Rice, who was raised in rural Mississippi with a bunch of brothers and sisters, was competitive and he loved the game of football. When his older brother, who is now a coach, didn’t make it in the draft, it became Jerry Rice’s job to make some dreams come true like the one Tom had for buying his parents a home.

Rice got a spot with the San Francisco 49ers, and thus began his 20 year career in the game. He married his Mississippi sweetheart and has three gorgeous children. He eschewed the use of performance enhancing drugs and the party scene. He practiced his moves on the field instead, and his efforts paid off with three Super Bowl wins.

Rice appears to speak pretty honestly about his career in the game, the dedication he brought to the job, and the pitfalls and disappointments. There’s a little bit of dish about other players like Terrell Owns, coach Bill Parcells, Deion Sanders, Joe Montana, and others. Rice also delivers some kind words about the Patriots’ organization, though he’s little skeptical about Tom Brady’s performance.

Rice is a man of faith, and faith was needed when his beloved wife went into a coma after the birth of their daughter Jada about 10 years ago. It took two years for Jackie to walk unassisted and to recover fully.

This is a wonderful book for young people to read. It’s not about the glamour of the game and the perks. It’s about how to do a job well, although Rice recounts the highlights of several games, and even though I didn’t know what he was talking about, my heart was pounding until I learned the outcome.

Rice also speaks warmly, and competitively, about his appearances on "Dancing with the Stars". He and his partner didn’t win, but by damn, he tried.

Bass is Tess Gerritsen and Patricia Cornwell on steroids. Actually,‘Jefferson Bass’ is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass, founder of Tennessee’s famous forensic facility, The Body Farm, and Jon Jefferson, veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker. Together they’ve crafted a smashing crime novel, the second in the Dr. Bill Brockton series. It’s hard to be poetic about the effects of maggot activity on a corpse, but Bass achieves just that in this folksy narrative about a grim endeavor.

Dr. Brockton accepts a donated corpse from medical examiner Dr. Jessamine Carter in order to determine the time of death of a male murder victim who was discovered, his body mutilated and tied to a tree wearing a bustier and a wig. As it happens, the vic was a child molester who got off on a technicality so a lot of people may have wanted him dead. In the course of things, Brockton, a widower, and Carter, a divorcee, make tentative advances toward one another. Brockton is like a schoolboy with his first crush, and Carter seems to sense that this relationship could be the one. Standing by while all the fumbling goes on is Miranda, Brockton’s young protégé, a doctoral candidate whose affection for her mentor isn’t enough to distract him from Carter’s charms. Carter is filling in as death doctor in Knoxville because her predecessor is before the medical board trying to save his license against charges of incompetence. Brockton testifies against him.

Brockton also teaches at the university, and his over-the-top denunciation of the theory of creationism lands him in the public eye when a special interest group targets him for a public lynching. When Brockton discovers a corpse tied to his research subject, the one with the wig, he becomes the suspect in a different murder, and this time it’s personal. Brockton must turn to his nemesis, Attorney De Vriess, for some costly representation.

There’s a whole lot of plot going on here, and it’s all masterfully handled in Bass’s hands. With its southern setting in locales like Fiery Gizzard, this novel shines with its sophisticated and subtle humor, and the decency of its characters. Brockton, while he may be a heathen, is a gentleman who always carries a fresh handkerchief and a modest attitude. If grisly and exhaustive forensic detail is your thing, then this is your series. Jefferson Bass is my new favorite crime writer.

The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry, Ballantine Books, Fiction, 384 pp., $25.95(avail. Jan. 30)

Bestselling author Steve Berry re-draws the map of the Middle East in his own audacious style in this tale of a search for the missing library of Alexandria which disappeared without a trace about 1500 years ago. The Egyptian library contained hundreds of thousands of scrolls and papyri, essentially all of the world’s knowledge at the time.

This is the second thriller to feature former elite U.S. international intelligence agent, Cotton Malone, who relocated to Copenhagen after he retired to open a rare book shop. Malone is astonished when his ex-wife appears to tell him their son has been kidnapped. Then Malone’s shop is burned. Thus begins their quest to find their son. The real spoils of this dangerous game, however, is the library of Alexandria, and there is only one man who knows where the map to the prize is, and Cotton Malone is the only man who knows where he is.

In the states, Malone’s old boss, Stephanie Nelle, is trying to help Cotton at her end. Enter the lethally beautiful, and obscenely wealthy Cassiopeia to assist Stephanie at the behest of one of the wealthiest men on earth, a member of the world’s most exclusive club, a group that decides world political policies from thousands of miles away. Also plaguing the stalwart Stephanie are some additional problems with her superiors, one of whom could be a very highly placed traitor.

The action, of course, is global and hair-raising. What a great ride.

From the publication of his first book, The Amber Room, I became a Steve Berry fan. Berry’s hallmark is to take an historical mystery and then turn conventional theory on its head. Thus far, he’s tackled the mysteries of the Amber Room, (The Amber Room) Fatima, (The Third Secret) the killing of the Romanov family during the Russian Revolution, (The Romanov Prophecy and the search for the Holy Grail (The Templar Legacy). Every one is a winner, and if go to the author’s web site and click on the book you’re reading, you can see the actual sites referenced in the book. It’s a great aid to enjoying the stories as well as a way to get one’s interest piqued in the actual history of the events.

Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies, and the Buying of Washington by Peter H. Stone, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Non-Fiction, 224 pp., $23

Heist is a well written, compressed account of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. The intricacies of Abramoff’s betrayals are vindication for conspiracy theorists because who could have imagined the extent of the man’s treachery. Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon, formerly of Texas Congressman Tom De Lay’s office, actually lobbied to shut down an Indian casino, and then bilked the tribe of millions in order to reopen it. In total, Abramoff and Scanlon ripped off several tribes for a total of about $80M. And, according to Stone’s account, the duo is not unique except for the notable degree of their greed. Complicit in all of this is Ralph Reed, the fresh faced former head of the Christian Coalition who disgraced himself immeasurably by whipping Christian groups into an anti-gambling frenzy while taking money from Abramoff to do so.

Abramoff teamed up with a failed Florida businessman to buy a fleet of gambling ships. The former owner was murdered during a time when Abramoff’s partner was feuding with him.

What’s truly disturbing is the effect of lobbying on U.S. congressmen whose salaries can’t begin to cover golf junkets to St. Andrew’s in Scotland. Lobbyists, however, can afford to give them anything they want in order to influence their votes. It is a despicable system, and Sen. John Mc Cain’s effort to change it has failed.

This is the sixth entry in the very popular Charlotte La Rue series set in New Orleans, this time in the tragic post- Katrina environment. Charlotte, owner of the Maid for a Day service, agrees to clean at a local hotel as a favor to a friend. The Red Hat Society, a group of forty-ish society ladies, has taken over the hotel. One of the members is dealing with an agonizing divorce, complicated by the apparent pregnancy of her husband’s mistress, so when the mistress turns up dead in the hotel’s courtyard, Charlotte’s mind goes into overdrive in her attempt to find the killer and clean his clock but good. Adding to Charlotte’s concerns is the fact that a former boyfriend is related to several of the Red Hats, and some signs point to him as the possible killer.

Charlotte has problems of her own as her daughter-in-law nears the end of her first pregnancy, and her sometime sort-of beau and tenant, Louis, is dealing with his very ill ex-wife. Everyone seems to need Charlotte’s assistance, and being the good God-fearing lady that she is, she runs herself a little ragged trying to be a guardian angel to all.

This book is one of the best in the series. Colley writes well, and the layered plot keeps the action moving forward.

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