The author first attended a meeting of the Central New Jersey Grotto in the December of 1991. Perhaps I should mention that a “Grotto” is an American term for a caving club. This meeting obviously had a profound effect on him. His easy caving trips turned into epics. Stuck cavers, lost cavers, jammed locks, bat attacks, raccoons, carbide explosions and flooded passages for a start. These stories are the basis for this book, which, hopefully, is just the first of many.

Paul writes with cool understatement, in a style that once you have started reading is hard to resist. His casual account of taking a fearsome boss caving will appeal to most of us. How would you like to take your chief caving and leave them there? What better way to impress you employer than with impossible tight, wet squeezes. You take the easy bypass, of course. How about a little gamesmanship? You hop from foothold to foothold whilst your master puffs and gasps and slides and slips. Finally. [deleted] No, this is not suitable for children.

Do you have trouble with landowners? Meet the farmer from hell. Have you ever wondered what the caves under the secret Roswell airbase are used for? Paul tells all.  Have you steadfastly wished that cave vandals would meet their comeuppance? It happened to Paul’s vandals. Have your ever met an animal in a cave? Paul has.

Paul begins the book with the usual disclaimer “. . . this is a work of fiction . . . any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental . . .” BALONEY—I do not believe a word of it!