The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 The Great Detectives: from Vidocq to Sam Spade William S. Shepard, Uncle Seth Cutler Press, 2011, $3.50, Kindle Edition. The Great Detectives is a fas- cinating and highly readable in- troduction to the genre of the mystery. In a series of essays William Shepard traces the birth and evolution of the detective story from its origins in the early 19th century to the great American masters, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In the first essay, the reader meets Eugène-François Vidocq, the picaresque French criminal who became, by degrees, a police spy and then, the originator and chief of the first modern police intelligence bureau, the Brigade de Sûreté. His life was the stuff of great literature, from Victor Hugo to Dostoyevsky. Then there is the tor- mented Edgar Allan Poe, who created the first detective story, “Murders In The Rue Morgue,” alluding to the writings of Vidocq as he did so. The second essay treats three eminent Victorian writ- ers who created memorable sleuths: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Sherlockian, the author tackles the vexing question: Why didn’t Holmes solve the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murders of 1888? Next come a trio of great mystery writers, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Georges Simenon, whose works are examined in detail. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, repre- senting the American hard-boiled school, complete the list. Retired FSOWilliam S. Shepard creator of the “diplo- matic mystery” genre (see Fiction), has also written about wine, diplomacy and Maryland’s history. The Great De- tectives is based on the author’s lecture course by the same name at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Md. Of Summits and Sacrifice: An Ethnohistoric Study of Inka Religious Practices Thomas Besom, University of Texas Press, 2010, $25, paperback, 244 pages. In the middle of the 15th century, a small kingdom in the highlands of southern Peru began to expand. Within 100 years, it had become the largest state ever formed by an indigenous people anywhere in the Americas. At the height of its power, the Inka Empire stretched some 4,000 kilometers from the present border between Ecuador and Colombia to the Mapocho River in central Chile. However, though its culture continued to flourish, this empire did not long survive the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500s. Because the Inkas had no system of writing, it was left to Spanish and semi-indigenous authors to record the de- tails of the religious rituals the Inkas believed had been instrumental in consolidating their conquests. Synthe- sizing arresting accounts that span three decades, Thomas Besom presents a wealth of descriptive data on the prac- tices of human sacrifice and mountain worship, supple- mented by evidence from the rich archaeological record the Inkas left behind. Of Summits and Sacrifice offers insight into the sym- bolic connections between landscape and life that un- derlay Inka religious beliefs. In vivid prose, Besom links significant details, ranging from the timing of cyclical sac- rificial rites to the varieties and roles of mountain deities, to produce a compelling cultural history. Dr. Besom is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. He is the son of retired FSO Donald Besom. POLICY AND ISSUES How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller Coaster Howard Schaffer and Teresita Schaffer, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2011, $13.50, paperback, 210 pages. Retired career FSOs and tandem couple, former ambassadors and South Asia experts Howard and Teresita Schaffer provide a thorough analysis of the relationship between Pakistan and the United States in How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States . Meticulously analyzing all major as- pects of the relationship, including ties between the countries’ intelligence communities, their positions on C OVER S TORY