I'm going to watch out for more books by Gordon Grice -- he makes a fitting successor to Loren Eiseley or Aldo Leopold. Like those two earlier writers, Grice has a quick eye for detail, a lovely sense of drama, and prose that is a delight to read, either to oneself or aloud in the joy of sharing beautifully written information.

Despite tackling what one might think were generally unsympathetic subjects -- black widows, praying mantises, rattlesnakes and tarantulas -- Grice makes you warm to the creatures whose predatory lives he examines. Grice's easy familiarity with these creatures, particularly the arachnids, has a fascination all its own. He cruises for the monster tarantula that got away, he checks out the Malthusian morass of recluse spiders in his back shed.

And not just the creatures themselves, but those who have sought to gain a greater understanding of them. There is the story of spider researcher Allan Blair and his experiment with Spider #111.33. In the early 1930s, the jury was still out on whether the bite of a black widow spider was venomous. Blair was to provide definitive proof in excruciating personal detail, all in the name of science.

Anecdotes and historical asides, new research and philosophical musings makes this a book that will stand on my shelf next to my favourites of Eiseley (The Immense Journey) and Leopold Sand County Almanac.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.