The book begins as Pamela, back home from a British-style publicschool in Tientsin, is found mutilated in a ditch near one of the major gates in the city walls.
Elsewhere in Canada, especially British Columbia and Ontario, dissatisfaction with public-school standards is increasingly driving parents to pack their children off to private schools.
Success often means wringing as much as possible from inadequate capital assets: the Britishpublic sector, argues Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, is typically trying to deliver continental European levels of service with American levels of tax.