Victor MolloLast Call in the Menagerie

For a dedicated bridge player, the "Bridge in the Menagerie" books are a delight. The characters are funny and interesting, and the hands are all masterpieces of card play technique. You will want to set up the hands and follow through the play to see what is actually going on. All by itself this will improve your game, as well as providing loads of fun.If you love bridge, buy this book!

Whether 30 yrs ago or reading Mollo today, pure enjoyment.

Solid Mollo

The book arrived in time with the expected quality.ThanksGyulai András

Did not like it at all.

Mark Horton has edited together Mollo's remaining articles which have not been published in book form, into a series of 4 four final books. This is the last one. After the shortcomings of the first, "The Hog Takes to Precision", where most of the hands in the later part of the book had in fact been previously published, Ron Tacchi set up a computer catalogue of the articles to try and get it right, as his Introduction to "Diamonds are the Hog's Best Friend" sets out. Tacchi had a difficult job due to Mollo's habit of reusing material. It wasn't just that he turned it out again, often he re-edited it: reused a hand with different text; switched around the suits; re-used text with different hands; reused part of an article with new material appended.Tacchi created a catalogue of all the hands and tried to use computer indexing to spot the repetitions. He wasn't always successful. There are rather more republished hands in "Diamonds..." than Tacchi thought at the time. But he got better at it for the last two volumes. I spotted only a couple of (unacknowledged) repetitions in each of "Swings and Arrows" and this final volume. And I read this volume straight after reading all 10 preceding books in sequence before it.There is the odd hand where the logic has gone wrong. Horton did spot some of these and footnote them, but there's a couple he didn't spot. For example, in the hand on p126-127, the contract is straightforwardly unbreakable without the jettison play, contrary to what is implied by the text. And a few misprints too.But overall, this is a really worthwhile final collection. The few small mistakes we can forgive in well over 200 pages of new material. We also spend extended time with some characters who did not or rarely made it into the early volumes: Gavin the Goose, Percy the Prattling Parrot, etc. We can understand why - they are weaker characters than our old favourites, but they provide useful variety: Gavin is a habitual overbidder; Percy gets bored and misbehaves disruptively.Overall, I enjoyed this book almost as much as "Swings and Arrows", and more than the first two in this series of four. It is a worthwhile final volume.

Sadly, the end of an era. These characters have entertained me for decades, and I hope that they will provide me with further pleasure in the years to come

Great fun

I am 70% through this most recent and alas, last GEM in the series! I read it in sequence, starting with1. BRIDGE IN THE MENAGERIE2. BRIDGE IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION3. MASTERS AND MONSTERS4. HAPPY DAYS IN THE MENAGERIE5. DESTINY AT BAY6. THE HOG IN THE 21ST CENTURY7. WINNING BRIDGE IN THE MENAGERIE8. BRIDGE IN THE FIFTH DIMENSION9. MURDER IN THE MENAGERIE10.THE HOG TAKES TO PRECISION11.DIAMONDS ARE THE HOG'S BEST FRIEND12.SWINGS AND ARROWSIf you like Bridge, if you like Bridge Literature, if you like Good Writing, then you are going to fall in love with these books. I envy the person who has not read these books, imagine being in a position to read these books FIRST TIME! And this book is said to be the LAST, sad!You will meet all the Menagerie's characters - the Hog, the Rabbit, the Greek & his partner the Armenian, not to mention the Corgi, the Owl, the Penguin, the Walrus, the Mule, the Dove, the Toucan, the Chimp, not to mention the Parrot and the Goose!Superb!A. AshokanKollam Kerala India

Enjoyed it very much