Williams quarter-final did materialize yesterday when
Capriati defeated Ai Sugiyama 7-5, 6-2 and Williams downed Patty
Schnyder 6-4, 6-2.
It will be their third consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final —
Capriati winning at Roland Garros and Williams at Wimbledon.
Last night No. 2 seed Amélie Mauresmo defeated Italian Francesca
Schiavone 6-4, 6-2 and will next meet Elena Dementieva.
In men’s action, Andy Roddick showed form worthy of a defending
champion, hitting 21 aces and no double faults in the 6-1, 6-3, 6-3
dismantling of Guillermo Canas of Argentina and Lleyton Hewitt ousted
Feliciano Lopez 6-1, 6-4, 6-2.
Tommy Haas, after missing 15 months after two operations on his right
shoulder, continued an impressive 2004 campaign by beating Ricardo
Mello of Brazil 6-3, 6-3, 7-5.
As a result of their victories on Saturday, Federer and Agassi are
destined for a quarter-final confrontation.
Today, Federer will take on Andrei Pavel, whom he has defeated seven
times in a row (four in 2004), while Agassi will plays his pal Sargis
Sargsian, with whom he shares Armenian ancestry.
He is 5-0 against Sargsian.
In doubles yesterday, No. 3 seeds Daniel Nestor of Toronto and Mark
Knowles of the Bahamas reached the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 6-1 win
over Americans Justin Gimelstob and Graydon Oliver.
“It’s always important in a match like that with a rowdy crowd
[Gimelstob is from nearby New Jersey] to get off to a good start,”
Nestor said.
That was on the Grandstand.
Later, in the Arthur Ashe Stadium, supermodel Naomi Campbell watched
Serena Williams, who wore a relatively modest black, silver-studded
dress. Campbell told a CBS interviewer that she liked the Williams
sisters’ fashion sense, proclaiming them “bold and interesting. I
love their looks.”
“She’s a really good friend of myself and my sisters,” Serena said.
On a more serious matter, Williams revealed that three doctors had
recommended she not play the U.S. Open because of the problem with
her left knee.
Explaining her participation, she said jokingly: “I became a doctor
just recently. I took my own doctor’s advice.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PHILIP NOUBEL SPEAKS ON JAVAKHK
A1 Plus | 18:47:11 | 06-09-2004 | Social |
Philip Noubel, Belgian International Crisis Group /ICG/ senior analyst,
speaking at a seminar held Sunday in Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, raised an
issue of Armenians living in Javakhk, Georgia.
Armenians there feel themselves as persons of secondary importance,
he noted.
One of Javakhk journalists present at the seminar told Noubel “when
Armenians speak about sovereignty they mean self-governing but
Georgians take that as separatism”.
Noubel said, in his opinion, Tbilisi doesn’t care about Javakhk.

Chechnya: Why Putin is implacable
By Paul Reynolds, BBC News Online world affairs correspondent
BBC News, UK
Sept 6 2004
President Putin has drawn a line in the mountains of the North Caucasus
beyond which Russia will not withdraw.
Putin under pressure but not compromising
His insistence that there can be no surrender to demands for
independence for Chechnya is based on a number of factors which
include:
a fear of further chaos on Russia’s borders in the region
a feeling that Russia must not make any further territorial concessions
anywhere
a belief that the Chechens were offered and threw away the chance of
responsible independence before. Mr Putin has also added into this
complex mix the spectre of international (by which he means Islamic)
terrorism and an accusation that unnamed foreign countries want to
break bits off Russia.
It must also not be forgotten that he has staked his own reputation
on his policy and that therefore he is reluctant to change it.
Russian policy can be grouped under the following headings:
Geo-political
The argument is that if Chechnya, a troublesome republic on Russia’s
southern border, broke away it could provoke demands for independence
elsewhere in the region.
Chechnya has to its east the Russian republic of Dagestan which
is multi-ethnic and where there has been unrest between some of
its peoples.
To its west is Ingushetia, to which Chechnya was once joined and
which is largely Islamic. The Ingush in turn have fought with the
North Ossetians who are Orthodox Christians and whose children were
the victims in Beslan.
And all this is close to the energy-rich Caspian Sea and on Russia’s
southern flank.
Terrorism
The Russian fear is that terrorists have taken over the Chechen
opposition and that if Chechnya becomes independent, they will
take over Chechnya as well. They might then begin to spread their
influence outwards.
Mr Putin has alluded to Russian claims that Islamic terrorism is
linked to the attack on the school and other incidents.
He implies that Islamic terrorism not Chechen nationalism is the
real enemy.
Economic
An oil pipeline from Azerbaijan used to run through Chechnya, but it
was by-passed after earlier fighting and now goes through Dagestan.
There is oil and gas to be developed in the Caspian Sea and Russia
wants a stable area through which to pass supplies.
Territorial integrity
Mr Putin spoke nostalgically in his address to Russia after the
Beslan tragedy about the days when the borders of the Soviet Union
were protected.
He and others regret the loss of so much territory in the break-up
of the Soviet Union and want to stop any further territorial loss.
Necessity
The Russian president argues that after 1997, when then President
Yeltsin gave Chechnya autonomy, with independence to be discussed
later, the Chechens responded by failing to develop a stable republic.
In August 1999, radicals led by the man believed to be behind the
school siege, Shamil Basayev, invaded neighbouring Dagestan.
Putin does have a geo-political case. It is open to question though
whether his chosen means have the slightest likelihood of dealing
with the problem
Professor Margot Light, LSE Chechens were blamed for blowing up Russian
civilian targets, including apartment buildings in Moscow. Mr Putin
led the move to re-invade Chechnya.
Elections were held there recently so he claims that he has done all
he can and that his present policy is therefore one of necessity.
Western Russia watchers, like Western governments, have some sympathy
for the Russian dilemma but many doubt if Mr Putin’s approach is the
right one.
Professor Margot Light of the London School of Economics said:
“Putin does have a geo-political case. It is open to question though
whether his chosen means have the slightest likelihood of dealing
with the problem.
“He has to start talking to the people he says he will not talk
to, like Aslan Mashkadov who was the Chechen president until the
99 invasion.
“Mr Putin’s reputation is on the line. It is extremely useful to argue
that this is international terrorism and that outside countries are
involved. Frankly this is rubbish. Any involvement by al-Qaeda to
train or fund the Chechens post-dates the conflict.”
Professor Light, however, also suggested that Russian fears of chaos
on its border in that region could be exaggerated.
“Russia could afford the loss of Chechnya. Talk of other republics
leaving the federation is far from the truth,” she said.
Nicholas Redman, Russia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit in
London commented: “Oil is an issue but it is not the main issue. If
there was oil Russia would still be determined to hang on.
“The North Caucasus was a hard-won region and Russia sees itself as a
civilising influence there. The loss of other republics in the area,
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, makes it even more important that
it should lose no more.
‘Where do you stop?’
“There is a just a fear that if you unravel, where do you stop.
“The problem is that Putin’s tactics have to be questioned. Russian
policy has encouraged divisions among the Chechens and there is nobody
who can glue the factions together.”
Western governments have not so publicly questioned Mr Putin’s
policies. Even a hint of criticism by the Dutch government (currently
holding the European Union presidency) provoked outrage in Moscow.
The West has generally left Moscow to its own devices in Chechnya
with occasional and ineffective mutterings about human rights.
This is despite a private view among some Western diplomats that
Russia, having lost so much of the old Soviet Union, would not be
affected by the loss of Chechnya.
The reality is that many western governments have their own war against
terrorism to fight and do not want to jeopardise Russian cooperation
by making adverse comments about Chechnya.
It all adds up to a Putin policy of, for the moment, no change.

ANOTHER POLITICAL PRISONER TO BE RELEASED BEFORE PACE SESSION
A1 Plus | 16:49:14 | 06-09-2004 | Politics |
Edgar Arakelyan, who was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in jail
this summer for hitting a policeman by empty plastic bottle during
the demonstration held on April 12 is expected to be released ahead
of the end of his term.
He has already served one-third of his term in jail. The decision is
to be made today at 16:00 in the first instance court of Nork-Marash.

Farhat’s new album to be released in Germany
Tehran Times
Sept 6 2004
Tehran Times Art Desk
TEHRAN (MNA) – The new album “Angels’ Birthday” by Iranian musician
Shahin Farhat will soon be released in Germany.
Early this year, Farhat recorded a new selection performed along with
the Armenia Youth Orchestra in Armenia. The new album also features
Armenian tenor Narbeh Cholakian performing songs based on poems by
Hafez, Khayyam, and Sa’di.
The album is being released in Germany by a German company and will
probably be distributed in Iran at the same time.
Farhat is quite satisfied with his new album, saying that this is the
first time an Iranian classical work has been recorded in a foreign
country and hopefully it will hit the market soon.

Armenian defense minister goes to Poland
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 5, 2004 Sunday 1:03 PM Eastern Time
YEREVAN, September 5 — Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisyan
went to Poland on Sunday to discuss bilateral cooperation with Polish
counterpart Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Sarkisyan’s press secretary Seiran
Shakhsuvaryan told Itar-Tass.
Sarkisyan will also visit a naval aviation squad, the Military Academy
of Poland and an electronics research and production center.
On September 7 he will go to Lithuania on an official visit to meet
with President Valdas Adamkus, defense and foreign ministers, the
Lithuanian Army commander, and head of the Parliamentary Commission on
National Security and Defense. Sarkisyan will sign an interdepartmental
agreement on the participation of Armenian servicemen in exercises
of the Lithuanian Military Academy.

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
September 05, 2004, Sunday
Rock CDs
By James Delingpole
Kasabian Kasabian (RCA, pounds 12.99). Leicester’s Kasabian think
they’re the new guardians of British rock ‘n’ roll. ‘The Stones,
Zeppelin, the Pistols, the Gallaghers, we’re in that line,’ says
their singer Tom, and the damnedest thing is he might just be right:
not since Oasis can I recall a debut of quite such magnificent verve
and swagger.
They’re not as tight or clever as Franz Ferdinand, but then that’s
not their point: Kasabian (named after Charles Manson’s female getaway
driver – her surname means ‘butcher’ in Armenian) represent the bummed,
druggy, louche end of rock. It’s impossible to play them without
wanting to load up on drink and drugs and spend all night dancing,
which is what apparently goes on quite a lot on the 600-acre farm
where they live, record and throw free festivals.
They’ve got the cocky slouchiness and shuffling dance beat of the Happy
Mondays, the psychedelic languor of the Stone Roses, the attitude of
Oasis, the anthemic danciness of Stereo MCs. Who would have imagined
that the early 1990s would have made a comeback quite so soon and so
brilliantly reinvented? Truly Kasabian are the hound’s testicles.
The Libertines The Libertines (Rough Trade, pounds 13.99). In a
survey last year of the greatest British pop bands, the Guardian
decided The Libertines were even better than Radiohead and put them
at number one. I’m not sure I’d go quite so far – can I ever imagine
myself going: ‘God, I just have to put on a Libertines record right
this second, or I’ll die’?
No – but their second album does give you a good idea what the fuss
is all about. It’s excruciatingly honest – detailing the break-up of
the fraught, intense, almost marital relationship between frontmen
Carl Barat and heroin-addicted Pete Doherty. It has the throwaway
assurance of a band that knows it’s great and original and doesn’t
need to prove anything to anyone, and a sweet, eccentric, ramshackle
English charm. As produced by Mick Jones it sounds a bit sludgy and
home-made, but the heartfelt lyrics are compulsive and the debonairly
punkish melodies do grow on you.
Skinnyman Council Estate of the Mind (Low Life, pounds 13.99). You
wouldn’t guess it from his authentically black-sounding patois, but the
much-praised north London rapper Skinnyman is in fact white. His tunes
and samples aren’t bad but is he the British Eminem? Not lyrically
deft enough and way too earnest. Another Streets? Not funny enough.

The Caucasus mountains, a turbulent crossroads between Caspian and Black Sea
Agence France Presse — English
September 5, 2004 Sunday 2:03 AM GMT
MOSCOW Sept 5 — The Caucasus, scene of a hostage drama that ended
with hundreds of dead and wounded, is the turbulent home to scores of
ethnic and religious groupings prone to regular outbreaks of violence.
The mountainous region, roughly the size of California, forms a
natural crossroads between east and west, north and south and currently
comprises three newly independent states — Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Georgia — along with part of the regional superpower, Russia.
The seven Russian republics in the region are themselves highly
diverse, including strife-torn Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North
Ossetia, Karachai-Cherkessia, Adygeya and Kabardino-Balkaria.
Dagestan alone, wedged between the Caspian Sea and Chechnya, is
inhabited by 30 nationalities, each with its own language and customs.
Many of the region’s languages are of Indo-European or Turkic origin,
others are indigenous.
Islam is well-established in the Caucasus, notably in Azerbaijan and
several of the Russian republics, but Orthodox Christianity in its
Armenian, Georgian and Russian variants is also widespread.
Its key position made the Caucasus a target for regional empires
including those of the Ottomans and Persia.
More recently the Russians have dominated the region, and many of the
conflicts of the past decade have been exacerbated by administrative
demarcations decided during the Soviet era and the wholesale
deportations ordered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin during World
War II.
Nationalist sentiment among the rugged, fiercely independent mountain
peoples was never entirely extinguished, and aspirations to self-rule
contributed significantly to the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The first out-and-out conflict erupted in the late 1980s between
Armenians and Azeris scrapping over the remote enclave of Nagorno
Karabakh, administratively part of Azerbaijan but inhabited mainly
by Armenians.
That conflict, like others that have broken out subsequently, has
still not been resolved.
In 1992, in the months following the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
South Ossetia, part of Georgia, fought a brief war with government
forces to claim independence from Tbilisi, while Christian North
Ossetia, part of Russia, battled with Muslim Ingushetia over a
territorial claim.
The same year, Georgia’s western Abkhazia region — with suspected
Russian support — fought a year-long separatist war that won de
facto independence at a cost of thousands of dead and a ruined economy.
In December 1994 then Russian president Boris Yeltsin poured troops
into Chechnya to put down a separatist insurgency headed by Dzhokhar
Dudayev. Less than two years later he was forced to withdraw the
troops, leaving rebel leaders in control.
Chechnya’s de facto independence, marked by chaos and warlordism,
lasted less than three years as an incursion by rebels from Chechnya
into Dagestan triggered a further invasion by Russian troops, ordered
this time by Yeltsin’s prime minister and heir apparent Vladimir Putin.
Putin has made frequent claims since then to have stabilised the
situation in Chechnya, usually finding them belied by events.
The Caucasus region, particularly its Russian republics, are also
dogged by lawlessness despite — some say because of — the presence of
Russian troops, with oil-trafficking, clan warfare and hostage-taking
rampant.

Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
September 5, 2004 Sunday
DVD Review
by KAY SCHMIDT
DRAMA
Ararat
Imagine (MA)
In short: Focuses on the Armenian genocide, still denied by Turkey.
The players: Arsinee Khanjian, Christopher Plummer, Charles Aznavour,
Elias Koteas.
Verdict: A history lesson that is too wide-ranging to be involving.
AN ambitious, complex and informative film from Atom Egoyan (The
Sweet Hereafter), a Canadian of Armenian extraction. His deeply
personal mission is to draw attention to his heritage — the 1915
massacre of up to a million Armenians, which went mostly unnoticed
during World War I. He does so through several strands connecting
past and present, including a film within the film based on the
alleged atrocities.

Dangerous liaisons, a clever Greek and a deadly diamond. By Paul Skenazy
by Paul Skenazy
The Washington Post
September 5, 2004 Sunday
Final Edition
Garry Disher’s The Dragon Man (Soho, $23) is a lean, compelling
police procedural that uncovers rural Australian life in all its
hazardous dailiness. Detective Inspector Hal Challis runs the police
office on the Peninsula, “a comma of land hooking into the sea
south-east of Melbourne.” Women have been disappearing along the Old
Peninsula Highway. One body has been discovered. While mothers and
friends appeal for help in finding the other women who are missing,
Challis and his mates at the police station try to trace a pattern in
the crimes. They also cope with a rash of burglaries and a series of
mailboxes set on fire. And a car set on fire. And a house set on
fire.
Disher keeps his style curt, his bits of dialogue short, his
invasions of the psyche pointed. Weaving back and forth between the
police and the criminals, and among the uniformed cops and
detectives, Disher smoothly creates a choral portrait of the police
and the people they work with and for, delivering a community of
stories. Loneliness is as commonplace as the muddy roads and broken
fences. The police force that Challis commands is a varied lot,
including a wife frustrated by an indifferent husband and rebellious
daughter, a cop who falls for a cocaine addict and starts supplying
her from the evidence locker, a young recruit recovering from a car
accident who is as interested in her surfing teachers as in her
police procedures. Challis himself is the “dragon man” of the title
(a nickname that refers to his efforts to restore a vintage airplane,
a de Havilland DH 84 Dragon Rapide). He fluctuates between exhausted
patience on the phone with his ex-wife, who is in prison for trying
to kill him, and a discreet and intermittent affair he’s having with
a local newspaper reporter. Though Disher broadcasts the killer’s
identity a bit too early, this is still a first-rate piece of crime
writing: a dense, hard-nosed portrait of a world unto itself.
Ed McBain (a k a Evan Hunter), the grand master of the police
procedural, returns in Hark! (Simon & Schuster, $24.95), his 54th
book about the 87th Precinct cops, the crimes they solve, and the
lives they live outside the station house. The thief known as the
Deaf Man has returned, eager for revenge on the woman who left him
for dead (he shoots her in the first scene) and eager to mock the
87th crew with a series of teasing clues about his next crime. Steve
Carella, Meyer Meyer, Kling, Cotton Hawes and the rest start
receiving messengered notes that seem impossible to decipher. Some
prove to be anagrams, some palindromes, some quotes from Shakespeare.
The notes appear to define the date, and even hint at the crime —
except they hint at several crimes at once.
Meantime, the detectives are clueless about what to do with their own
lives. Carella is trying to avoid thinking about the joint wedding he
is planning for his mother and sister. Cotton Hawes is making it with
Honey Blair of Channel Four News, until someone starts shooting at
the two of them. Kling is worried that his sweetie is meeting
secretly with a man she used to date. And the Deaf Man (who calls
himself Adam Fen) wanders the city, visiting the New York Public
Library to view an original copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio on
display, showing intense interest in a classical violin recital. He
shacks up with a prostitute named Melissa Summers, whom he sends on
errands to find delivery men for his notes to Carella and Co. And he
waits.
McBain is playing for laughs, and he gets them, working skillfully to
create just enough intrigue to keep us interested in the bad jokes,
the puzzling riddles and the domestic melodramas. The whole
performance is deft and light, like a magician’s sleight of hand: The
trick is pulled off while you look the other way. There’s nothing
lasting here, except the pleasure of watching a master having fun —
and that’s a kind of Shakespearean delight in itself.
Just as the Olympics have brought Greece to the world’s attention
comes the first American publication of Petros Markaris’s Greek crime
fiction. Deadline in Athens, ably translated by David Connolly
(Grove, $23), features Inspector Costas Haritos, an edgy, cynical
policeman in a contemporary Athens more notable for its traffic jams
and rainy weather than its classical ruins. Like all good fictional
cops, Haritos is in trouble with his superiors and unwilling to
settle for the convenient, if unconvincing, solution. So when an
Armenian quickly confesses to killing two other Armenians, Haritos is
willing to follow a tip from Janna, a zealous, ambitious TV reporter,
that there is more to the case than appears. Then Janna herself is
found murdered, just before she was set to air a sensational news
story. And soon after, Janna’s successor is found dead as well.
The evidence from one murder slowly intersects with the next, leading
Haritos to an accused child molester who has just been freed, a love
affair Janna had with her station manager, and the shipping records
of a well-connected travel agency. At home he struggles
unsuccessfully to appease his wife, Adriani, who spends her days
watching TV crime stories, and to find time to see his daughter, who
is away at school.
But the real story here is the geography and culture of Athens. From
Haritos’s wily boss Ghikas, the chief of security, to the
Armani-suited corporate TV executives, this is a world where the rich
and powerful rule. Newscasters point a finger at an innocent man, and
Haritos spends days tracking him down as much to protect as to arrest
him; Haritos builds a case against a TV producer only to find himself
facing suspension. Ghikas urges him to be more “flexible,” while
Haritos charges on, pushing his way through doors that want to remain
closed.
Deadline is a satisfying if sometimes slow-paced read, the wayward
elements of the plot wandering in and out of focus as Haritos reaches
one wrong conclusion after another. Still, the material is rich, the
characters are drawn with depth, and Haritos himself is an intriguing
find: zealous in his work, more in love with his wife than he will
admit, suspicious by training, his only relief from work being the
hours he spends learning new words in his dictionaries at home. Two
more Haritos tales are promised for the near future, and I look
forward to reading them and spending more time with this snarling,
amiable Greek.
Skye Kathleen Moody’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Venus
Diamond returns for her seventh outing in The Good Diamond (St.
Martin’s, $24.95). This time Diamond’s name claims major attention as
a pun that echoes from start to finish in a story about diamond
trading and the international arms trade. Big Jim Hardy, a reclusive
prospector, discovers a 384-carat rough diamond he calls “Lac de
Lune,” after the lakebed where he found it, just outside the small
prospecting town of Yellowknife in Canada. But as he is about to
depart to have the diamond cleaved, his compound is invaded, he is
killed, the diamond is stolen, and his geologist is taken hostage.
Before he dies, however, Hardy has time to send an e-mail and scrawl
Venus Diamond’s name in blood.
Still with me? Because now the plot really gets farfetched. Sgt.
Roland Mackenzie of the Royal Canadian Mounties is convinced that
Hardy has written his murderer’s name and so arrests Diamond, who
then reveals that Big Jim Hardy was really Buzz Radke, a U.S. federal
undercover agent whom Diamond worked with years before. The escaping
thieves are, it seems, part of a militant group that dubs itself the
Nation of God’s Chosen Soldiers (or “Company 8”), headquartered on
the Lay-a-Day Chicken Ranch just across the U.S.-Canadian border.
They want to trade the diamond for arms, through a diamond trader in
New York who is sending the guns out West with two hoodlums in a
truck with New Jersey license plates. Evidence turns up that seems to
link Mackenzie to the killing, so suddenly he is arrested and needs
to turn to Diamond for help trying to clear his name. Three master
diamond cutters — in New York City, Antwerp and South Africa — are
working on models of the huge diamond to see if they can successfully
cleave the delicate stone. The New York traders are ruthlessly
working to procure the diamond and frighten competitors away from the
chase. And there are rumors that the stolen diamond itself might be a
fake substituted for the real stone to prevent just the kind of theft
that occurred.
Moody has always liked to stuff her books with plots until they burst
at the seams, and this outing is no different. White supremacists,
greedy hoodlums, devious diamond cutters, desperate jewel traders;
Canadian tundra, Seattle digs, border chicken farms, New York
streets, Antwerp hovels; a militant’s wife who offers a captive a
tape recorder and tapes so she can explain her life (and fill in the
plot details); a hoodlum who deserts his post to sit in the library
— the unbelievable elements and events spiral out at an alarming
pace. Lost in the frenzy is the issue of diamonds-for-guns — the
trade in what are called “blood” diamonds that support arms shipments
to militant groups worldwide. Lost too is Venus herself, who becomes
a cipher that we watch from increasing distances as she tries to make
sense of the confusing events. You will not be bored by this book. It
is filled with interesting diamond lore, and it clips along, jumping
with often comic cunning among its various plots. But Moody seems so
anxious to fit them all in that she sometimes sketches in her stories
rather than writing them out. The result is a confusing, faceless
tale. *
Paul Skenazy teaches literature and writing at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, where he is provost of Kresge College.