|
Monthly book reviews of
mysteries and thrillers with a computer theme This is all 150+ reviews published between August 1998 and
August, 2005 |
|
Monthly book reviews of
mysteries and thrillers with a computer theme This is all 150+ reviews published between August 1998 and
August, 2005 |
Current
(2004-2005) reviews | 2003 Reviews | 2002 Reviews
2001 Reviews | 2000 Reviews | 1999
Reviews | 1998 Reviews
reviewed:
July, 2004
Feed, by M.T. Anderson
Paperback,
Candlewick Press, 2002, $7.99, 299 pages
In the not-too-distant
future, computer chips that transmit a steady stream of popular culture and
banner ads are implanted into children’s brains at birth. Titus, on a boring
spring break at a moon resort, falls in love with the eccentric Violet. Their feeds
are hacked. Titus recovers, but Violet, slowly dying, decides to resist the
feed and tries to break through the mindless consumer babble that fills Titus’s
brain.
This exceptional novel
is this generation’s answer to Orwell’s 1984.
reviewed:
May, 2005
Access Denied, by Donna Andrews
Hardback,
Turing Hopper, the sentient artificial intelligence computer, is back in her third adventure, along with human sidekicks Maude and Tim. Turing dispatches Tim to stake out an empty house with a porch stacked with packages charged to the credit card of the elusive arch criminal Nestor Garcia, the thief who stole Turing’s clone. Tim falls asleep on the job and falls under suspicion when a young man is murdered at the site.
The plot involves identity theft
and a credit card scam: the way it’s done is clever and will make you feel
vulnerable. As always, there’s a bit of hacking and philosophizing about
(literally) the meaning of life. Lovely scene with a
computerized security and lawn watering system gone whacko. This is a
marvelous series: read the books in order if you want to get the full effect. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
May, 2003
Click Here for Murder, by Donna Andrews
Hardcover,
Taking off where You've
Got Murder left off, we find Tim, the Universal Library's photocopy guy,
set up in his own fledgling private eye firm; Maude still toiling away as a
secretary at the UL but slipping out every afternoon to run Alan Grace, her new
computer company and Turing, the artificial intelligence program, doling out
advice while preparing for a move to Alan Grace. Tim is so involved with
playing Beyond Paranoia, an online role playing game that his misses a
rendezvous with Ray, Alan Grace's new technical genius. Ray is killed, Tim
feels responsible. His newly won detective skills are put to the test in
finding Ray's killer and fending off a worm attacking all the AIs.
You've Got Murder, now
in paperback, was nominated for the prestigious Dilys
and Agatha mystery book awards. I admit to
shamelessly bugging Donna Andrews to get this next book done. My advice: read
the first one first. As befits a series, many of the details that form Turing
Hopper's quirky character were omitted from the sequel and you will miss much
of the charm of the series if you start with this second book. This book is ALL
about computers: virtual role-plating games that turn into live action role
playing (larp); worms and viruses and, in a stunning
twist at the end, the nature of computers and sentience. The ending is a
winner. Not to be missed.
reviewed:
January, 2003
Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, by Donna Andrews
Hardback,
Sidelined from her blacksmithing job with a broken arm, Meg Langlow is manning the switchboard at Mutant Wizards, her
brother's software company. Rob coasted through law school creating a role
playing game, Lawyers From Hell, which became a hit on the software
shelves. Something's sour in the company and Rob hopes his big sister with her
nose for solving mysteries will get it back on track. When the office practical
joker is killed, Rob becomes the prime suspect and Meg races to solve the crime
to save her kid brother.
Donna Andrews is a
former programmer and a very funny woman. There's a computer on every page,
from the dysfunctional programming staff, to the renegade game spoof, NUDE Layers
from Hell, to a possible pornography ring running on the company servers,
to disgruntled former employees, spies from rival companies, a
hacker-blackmailer, rabid fans hoping for a peek at the next release….it's geek
paradise. Highly recommended!
reviewed:
June, 2002
You've Got Murder, by Donna Andrews
Hardback, Prime Crime, April, 2002, 304 pages, $21.95
When Zack disappears from his job at Universal Library - eight days
without even checking his e-mail! - worried colleague Turing Hopper enlists the
aid of 50-something secretary Maude and Chris from the photocopy room to track
him down. Turing needs all the help she can get because she's an AIP, an
artificial intelligence personality, unwittingly programmed by Zack to grow
into sentience. The unlikely trio uncovers a plot of murder and financial
finagling that ends in a nail-biting and surprisingly physical showdown in a
remote snowbound cabin.
The quirky and
resourceful Turing is the most engaging mystery heroine to emerge in a decade.
Zack programmed her with the texts of every mystery novel written in the 20th
Century, so she's got the detective gene with a vengeance. The novel wrestles
with the meaning of reality: when computers can feel as well as think and large
corporations can diddle with databases, then what is human? What is true? It's
funny, poignant and a ripping good mystery. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
April, 2002
A Murder of Promise, by Robert
Andrews
Hardback, G. P. Putnam, 2002, 336 pages $24.95
A prominent Washington Post reporter is found hacked to death not far
from her
Without giving away
too much of the plot, computers, especially violent computer games and Internet
security, play a central role in the plot, and are handled deftly. I was
charmed by the loving depiction of
reviewed:
July, 2003
Spiked, by Mark
Arsenault
Hardback, Poisoned Press, July, 2003, $24.95, 318 pages
When a dead reporter
is dredged from a
A reporter for the
Providence (RI) Journal, Arsenault has written an adept first novel. Stan, the
paper's tech services guy, is an endearing misanthrope who trades his computer
expertise for stand-up comedy lessons; parts of the plot revolve around a
mysteriously introduced file-destroying virus and the recovery of deleted
computer files. Clever action, engaging characters, and a twisty plot with a
surprising ending make this a compelling read. Recommended.
reviewed:
August, 2005
Hardware by Linda Barnes
Hardcover, Delacorte, 1995, $19.95, 338 pages
In her sixth adventure, Carlotta
Carlyle, a red-headed six-foot tall ex-cop, part time cab driver and part-time
private detective is asked to investigate a string of cabbie beatings that look
like part of an extortion scheme to corner valuable
Without spilling the beans too much, Sam’s computer buddy is using his hacking skills to embezzle cash from the Mafia. Not too many technical details, but a neat little plot about computer-based embezzling. If you like tough female PIs like Kinsey Millhone or V.I. Warshawski you’ll like Carlotta too. Recommended.
reviewed:
October, 2001
Murder
in
Hardcover,
Parisian detective Aimeé LeDuc is back, this time in
the Belleville Quartier, the old stomping ground of
Edith Piaf and now an appealing melánge
of immigrants and yuppies. An old friend pressures Aimeé
into helping her with a philandering spouse and she appears just in time to see
the husband’s mistress blown up by a car bomb. Aimeé
and her business partner, the handsome dwarf hacker Rene, use all of their
gumshoe and computer skills to link the explosion to a standoff between the
government and sans-papiers, illegal African immigrants
threatened with imminent return to their countries of birth.
Aimeé
and Rene and into French Bank records to uncover the mistress’s true identity
and follow the cyber trail of money in a high level scam that disguises weapons
deals as humanitarian aid. Aimeé uses photo
enhancement software to reconstruct shredded documents culled from the garbage
and Rene gives a plug for Corel Knockout as a tool for doctoring identity
photos. As with Black’s first novel, Murder in the Marais,
the real star of this book is the city of
reviewed:
December, 1999
Murder
in the Marais, by Cara
Black
Hardback,
Corporate security
expert Aimée LeDuc is
approached by an aging Nazi hunter who asks her to decipher an encrypted
photograph. When she delivers the digitally-enhanced print to her contact in the
Marais, the old Jewish quarter of
This is a wonderful
book: I was on the phone recommending it to friends even before I finished
reading it. The evocation of
reviewed: July,
2005
Format C: by Edwin Black
Hardback,
The richest man on earth, Ben Hinnom, preys on
fears of the Y2K problem to embed mind control features into the dominant WindGazer 99 operating system. Chicago investigative
reporter Dan Levin, his girlfriend, her computer genius teenage son follow Hinnom to Jerusalem’s Old City and the Caves of Qumran and
end up in a final battle in Meddigio, on the site
known as Armageddon and faith that the only way to save the world is to
reformat the C drives of every computer at the stroke of midnight.
The first half of this book is a funny, obvious and often well-written
take down of Microsoft and its attempts to dominate the world’s OS market. The
second half of the books turns weird; with Kabalistic mysteries (did you know
that the word computer works out to
666, the mark of the beast, in the Jewish Kabala?), secrets of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, some very odd rabbis and a reincarnation of Hitler and an end of the
world scenario that rivals the Left Behind series. It’s a classic of its type;
read it, but don’t take it seriously.
reviewed:
October, 2004
None
of Your Business, by Valerie Block
Paperback, Ballantine, 2003, $13.95 337 pages
When a partner in a
big
This is, above all, a
funny, funny book: I laughed out loud. Windows are opened into some of the
computer crime squad’s other cases: most of them are related to child porn. I
wonder if that’s typical? The characters are well drawn with a lot of
potential: I hope Block brings them back in a sequel. Sassy writing and a good
plot. Recommended.
reviewed: January, 2005
Faithfully Executed, by Michael Bowen
Hardback,
Former diplomat Richard Michaelson is commissioned by the White house to investigate anomalies in the execution of a hired hit man convicted of murdering a Pentagon computer programmer who was working on a secret project to determine whether electronic voting machines could be tampered with to rig an election.
A hot issue today is whether or not we need a paper trail for electronic voting machines. Just a tiny change to the proprietary code could alter election results and there is no way to conduct an audit – except by running the same computer program! This insightful mystery anticipated the problem a decade before it hit the news. Not many technical details, but nonetheless a thoughtful look at the intersection between technology and politics.
reviewed:
January, 2002
Executive Privilege, by Jay Brandon
Hardcover, Forge Press, October, 2001, 414 pages, $25.95
The first lady sneaks out to hire young attorney David Owens, who's
flying high after winning a high-profile custody battle for the ex-wife of the
CEO of the only Fortune 100 Company in San Antonio. She wants a divorce. The
president doesn't. Their precocious 8-year-old son, Randy, has been
eavesdropping on his dad's high tech shenanigans and he can't afford to let the
kid out of the White House. Owens and a sympathetic Secret Service agent spring
the first family and go on the lam until they have the ammunition that they
need to set them free.
The president has
become a little too cozy with a software mogul who is using his friendship to
pilfer high-tech military secrets and use them for private gain. The computer
details - most of them explained in the book by little Randy - are plausible
and the too-close relationship between the White House and big business is the
scariest part of the book. San Antonio readers will get a kick out of the local
setting. Recommended.
reviewed:
September, 2001
Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
Hardcover, Pocket Books, May, 2000, 480 pages, $24.95
The secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati has resurfaced, brutally
murdering a physicist in Switzerland and burning him with one of their
long-lost brands. Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon
is called to the scene to retrace the steps of the four hundred-year-old
society through the streets, crypts and churches of Rome before they destroy
the Vatican City and disrupt the conclave of cardinals convened to elect the
next Pope.
Maybe I'm stretching
the Computer Crimes theme a bit here, but the first several chapters do take
place at the Conseil Européen
pour la Recherche Nucléaire,
also known as CERN, birthplace of the Internet. And the central theme, the
tension between science and religion, should be of interest to geeks of all
persuasions. This is a terrifically engaging book - I stayed up until four in
the morning to finish it. The final fifty pages had more plot shifts than a
graveyard in an earthquake. It was released in paperback in June and is
available for download as an e-book. Highly Recommended!
reviewed:
February, 2000
Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown
Hardback, St. Martin's Press, 1998, 373 pages, $24.95
A fired National Security Agency cryptographer, distressed at the NSA's ability to intercept and decode everyone's e-mail,
claims that he has developed an unbreakable cryptographic privacy algorithm. He
threatens to unleash it unless NSA admits that it has developed a secret
supercomputer capable of breaking all other encryption schemes with brute
force. Head cryptographer Susan Fletcher is called in to track down a suspected
duplicate key, while her fiancée, a linguistics professor, is dispatched on a
mission to Seville to recover the original key. Surrounded by intrigue,
betrayed by those they trust most, the country's intelligence databases are
within seconds of being penetrated when they crack the code.
The first edition of
Digital Fortress sold out in nine days and was in its fourth printing within
six weeks. Published two years ago, it has yet to be released in paperback It
has been the #1 nationally best selling E-book for 15 weeks. In other words,
this is a very popular and successful book, and with reason. The technical
aspects are engrossing, with detail about computers-based code breaking and
virus tracking, blocking and recovery. There's fast paced action, but I cracked
the code before the NSA geniuses figured it out. The author's web site,
www.digitalfortress.com, has lots of supplementary material and is worth a
visit. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
April, 2000
Virus, by Bill Buchanan
Paperback, Jove Books, 1997, 432 pages, $6.50
It's 2014 and our military defense is launched into space. Just as the
Air Force is about to test a new technology that will make stealth missiles
obsolete, Saddam Hussein's successors infest the main military computers with
an intelligent virus called PAM that paralyzes
The literary quality
of this book is abysmal. I have been trying to wade through it for a year and
confess that it is the only one of the forty-plus books that I have reviewed
that I skimmed, rather than read. I just couldn't stick it. The amount of
technical detail is immense and apparently well researched. If you like lots
and lots and lots of techno-babble, including charts and snippets of code, you
will like this book. Otherwise, skip it. The detail on viruses is impressive.
reviewed:
August, 2000
Interface, by Stephen Bury
Paperback, Bantam Books, 1995, $6.50, 632 pages
The plot sounds corny,
but this is one of the best books of any genre that I've read in years. The
unforgettable characters are fully developed and totally believable. The
writing is excellent, reminiscent of Tom Wolfe. The technical details are
accurate and unobtrusive. The real strength of this book, however, is in the
political satire. It cuts close to the bone in the battle between the
win-at-any-cost ethos versus integrity. Highly recommended reading in this
election year.
reviewed:
July, 2002
Knockout Mouse, by James Calder
Paperback, Chronicle Books, 2002, $11.95, 272 pages.
A young genetic researcher dies of a shellfish allergy after fish-free
dinner party. Filmmaker Bill Damen, an underemployed
victim of the downturn in the dot.com industry, investigates the death to clear
his girlfriend's name. He uncovers a plot in which crooked scientists stop at
nothing to cover up a failed experiment.
You would think that a
novel with a
reviewed:
December, 1998
Final
Victim, by Stephen J. Cannell
Paperback,
A maverick customs
agent and a bored psychologist spring a hacker from jail to help them
infiltrate an Internet remailer suspected of hosting a
support group for serial killers. At first crack the improbable trio uncovers
The Rat, a psychopathic hacker who travels cross-country collecting body parts
to construct a clone of his hated stepmother. The two super-hackers face off,
and the psychologist sets herself up as the bait - the final victim.
The reviewers hated
this book, claiming that the plot was bogged down by excessive computer detail.
For geeks like us, nothing perks up a novel more than a screen capture or two.
Especially compelling were the descriptions of breaking into building security
systems - the vulnerable point is the elevator's emergency telephone. Cannell is best known for his Emmy-winning TV scripts,
including the Rockford Files, the A-Team, Wiseguy and
the Commish. Explicit sex and violence.
reviewed:
February, 2003
The Eighth Day, by John Case
Hardcover, Ballantine Books, 2002, $25.95, 379
pages
Young Washington D.C.
artist Danny Cray admits that he's more of a Dumbo than
a Rambo, so he's surprised when the biggest client of the detective agency
where he moonlights hires him for a hush-hush side job. The elusive Italian
millionaire asks him to track down people who are slandering him and Danny,
needing fast cash for a new computer, accepts the assignment. From the
It's an omen that two
big nanotechnology thrillers - this one and Michael Crichton's Prey - both came
out at the end of 2002. In a nutshell, nanotechnology uses assemblers - tiny
robots about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair - to
construct matter at the molecular level. This novel has an elegant explanation
of the "gray goo" problem: after two days,
if you can't stop the replication of the assemblers, they'll take over the
world. Lots of computers, even more futuristic technology and a compelling
travelogue of exotic countries and cultures. Recommended.
reviewed:
December, 2002
Cold Logic, by C.J.R. Casewit
Paperback, Metropolis Ink, 2002, $15.95, 279 pages
The handsome owner of a software company blackmails natural language
programmer Terra Breaux into searching for a hacker by threatening to reveal
her secret hacker past. Someone is stealing scraps of Silicon Silk code and
releasing them into the public domain. Distracted by her teenage sister's
pregnancy, she works hard to expose the hacker so she can return to the work
she loves. The stakes are raised when company officers start dying under
mysterious circumstances and Terra feels threatened herself.
This is a good plot
ruined (in my opinion) by excessively explicit sex scenes. Really explicit. On
the technical side, the novel gives an insightful peek into hacker culture, the
pressures of taking a small privately held company public and quite a bit about
computer security.
reviewed:
December, 2004
Cyberkiss, by Sally
Chapman
Hardback,
A programmer from a
biotech startup hires computer fraud investigators Julie and Vic to find out
who is stalking him on an erotic Internet newsgroup. Their client is killed
early on – all that’s left is a handful of ashes in his company’s incinerator –
and when a secretary is murdered, they partner with the police to find the
killer.
The techno-highlights
are a virtual reality wedding, with all the guests plugged into a ceremony on a
computer-generated Saturn and a precious scene where Julie, sprawled on the
floor in her purple chiffon bridesmaid dress, fixes the VR server while a dozen
engineers long on in male chauvinist embarrassment. They also track down
newsgroup postings through an anonymous re-mailer. Nice computer-based mystery
with a good twist at the end.
reviewed:
April, 1999
Hardwired, by Sally Chapman
Paperback,
Worldwide Mystery, 1998, $4.99, 301 pages
Computer security
consultants Julie and Vic are hired by NASA to stop a hacker that is sending
random strings of numbers across the computer screens of a space shuttle. Human
suspects abound but the astronauts hint that the hacker might be an alien life
force.
I waited for months
for this book to come out in paperback and was sorely disappointed. Unlike the
other novels in this series, the computer aspects of the plot were scanty,
belying it's subtitle, "a Silicon Valley Mystery." The repartee
between Julie and Vic crackles, but the rest of the characters are flat and the
plot is thin. Pass this one up.
reviewed:
December, 2004
Love
Bytes, by Sally Chapman
Paperback, Worldwide,1994, $4.99, 253 pages
In their second outing, Julie and Vic have opened their own computer fraud investigation firm and their first client is a bail bondswoman who wants them to track down a missing client, who is also her fiancée, Arnie Lufkin, a Virtual Reality expert who disappeared after embezzling a million from his corporation.
Cute series with an interesting high-tech plot but irritating protagonists. Good virtual reality scenes at a time when it was a fairly new technology and a few details about computer-assisted embezzling. Chapman is a University of Texas graduate who worked for IBM for nine years.
reviewed:
November, 2000
Raw Data, by Sally Chapman
Paperback (out of print), St. Martin's Press, 1991, 250 pages, $3.99
It's not bad enough
that ICI program manager Julie Blake finds the dead body of her top analyst
stashed away in her computer: soon after, she's told that someone is selling data
from her top-secret biological memory chip project to the Russians. Vic Paoli,
an obnoxious techie from the National Security Agency, is flown in to solve the
leaks and the two of them reluctantly team up to save the project and prevent
more murders.
This is the first in
the series of "Julie and Vic" mysteries by Austin native Sally
Chapman, and I think it was the best of the bunch. The technical details are
very good, mostly about the procedures used in finding a security hole. If you
have ever programmed in a language that uses base 16 you will instantly catch
onto an important clue. The story is well plotted and the characters are
engaging. Worth picking up if you can find it in a used bookstore or the
library.
reviewed:
August, 2004
Death Match, by
Hardback, Doubleday,
2004, 24.95, 356 pages
More than a quarter of a million couples have been matched by Eden Corporation’s innovative software. When two of the perfect couples – 100 percent compatible matches – inexplicably seem to commit suicide, the company calls in former FBI psychologist Christopher Lash to investigate. He is both attracted and repelled by the technology and forced to confront some of his own inner demons while being thwarted by someone inside the company.
The technology is a combination of artificial intelligence, incredible computing power and unlimited access to just about every database in the country. Lots of high-tech details. A real page-turner – I guessed the ending about two-thirds of the way through but still couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
June, 1999
Net
Force, created by Tom Clancy and
Steve R. Pieczenik
Paperback,
Berkley Fiction, 1999, $7.99, 342 pages
The year is 2010, and
computers are the new superpowers. When his boss is assassinated, Alex Michaels
steps in to fill in as the Director of the FBI's Net Force, a special
department established to police the Internet. He gets caught in the crossfire
between a Mafia don, an Eastern European strongman plotting a coup and a
chameleon-like female assassin. He wins.
Net Force was the
basis for an ABC made-for-TV movie that aired in February. Maybe it should have
been a Saturday morning cartoon -- it read like a comic book, with
too-good-to-be-true heroes fighting totally evil enemies. A group of bright
high schoolers steps in to help the FBI and
eavesdropping on their made-up teenspeak is painful.
From a computer standpoint, there is a shallow but possible portrayal of the
Internet ten years hence as being a virtual reality ride down the information
superhighway, and a neat little device, the VIRGIL, - virtual global interface
link - an all-in-one communications device. Created by Tom Clancy doesn't mean
written by him - he should be ashamed at this bit of fluff.
reviewed:
June, 1999
Ruthless.Com created by Tom Clancy and Martin Harry Greenberg
Paperback,
Berkley Fiction, 1998, $7.99, 353 pages
Businessman Roger
Gordian believes it would compromise national security to put his encryption
program on the market and finds his company the object of a corporate takeover
by Asian political extremists, who want to put the leadership of the free world
out of business. He wins, they die.
The .Com in the title
of the book led me to believe that it would have a strong computer theme. It
doesn't. Although the company targeted for takeover produces encryption
software, computers play a very minor role. One exception is the step-by-step
portrayal of a raid of a "key vault" in Sacramento. This appalling
book was written as a companion to a computer game by the same name. For almost
eight bucks a book you would think Clancy could have afforded a proofreader -
the Philippines was spelled three different ways in the first hundred pages.
reviewed:
April, 2004
The
Fractal Murders, by Mark
Cohen
Hardcover, Mysterious Press, 2004, 310 pages $25
A college professor hires private
detective Pepper Keane to find out if there is a connection in the murders of
three fellow mathematicians, all experts in fractal geometry.
A fractal is a complex shape in
which each part of an image is a smaller version of the whole. Fractal geometry
is being used for everything from art work to economic forecasting. If you’ve
been curious about fractals, this is an entertaining introduction. Computers
are present throughout the book, from hacking and file recovery to a brief
interlude with neural networks. A nice effort for a first novel, which seems to
have been self-published a few years ago and is being released as a hardback
next month.
reviewed:
June, 2000
Butterfly Lost, by David Cole
Paperback, Harper Mystery, 1999, 373 pages, $5.99
Laura
Winslow is a part-Hopi Ritalin junkie who moved back to Arizona to work as an
"information midwife" for a bounty hunter. She lives in a trailer near
the reservation where she was raised and hacks into computer systems to track
down fugitives. She's good at it - she's a fugitive herself. When her business
partner goes off on a tangent trying to track down a horse mutilator, she
reluctantly accepts a case of her own tracking down a young girl whose
grandfather thinks she has been abducted by Navaho skinwalkers.
Dragged away from her safe computers into the real world, she's forced to
confront her troubled past to catch a killer before he strikes again.
Tony Hillerman
fans will feel right at home with Butterfly Lost. Laura is a compelling heroine
and her computers are a running theme throughout the book, although the Native
American plot overshadows the technical details. David Cole is the founder of
the Internet's award-winning NativeWeb. This is his
first novel. I hope there are more.
reviewed:
April, 2001
The Killing Maze,
by
David Cole
Paperback, Avon, 2001, $6.50, 325 pages
Since we
first met Laura in Butterfly Lost
she's changed her name, settled in Tucson and gone to work for an aging - and
missing - private eye. Laura reluctantly leaves the anonymity of her computer
keyboard for a face-to-face meeting with a pharmacist who suspects prescription
drug insurance fraud at her small chain of drug stores The deeper Laura digs,
the more complex the crimes. Gangs. Smuggling Native American babies across the
Mexican border for illegal adoptions. Ruthless right-wing politics. Teamed up
with Rey, an ex border agent and his ex-wife Meg, a
performance artist, Laura risks her carefully constructed false identity and
life itself to untangle a labyrinth of deception and death.
Even better than Butterfly Lost, which I loved. Laura
shows her usual facility in cracking into corporate databases and uncovers an Internet
scam of stunning evil and astounding complexity. A tight plot, excellent
secondary characters and a theme as fresh as today's newspaper. Don't miss this
one. Will especially appeal to Tony Hillerman fans
and those who enjoy a richly constructed Southwestern plot.
reviewed:
January, 2003
Stalking Moon, by David Cole
Paperback,
Laura
Winslow, the Hopi cyber sleuth, is hiding out in the
This is a dark, violent and
ultimately confusing book. Read Butterfly Lost and The Killing Maze before
tackling Stalking Moon, or you'll never keep the characters and their
motivations straight. Although there are computers throughout the book -
including a clever ruse involving switched Palms Vs to get access to a chat
room - there is less technology in this than in Cole's two previous Winslow
books. The plot line about the illegal trafficking in women is sadly true.
reviewed:
July, 2003
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, by Eion Colfer
Hardcover, Hyperion Books for Children, May, 2003, $16.95, 320 pages
Dapper
thirteen-year-old genius Artemis Fowl, heir to an Irish crime dynasty, steals
computer technology from the fairy underworld and creates the C Cube, a
do-everything computer that is 50 years ahead of current human know-how. Intent
on increasing his family's already bulging coffers, Artemis attempts to
blackmail Spiro, a mob-connected Chicago telecom magnate: for a billion
dollars, he'll keep the cube off the market. His plan backfires when Spiro
kills Butler the bodyguard and makes off with the cube. Aided by his old rival,
Captain Holly Short of the LEPrechaun fairy police
and Mulch Diggums, a tunnel dwarf, Artemis spins an
elaborate plan to rescue the cube.
If you've read all of the Harry
Potter books twice and have run out of Lemony Snicketts,
Artemis Fowl is the next best thing for kids ages 10 to 100. This is the third
in the series, and although it stands alone, it would be better to read them in
sequence. Well written and clever, they are an amalgam of fantasy and
action-adventure: Harry Potter meets James Bond. Lots of fun.
reviewed:
January, 1999
Growing Light, by Martha
Conley
paperback, Berkley Prime Crime, 1993,
$4.99, 228 pages
Young
widow Anne Monro takes a job as a technical writer at
the "Growing Light" software company and is put at the top of the suspect
list when the firm's president is murdered on her first day at work.
"Growing Light" evolved
from a simple piece of farming software into a new age abomination that reads
your aura and horoscope to make your garden grow. Although the murder is committed
for comfortably old-fashioned motives, computers are a running joke throughout
the plot. My favorite: the manuals are deliberately written to be
incomprehensible so that customers are forced to pay for overpriced technical
assistance. Sound familiar? With its cast of aging hippies, greedy yuppies,
stoned notaries and beer-swilling aura cleansers, it confirms everything we
ever suspected about
reviewed:
May, 2005
Chasing the Dime, by Michael Connelly
Paperback, Warner
Vision, 2002, $7.99, 436 pages
Henry Pierce, founder of nanotechnology company Amedeo, moves to a new apartment and gets phone calls for Lilly, an “escort.” Her – now Henry’s - phone number is still listed on a porn website but no one has seen her for weeks. Although he should be busy preparing for a meeting with a major investor he gets drawn into finding the missing Lilly.
Excellent
descriptions of nanotechnology and its potential uses, plus peripheral stuff
about hacking, patents, high-tech financing and the Internet porn industry.
The term “chasing the dime” refers to the competitive rush to invent a
molecular computer no bigger than a dime. This is a very good thriller with a
wonderful kicker at the end. Recommended.
reviewed:
December, 2003
Most Wanted, by Jordan Cray
Paperback, Aladdin, 1998, $3.99, 233 pages
When
California teenager Andy McFarland asks his mother for a baby picture to use in
a class project she explains that she has no photos. She's reveals that he was
adopted - his father is in jail for murdering his mother. Stunned and angry, he
goes online find out more. He tracks down his dad, Silas, out of jail and
working at a fish restaurant in Maine. Andy exchanges e-mail with him but
forgets that the Internet works both ways: his father traces him, shows up on his
doorstep and moves into the family's garage. Andy's mother, subtly provoked by
Silas, starts butting heads with her best friend, with whom she owns an
educational software company. Is Andy's father a vicious murderer or a wronged
victim?
This is a young adult novel, #7 in
the danger.com series, and suitable for middle school kids and older. These are
well written potboilers, tightly potted and with believable characters.
Although the Internet features prominently, the content is not technical. Would
make a nice stocking stuffer for a young relative.
reviewed:
November, 2004
Disclosure, by Michael Crichton
Paperback, Random House, 1993, $7.99, 496 pages
A happily married executive at a
Crichton says in an afterword that it is based on a true story, and the role
reversal, although disturbing in places, helps you think more deeply about sex
and power in the workplace. Lots of high-tech details, especially virtual
reality-enabled databases and the process of bringing a new product to market.
The miniaturization foreshadowed in the plot – tiny cell phones and DVD players
– has come to pass. This was a 1994 movie staring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Recommended.
reviewed:
February, 2003
Prey, by Michael
Crichton
Hardcover, Harper Collins, 2002, $26.95, 367 pages
Jack Forman was fired from his
programming job for blowing the whistle, so he was stunned to be hired back as
a consultant to tweak an intelligent agent program being used by the
nanotechnology company where his wife works. Spirited away to a remote Nevada
fabricating plant, he finds that the company claims to be making microscopic
robots capable of curing breast cancer while secretly developing swarming
mini-cameras for military surveillance. The robots have evolved into relentless
flesh-eating predators and only Jack has the guts and the know-how to stop them
before the world is destroyed.
This is a cautionary tale about
scientific ethics and the corrupting effect of money on science. According to
Crichton, we now have the ability to create new life forms but we don't yet
have the skill to control them. The movie rights have been bought by 20th
Century Fox: and the book reads like a screenplay, with one dimensional
characters and a fast-moving plot. For non-nerds, the frequent pauses for
scientific exposition may be a drag but that's what we crave, right? Not up to
Jurassic Park standards, but you've got to read it.
Reviewed: April,
2000
Timeline, by Michael
Crichton
Hardcover, Random House, 1999, 449 pages, $26.95
Three
young historians go back in time to rescue their professor, who is stuck in
14th-century France after a botched teleportation. Physicists - and avid geeks
- will enjoy the use of Quantum technology applied to time travel:
"faxing" people through quantum foam wormholes. In the real world,
Quantum teleportation has succeeded in a laboratory setting, although only
through space, not through time. In this near-future world, computers the size
of a molecule are thousands of times more powerful than computers today, and
can transfer information between two points without wires or networks.
Crichton's science has often been
prophetic - Jurassic Park hit the bookstalls and the movie theaters just a few
years before real scientists cloned Dolly, the sheep. Even Crichton admits that
this premise is implausible, but it is entertaining, and sent me scrambling to
the Internet to learn more about Quantum technology. The movie rights were
contracted even before the book was completed, and a computer game is due for release
this year. I found the medieval history more interesting than the science, but
it's a good, fast read that will keep you entertained and get you thinking.
Reviewed: August,
1998
Killer.app, by Barbara D'Amato
paperback, Tor Book, 1997, $5.99, 350 pages
Computer conglomerate
SJR DataSystems manufactures radio equipment for
police cars, the sensors on the wings of Navy aircraft and data management
software for credit card companies and hospitals. This extends their tentacles
into every nook and cranny of business and government. Their renegade leaders
collect and alter data on people, which they use to control financial markets,
blackmail politicians and to mount a plan to assassinate the President. Chicago
cop Suze Figuroa gets
sucked into the morass when her sister, a senior SJR programmer, stumbles into
the conspiracy and is left comatose after a suspicious car accident.
Could it happen? Pair a
power-hungry computer company with a corner on the database market with the
vast amounts of computerized information that is being compiled on every facet
of human activity and it is just possible. Geeks will appreciate the technical
realism, right down to the screen prints, while the less nerdish among us will
be swept away by the societal implications.
reviewed: May, 2001
Help Me Please, by Barbara
D'Amato
Paperback, 1999, Forge Suspense, $6.99, 344 pages
Three-year-Old
Danielle Gaston is snatched from her prominent parents during a mass at Holy Name
Cathedral. Ninety minutes later, Danielle is the star of her own Web site:
starkly public yet deeply hidden. It's up to Chicago cop Polly Kelly to find
her, but at every turn the clever kidnappers foil her. Pitted against the FBI,
which is convinced that its high-tech expertise will crack the case, Polly uses
traditional, foot-slogging police work to find Danielle before the abandoned
toddler starves to death.
A compelling, evil plot with a
shocking surprise at the end. The technical details of trying to track down a
rogue Internet connection are right on target. If you've ever wondered about
dark fiber, or the inner workings of an anonymous remailer,
the explanations here will make it clear. D'Amato is a superb writer, creating
believable characters and suspenseful plots. She has a great sense of place:
Chicago comes alive on these pages. Highly recommended.
Reviewed:
February, 2001
The Victim in Victoria Station, by Jeanne M. Dams
Paperback, Worldwide Library, 2000, 253 pages, $5.99
Senior
sleuth Dorothy Martin chats with a young American on a train but when she stops
by his seat to say goodbye, he is dead. In a rush, she leaves him in the care
of a man claiming to be a physician. Later, no one, but no one, acknowledges
that a body was found at Victoria Station. Snooping around, she identifies him
as a young software millionaire, inventor of groundbreaking search engine, in
England to check on some irregularities in his London operation. Suspecting
foul play, she has a young friend teach her the rudiments of word processing so
she can get a job as a temporary receptionist at the dead man's office. She
soon figures out that the problem is piracy, but who is in on the plot to
black-market the company's software?
Dorothy is a gutsy protagonist and
older readers, especially, will applaud her intrepid leap into a brave new
world of computers. Young Nigel gives a brilliantly simple explanation of
office applications. "Why didn't anyone tell me about this before?,"
Dorothy complains. The piracy plot is well done; naïve me never speculated that
employees would stoop to selling their company's product on the side and
keeping the cash. A nice, cozy mystery with believable computer details.
reviewed:
December, 2003
Wink a Hopeful Eye,
by
Denise Danks
Paperback, St. Martin's, 1994, $7.95, 265 pages.
Georgina Powers, fired from her job
as a journalist for London's Technology Week, flies to Las Vegas to join a
friend for a gambling junket. While she's losing at the slots, Charlie wins a
suitcase full of valuable computer chips in a game of seven card stud. There's
a world-wide chip shortage and everyone wants to get his hands on Charlie's
silicon gold: a handsome gun-toting Hungarian black marketer, the Japanese
Yakuza, even the Columbian drug cartel. Georgina chases the story, Charlie
guards the chips and the guy who lost the chips is brutally murdered.
Many computer thrillers grow stale
as the technology becomes passé, but this one retains its immediacy. There are
fascinating of behind-the-scenes details about the shortage of 1 MB dram ten
years ago. The ending is a technological and political stunner, even more
shocking today that it was when the book was written. Danks,
a computer journalist herself, gets her facts right and is an elegant writer.
Be warned, though, that this is a gritty novel: Georgina is a pregnant slut
contemplating an abortion, finely drawn but not a sympathetic heroine.
Republished in April, 2003.
reviewed:
November, 2002
The Pizza House Crash, by Denise Danks
Paperback, Orion, 1989, $7.95, 260 pages
Julian, a
mediocre programmer for a chain of British pizza takeouts, commits suicide in a
particularly nasty way just as he is set to depart for an improbably high
salaried job in Silicon Valley. His cousin Georgina Powers, a technology
journalist, is too busy covering the Black Monday stock market crash to attend
the funeral, but as she pokes around she senses a link between Julian's strange
death and the plummeting market. Julian wrote a small secret program that flashes
subliminal suggestions on computer screens. The California firm planned to use
it for lifestyle changes such as weight loss. Julian and Georgina's soon to be
ex-husband Eddie planted it in the British stock exchange and manipulated the
market for their own gain by flashing buy and sell messages. Georgina has to
solve the crime and get the story to save her job and her life.
Reissued in 2001, this series has
remained remarkably fresh despite its relative antiquity in computer years. The
setting is very British and very noir, the computer details plausible and the
plot twisty until the last page. If you're interested in the stock market there
is plenty of background about computer assisted trading. Recommended.
reviewed:
June, 2001
The Blue Nowhere,
by
Jeffery Wilds Deaver
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster, May 2001, 432 pages, $26.00
Access,
which started out as a harmless computer game, turned so nasty that no server
in the world would host it. Wyatt Gillette dropped out of the game when it
turned bad but eventually ended up in jail on a minor hacking charge. Phate just couldn't let go. He carried the virtual game
into the real world, racking up points by killing people who were progressively
harder to get access to. He wrote a tunneling program that burrowed into
people's computers, used the personal information he gleaned to finagle
plausible meetings with them, and then killed them. The cops spring Gillette
from prison to help catch the killer and the two former colleagues go keyboard
to keyboard in a deadly race.
Soon after I read the book I went to
a meeting and was able to hold my own with a gaggle of scientists in a
conversation about virtual supercomputers, based solely on bits I gleaned from
The Blue Nowhere. I used what I learned about social engineering in a talk I
gave to a group about computer security. Complex concepts are explained simply
and without condescension by having the "good" hacker translate them
using clear metaphors to the computer-illiterate homicide cop. When I wrote my
first computer crime review this is exactly the kind of book I envisioned
reading every month. Lots of action, plenty of technology and just enough left
unresolved at the end to hold out hope for a sequel. Joel Silver (The Matrix,
Lethal Weapon, Die Hard) will produce the film for Warner Brothers.
July, 2005
Deadly Intrusion, by Walter Dillon
Paperback, Bantam, 1986, $2.95, 233 pages
A young professional woman is being
stalked on a CompuServe look-alike, The
Search. She soon becomes the third in a series of
This book was nominated for an
Edgar (as in Poe) for best paperback original. It hit home: I bought my first
computer, a Kaypro 4, at a
reviewed:
August, 2003
Betrayed, by Rosey Dow and Andrew Snaden
Paperback, Promise Press, 2001, $10.99, 267 pages
Laura's
father, a computer scientist, betrayed his country by selling the code he
developed for missile systems. The man she was dating turned out to be an FBI
agent, using her to get at her father. Now living under an assumed name, she is
trying to eke out a living as a computer consultant. When the missile systems
develop a virus, Laura is identified as holding the key to rectify it and
agents from half a dozen nations are scrambling to find her.
This is a Christian mystery and both
of the protagonists are led to the solution of the puzzle through Jesus. I
found that aspect cloying and unnecessary. There is an excellent subplot about
a computer consulting company that cornered the market on Y2K remediation, and
built glitches into every system to guarantee them continued lucrative work.
Not a bad plot, but a bit soppy and romantic for my tastes.
reviewed:
April, 2005
Interrupt, by Toni
Dwiggins
Paperback, Tor,
1993, out of print, 319 pages
Computer
engineer Andy Faulkner is stunned when 40,000 phones in the
Lots of details
about telephony, written during an era when PacBell was switching over from a
manual to a digital system. Interesting plot twists computer code,
compilers and the
reviewed:
October, 1998
f2f, by
Phillip Finch
paperback, Bantam Books, 1996, $6.50, 307
pages
When a San Francisco online service
receives a death threat the subscribers assume it is a tasteless prank. But
there really is a serial killer on the prowl. He lures his victims into his
trap, then integrates video of his kills into a macabre virtual reality game
called "try.me." It takes all the wits of a
pre-teen hacker and the online service's brilliant systems operator to bring the
killer to heel.
f2f is online jargon for a face to
face meeting, and if this book doesn't make you feel vulnerable, it should.
Nothing is sacred. Good and bad guys hack into your cell phone and steal your
codes. They grab your credit card number. Worm into your computer and read your
most personal documents. It's all possible and it's as scary as all get out.
Touchstone has bought the movie rights to this most excellent cyber-thriller.
reviewed:
March, 2004
Paranoia, by
Joseph Finder
Hardback, St. Martin’s, 2004, 432 pages $24.95
As a joke, Adam Cassidy hacks into
the corporate kitty to throw for a retirement bash for a nice guy on the
loading dock. Caught with his hand in the till, he’s given the choice between
spending the rest of his life in jail for embezzlement or getting a job with a
competitor and spying on his new boss. He decides to spy and, after getting a souped-up resume and a short course in spycraft,
gets hired by Trion working directly for the CEO. Torn between his growing
affection for his new boss and the sword his old employer hangs over his head,
Adam spies with the best of them while looking for a way out.
A marvelous book with engaging
characters, great humor and an edge-of-your-seat plot. Lots of high-tech
details: IP phones; tiny LCD screens; PDAs; optical chips; flash slots; PowerPoint (I loved this bit); keystroke
capturers and proximity chip replicators;
pin-compatible ASICs; and last but not least, the
Apple Newton. If you’re not a techie you’ll still get it, but if you are you
will glory in the details of life in a high-tech corporation. Highly, highly
recommended. Finder was a real find for me.
reviewed:
August, 1998
Bad Memory, by Duane
Franklet
paperback, Pocket Books, 1997, $6.99, 408
pages
A hacker breaks through the network
security at Houston's fictitious Simtek Corporation,
the world's leading computer manufacturer. His first move is to garble
thousands of orders for mail order computers. When his demand for a million
dollars is rejected, he escalates his terrorism against the company, from
introducing an insidious virus that zaps the hard drives in the accounting
department to (my favorite) inserting a tiny glitch in the operating systems of
almost a half million computers that . . but that would be giving too much
away.
Anyone with network experience will
go gaga over this book. It's a terrifying roadmap of the devastating penalty a
corporation can pay if it cuts corners in network security. The real beauty of
this book, however, is that Franklet, a Houston-based
computer trouble shooter, makes the high-tech hijinks
comprehensible to someone who can't tell the difference between software and tupperware. The characters are believable, and the twisty
plot had me guessing until the very last page.
reviewed:
February, 2002
The Day Trader, by Stephen W.
Frey
Hardcover, Ballantine Books, 2002, 352 pages,
$24.95
Augustus
McKnight is a paper towel sales rep who dabbles as an online stock day trader
when his boss isn't looking. Before he can tell his wife that he made his first
big killing on an IPO, she asks for a divorce, stomps out of their suburban
Washington house and gets herself killed. Augustus quits his job, sets himself
up as a full time day trader and becomes a murder suspect. In a fast-paced,
twisted plot that includes Mafia money laundering, high-priced strip clubs,
gun-toting day traders, mysterious widows and a slew of plausible suspects, the
story unfolds to a surprising conclusion.
USA Today said of a previous Frey
book, "'Grisham meets Ludlum on Wall Street." Day trading, for those
unfamiliar with the term, is the rapid-fire buying and selling of stocks,
sometimes hundreds of transactions a day, from a personal computer over the
Internet. This novel does a great job of demystifying the convergence of new
supercomputers on Wall Street, coupled with desktop PCs equipped with
high-speed Internet connections and sophisticated, real-time stock data and
analysis. Recommended - couldn't put it down!
reviewed: August,
2005
Dangerous D@ta by lury.gibson (Adam Lury and Sam Gibson)
Paperback, Bantam, 2002, £9.99.
272 pages
An anonymous client hires Arthur C.
Dogg, a data detective, to check out the garden flat
at
The subtitle of this book is “Your
privacy has expired . . .” and if you weren’t worried about the electronic
trail that leaves you vulnerable to snoops like Dogg,
you will be after reading this novel. It even includes tips of Web site to
visit to spy on people! The format of stark records interspersed with Dogg’s commentary is very effective, reminiscent of
epistolary novels of old. This is a British book that I ordered from a little
shop in
reviewed:
June, 2004
Pattern
Recognition, by William
Gibson
Paperback,
Cayce Pollard, a market researcher
with uncanny intuition and a physical allergy to name brands, is hired by a tycoon
to uncover the source of “the footage,” video snippets that appear on the
Internet a disjointed clip at a time, attracting a cult following. Her search
takes her to London, Tokyo and Moscow, following a trail of marketing,
globalization and terror.
William Gibson is an iconic writer:
he invented the word “cyberspace.” This is his first novel set in the present
day, although there is something futuristic in his depiction of everyday
objects, events and relationships. Lots of technology - mostly Internet
centered - but also a thoughtful, deep analysis of the human condition.
Beautifully written, with an engaging plot and delightful characters. Highly recommended.
reviewed: February, 2005
Offline, by
Hardback,
It’s the near future – 2020 – and computers have taken over most of
society’s brain work, from school teaching to interior decorating, leaving
people bored and restless. AutoDrive, ColorMatch, DecoTech,
LandscapeMaster take care of all life’s little
details. When a beautiful employee of a software company is
murdered in what appears to be a routine sex crime, city detective Paul Gagliardi senses a mystery not detected by the databases
and machines that control 21st Century police work. He decides –
with the help of his father – to bypass technology and investigate this case
the old-fashioned way.
A fascinating science fiction
mystery, even closer to current reality than it was when written six years ago.
Technology is on every page and takes a starring role in the surprise ending. Recommended.
reviewed:
November, 1999
Spyder Web, by Tom Grace
Hardback, Warner Books, 1998, $25.00, 451 pagess
Navy Seal Nolan Kilkenny
bails out at the height of his career to pursue a doctorate in advanced computer
technology. While slogging away in his Michigan lab he notices a strange,
persistent, untraceable network log-in. It turns out to be the Spyder, a prototype of a spy program developed by the CIA
to snoop on hostile nations. The program was slipped into Kilkenny's
computer during a routine security upgrade by its evil developer, who intends
to use the Michigan network as a back door into the world financial markets.
The ending is a high-speed powerboat chase on the Chicago waterfront.
The Spyder
idea is a good one - the routine uses artificial intelligence to figure out an
undetectable exit from a network so that it can report every keystroke back to
the spymasters. It makes some good points about network vulnerability - once
you get in, you can move around. The author, an architect, did a decent job on
the technical details. Once you can move around, you can cause havoc. The plot
was a hackneyed shoot-em-up scenario, with double
agents posing as reporters and industrial spies working for stereotypical mysterious
Orientals who kill without compunction. Everyone in the book seemed to be a
scuba diver, the author's hobby. Also available on audio tape, and don't be
surprised if it shows up as a made-for-TV movie. Get it out of the library, as
I did, or wait for the paperback.
reviewed:
January, 2000
Y2K: The Day the World Shut Down, by George E. Grant and Michael S. Hyatt
Paperback, Word Books, 1998, $12.99, 268 pages
OfficeConcepts
shoots the messenger when chief information officer Bob Priam
outlines his extensive and expensive plan to make the company Y2K compliant.
Abruptly fired, he starts his own Y2K consulting firm and hits the jackpot when
he invents a cheap chip to override faulty imbedded systems. Ajax, a greedy
sociopath, is making a fortune off of Y2K. His programming team, code named
Chernobyl, uses their access to corporate computers to install back-doors to
company information systems and siphon off cash. He assaults Priam's country hideaway to steal the plans for the
override chip and kidnaps his daughter. The good guys triumph, learning that
faith and community are more important than technology.
This is a new genre for me - a
Christian thriller - and I have to confess that I didn't like it. The heavy-handed
moralizing and pompous descriptions of the hero's faith life detract from both
the plot and the pace of the book. Naming most of the characters after ancient
Greeks (Priam's kids are Cassandra, Troy and Hector)
was too cute and the writing was immature and hurried, showing off the authors'
erudition with smug lists of classical books they have read. However, if you
take this as a fictional, easy-to-read primer on the technical and social
aspects of the Y2K crisis, it's a winner. The research is excellent, there are
extensive quotes from reputable sources and as Priam
explains the complexities of Y2K to his family you learn along with him. I had
never considered the danger of panicked companies giving unvetted
programmers access to their corporate records - it was an eye-opener. If you
can stomach the self-righteous polemics, it's a useful book.
reviewed: July, 2005
Blind Trust, by Linda Grant
Paperback, Ivy Books, 1990, $4.99, 226 pages
A bank officer hires corporate security expert Catherine Saylor to find James Mendoza, one of five bank employees who knows about a critical flaw in the bank’s computer system. He’s disappeared, and his employers fear he will use an upcoming merger as an opening to steal millions.
Interesting
premise with a lot of high tech details about bank security. Nifty
twist at the end. This is a great series; recommended.
reviewed: March, 2005
Random Access Murders, by Linda Grant
Paperback,
Corporate security expert Catherine Saylor, in her first case, defends her boyfriend, private detective Peter Harman, who is charged with murdering the mistress of a high-powered computer company CEO.
Good series, with a high-tech twist
to every book. In this one, an interesting discussion about gray market
computer components: parts in short supply that are brokered by shady
intermediaries. Also an introduction to Saylor’s partner Jesse, who joins the
reviewed:
July, 1999
Vampire Bytes, by Linda
Grant
Paperback, Ballantine,
1998, $5.99, 304 pages
Soon after absconding with the source
code to a soon-to-be-released vampire role playing game, a programmer is
murdered, his naked body drained of blood. A teenaged girl, last seen with him
at a vampire live-action role playing game, disappears at the same time.
Private investigator Catherine Sayler is drawn into
both cases and battles public hysteria when Silicon Valley parents, cops and
clergy begin to fear that their kids are being drawn into a satanic cult.
Grant has a knack for releasing a
book just before the story breaks - her novel about sexual harassment was
released just as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill case hit the headlines, and
this book about affluent teens on the fringe has echoes of Littleton. This
thoughtful, respectful and well-written book explores the connection between
computer games and teen violence and paints a vivid portrait of why adults will
never, ever understand kids. Nice technical details on how games are designed
and tested and a primer on how to send anonymous e-mail. Highly recommended!
reviewed:
November, 2004
Women’s Place, by Linda Grant
Paperback, Fawcett, 1994, $5.99, 248 pages
Private investigator Catherine Saylor and her partner, Jesse, are hired to go undercover in a software company where the women are being harassed. While Jesse handles the technical aspects such as stolen passwords, Catherine insinuated herself into the company as the harassment escalates, ending in murder.
This is a compelling case study of sexual harassment in an industry where women were – and still are – in the minority. Interesting look at the software industry, just as corporations were starting to drift away from their mainframes and over to networked PCs. Some, but not too many, technical details. Good writing, tense plot, interesting characters. This is an excellent series. Recommended.
reviewed:
September, 2004
Codex, by Lev Grossman
Hardback, Harcourt, 2004, $24.00, 348 pages
Young banker Edward Wozny is offended when a big client requests him by name for a special project, just two weeks before he’s set to depart for a new job in London. Catalogue books? Sounds menial. He’s drawn, though, into the search for a medieval book, one scholars claim has never existed. Life turns weird when a computer game he is playing seems to mimic his search for the codex. With the help of a teenaged medieval scholar he picks up at the library, he sets out to solve a mystery that has perplexed the world for 700 years.
If you liked the Da Vinci Code and The Rule of Four (neither of which had even a whiff of computers,
alas) you will enjoy Codex. There is a LAN party scene that will appeal to
gamers: tell me it’s not really that strange! A fast-paced book with an
interesting puzzle at the core. Recommended.
reviewed:
July, 1999
The Expert, by Lee
Gruenfeld
Paperback, Onyx Books, 1999, $6.99, 496
pages
The president of Tera-Tech,
who has relentlessly pressured the government to loosen federal laws
prohibiting the export of encryption technology, is indicted for selling chips
with an embedded high-speed processor capable of handling 256-bit encryption
keys to the Chinese. He claims that the technology does not yet exist to
manufacture the alleged chips; the government claims it confiscated one. Is he
lying or is someone setting him up? The truth is unfolded in an engrossing
courtroom drama.
This excellent novel will appeal to
both legal eagles and techno-obsessives. Gruenfeld is the former manager of systems development for
a pioneering computer company (which he coyly refuses to name) and has served
as an expert witness himself - the details are flawless. The technique of
coaching an expert to explain extraordinarily complex scientific principles to
a lay jury ensures that the science can be understood. The novel brilliantly
covers encryption technology, chip manufacturing and the tension between
national security and data privacy. This is one of the best books in the genre
and not to be missed.
reviewed:
August, 2001
The Street, by Lee Gruenfeld
Hardback, Doubleday, 2001, $23.95, 399 pages
Stockbroker
James Vincent Hanley is having jealous snits putting together Internet startup
deals that make zillionaires out of pimply-faced geeks while he struggles to
make ends meet on a mere $300K a year. When he quits his job to start his own
dot-com, Security and Exchange Commission agent Jubal
Thurgren smells a rat. The hot new company has no
clear mission and no product yet has managed to attract millions and millions
in venture capital. As Artimis.com is poised to go public, Thurgren
struggles to make sense out of the new economy to determine whether Hanley's
brainchild is a groundbreaking innovation or a brilliant rip-off.
I went to a university founded by
repentant stock market manipulator Daniel Drew who scammed the market by
selling watered stock, cattle that had been starved, led to the salt-block and
bloated with water to boost their selling weight. This legacy left me with a
finely tuned appreciation for the well-crafted swindle. If you've ever been
tempted to cash in the kid's college fund and invest the proceeds in the next
best thing, read his book first. It goes a long way towards explaining the
recent dot-com meltdown and how six-month-old, debt-ridden high-tech companies
are generating fortunes for their young founders. The writing is excellent, the
characters well drawn and the insight you'll get into Wall Street worth its
weight in gold.
reviewed:
June, 2000
The Truth Machine,
by
James L. Halperin
Paperback, DelRay, 1997, 394 pages, $6.99
When he is
five, Pete Armstrong's beloved younger brother Leonard was abducted and killed
by a recently paroled sociopath. While a student at Harvard, the haunted young
genius vows to develop a truth machine that can detect with 100% accuracy truth
and falsehood, to prevent such unreformed killers from ever being released from
prison again. The action stretches from 1991 through 2050. Pete graduates from
Harvard, invents his truth machine and becomes the richest man in the world.
Along the way he harbors a terrible secret that only he, of all the people in
the world, has the power to hide and which, if discovered, could cost him his
life and all the good he has worked for.
Of all the computer crime books I
have read, this is the only one that claims to have been written by a computer.
This novel is speculative fiction, envisioning a future where technology has
changed every aspect of our lives, with a special emphasis on the truth machine
and its impact on the criminal justice system. This is an accessible,
provocative, issue-oriented book that forces you to confront the future on its
own terms. This is a first novel for Dallas-based Halperin.
It's become a cult favorite and I recommend it. He maintains a web site at
www.truthmachine.com where you can read sample chapters and cast your vote on
the wisdom of really building an infallible lie detector.
reviewed:
March, 1999
Society of the Mind, by Eric
L. Harry
Harper, paperback, 1996, $6.99, 657 pages
Harvard psychologist Laura Aldridge
receives a mysterious summons to the South Seas hideaway of the world's richest
man, computer magnate Joseph Gray. Laura assumes that the invitation is for
administering discreet therapy to Gray himself, but she is stunned to learn
that her mission is to determine whether the computers themselves have gone
insane.
This is a fantastic book, teetering
on the edge of speculative fiction. The computer in the book are water-cooled,
analog, and use fuzzy logic. The computers are self-programming, using the laws
of evolution; they created free-ranging robots that learn about the world by experiencing
it. It is an intriguing - and at times - frightening glimpse of the future, and
raises important questions about what it means to be human.
reviewed:
February, 2000
murder @maggody.com,
by
Joan Hess
Hardback, Simon and Schuster, 2000, 253 pages, $22.00
The town
of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) spins into a tizzy
when they get a government grant to wire the town for the Internet. Ruby Bee
wants to post her diner's menu on the Web, Brother Verber
of the Voice of the Almighty God Assembly Hall has visions of setting up a
cyber shopping cart to salvation and folks are speculating that the local moonshiner is ordering is mason jars over the 'Net . They
worry about the specter of pornography entering their town, but the grad
student hired to administer the network assures them that he can block all the nasties. He can't. A young mother is murdered, naked
pictures of the town worthies are slithering around on e-mail and it's up to
sheriff Arly Hanks to sort it all out.
This is the 12th of Joan Hess's Maggody books, and her rowdy rural humor is wildly popular
among mystery readers. I am not a Maggody fan
(although I do enjoy her Claire Malloy mysteries), finding the plots weak and
the humor grating. It does give an accurate and sympathetic picture of what
happens when a community too small for even cable TV plugs into cyberspace. Maggody groupies will love it.
reviewed:
November, 1999
Catch Me, by AJ
Holt
Hardback, St. Martin's Press, 1999, $23.95,
327 pages
When we left FBI agent and computer guru
Jay Fletcher at the end of Watch Me,
she was disgraced and fired for turning vigilante and blowing away most of the
members of Special K, a computer bulletin board for serial killers. Only one
survived - Billy Bones - and he has escaped from his mental institution,
embarked on another killing spree and is taunting Fletcher to "catch
me." Teamed with a skeptical federal marshal, she embarks on a
cross-country scavenger hunt, following his trail of grisly clues.
Although computers play a less
prominent role in this novel than they did in Watch Me, they are a running thread throughout the plot. Billy
Bones is great at cracking through network security and Jay keeps turning to
the Internet to research the clever and convoluted clues. Maybe I'm being
picky, but some of the details lacked authenticity. She dropped down to DOS to
check Billy's cookie file, when everyone knows that they are contained in a
file called cookies.txt, and she used Yahoo to search for a long line of poetry
when HotBot or Altavista would
have been more efficient. Some expert. Good book, though. If you liked Watch Me, as I did, this is a necessary
follow-up. Killer of an ending, especially for Sherlock Holmes fans and
students of chaos theory.
reviewed:
September, 1998
Watch Me, by A.J.
Holt
Paperback,
St. Martins, 1996, $6.99, 370 pages
FBI agent Jay Fletcher develops a
computer program that combs databases, matching criminal profiles against bank
records and airline reservations. She is banished to the boonies when her
unauthorized trolling violates a serial killer’s civil rights and he is set
free. She continues to track down killers and administer vigilante justice.
Meanwhile, a retired agent is tracking down “The Iceman,” a killer he has been
dogging for 30 years. The Iceman hacks into databases to monitor the agent’s
progress and runs an Internet-based fantasy game called “Special K” to attract
other serial killers. When the paths converge, all hell breaks loose.
Watch
Me raises urgent issues about privacy. How far should the government be
allowed to go in gathering data on private individuals to prevent and solve
crime? Who is the greater threat: government o criminals? This is a very scary
book with graphic depictions of rape, murder and mutilation. The web of
computer information is terrifying, and the technical details are right on
target. Other reviewers have likened it to Silence
of the Lambs with a high-tech twist. Highly recommended.
reviewed: July,
2005
Something to Kill For by Susan Holtzer
Paperback,
While foraging for Art Deco treasure
on the Saturday morning yard sale circuit,
This is the first in an
award-winning series that will delight those interested in antiques and yard
sale lore. The computer stuff is on the periphery but solidly written and
insightful about the day-to-day work of a computer consultant. Recommended.
reviewed:
November, 2002
The Wedding Game,
by
Susan Holtzer
Paperback, St. Martin's, 2000, $5.99, 275 pages
When a
letter bomb kills a member of Anneke Haagen's game designer mailing list, a note on the dead
man's desk, headlined "the blackmail game," puts Anneke
and six other members of the group at the top of the suspect pool. As Anneke prepares for her wedding to an Ann Arbor cop, makes
ready for the arrival of two grown daughters wary about her remarriage and
prepares to beta test her first computer game, she carves out time to go online
and solve the crime in time to make her honeymoon escape.
A computer crime with enough detail
to keep the geekiest of geeks happy and a light enough touch with the
technology to let the mystery shine through. The murder is cleverly solved completely
online. Fresh details about game design and news groups - even a spattering of
code. And the wedding game itself is a hoot! Recommended.
reviewed:
April, 2005
Apple Crunch, by Frederic
Vincent Huber
Paperback,
A
computer consultant and a young hacker, their lives ruined by sloppy glitches
in New York City's municipal computer system, team up to get revenge on a
corrupt system by stealing the city's budget data and holding it for ransom.
This is a lighthearted caper - if
you like John Sandford's Kidd novels, this will be right up your alley. The charm of this
book is in its relative antiquity: 1981! Remote terminals are described with
awe and the city is struggling with defining what constitutes a computer crime.
The Big Apple Computer Club - a charming collection of Nerds not unlike Alamo
PC - figures prominently in the plot. Out of print, but a copy is in the
reviewed:
June, 2004
The Footprints of God, by Greg Iles
Paperback, Pocket Star Books,
2003, 528 pages, $7.00
Medical ethicist David Tennant works for Project Trinity,
a secret government organization attempting to build a quantum-level
supercomputer. Using advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques, six top
scientists have supplied Trinity, the experimental computer, with molecular
copies of themselves as models for a neurological operating system. When the
scientists start suffering neurological malfunctions from the high-level MRI
they underwent to map their brains, he is forced to flee.
There is a bizarre subplot of Tennent having mystical visions in which he inhabits the
body of Jesus, which Iles just manages to bring off.
There is lots of technology, bordering on sci-fi, most interesting in its
exploration of the ethical and religious implications of technology. This is a
good techno-thriller, trying to be more profound than it really is.
reviewed:
February, 1999
Mortal Fear, by Greg
Iles
paperback, Signet, $6.99, 1997, 621 pages
A serial killer is using the EROS computer
network to select his victims. Part-time systems operator Harper Cole catches
on and in an attempt to clear his name and save lives he places his family in
jeopardy.
I picked up this book once and threw
it down after the first three pages, which I found too explicit. Once I broke
through the barrier I was captivated, but be warned that much of the action
takes place on a sex-talk BBS and does not leave much to the imagination. The
technology - especially the way the killer uses the telephone system to hide
his name and location - is fascinating and rings true. My favorite part was
when the hero rigged his laser printer to work as a bomb. Mortal Fear has
received excellent reviews and Iles subsequent novel,
Spandau Phoenix, made it to the New York Times best
seller list.
reviewed:
July, 2001
Murder in Central Park: A Bill Donovan Mystery, by Michael Jahn
Paperback, Worldwide Mystery, May 2001, $5.99, 272pp.
N.Y.P.D.
Captain Bill Donovan takes a break from crime fighting to camp out with a
scientist friend in a Central Park tree house observing the behavior of crows.
When he descends at dawn it's only to find a venerable old bird pecking at a
corpse. The body belongs to a stalker who had sent hundreds of e-mails to a
teenaged cyber-grrrl who practiced "body
art" with a camera running 24-hours a day in her bedroom. Suspects abound,
from Donovan's friend, to a rival scientist studying the park's rats, the
girl's boyfriend and a gang of inline skaters.
I can't believe that this author
escaped my notice; I immediately scarfed up all the
books I could find in this engaging series. Donovan and his sidekick, Sergeant Moskowicz, are the two most technologically advanced
detectives in Manhattan. Even when he's disguised as a homeless person, Donovan
checks his e-mail via laptop and cell phone. The high-tech clincher in this
entry is a peek into the world of 24-hour web cams. There's also a clever
episode that involves tinkering with the time stamp on a video camera. This
book just slips under the radar as a computer crime, but it's a great read with
a nifty plot.
reviewed:
May, 1999
Host, by
Peter James
Hardback, Villard, 1995, $24.00, 469 pages
Joe Messenger’s father was a pioneer
in cyronics, the science of freezing bodies for later
resurrection and ultimate immortality. Joe has a better idea – his “postbiological man” will be a ghost in a machine, a brain
downloaded into a computer. He has spent his career figuring out how to
transfer the contents of a brain to a computer, create a computer with a large
enough storage capacity and develop a program or neural network capable of
thinking like a human brain. One of his graduate students makes a breakthrough
in the toughest challenge: downloading brain contents. She dies, and his computer
goes berserk, threatening him and his family. Was Juliet’s last act to download
her brain? Or has the computer become smart enough to decide that flesh and
blood people are dispensible?
Do you want to live forever? This
novel presents both the hope and the horror of immortality. The technical details are fascinating, right
down to the gruesome details of how bodies are prepared for freezing. James
doesn’t shy away from the moral implications of the merger of computers and
humans. This book will make you think! ABC television made it into a three-hour
film that aired in February of last year as “Virtual Obsession.” Highly
recommended!
reviewed:
March, 2000
Sprinter, by Bruce Jones
Paperback, Signet, 1998, 340 pages, $5.99
Former ATF
agent Jeri Starbuck, fired after Waco, is working off her angst running
marathons and directing a children's AIDS hospice. Her new life is shattered
when a psychopathic bomber turns her into his reluctant pawn with hints that
her murdered daughter still lives. The bomber has taken over government
databases through his control of the Sprinter 9000, an exploding spy chip
originally developed by the FBI that has entered the consumer computer market
with a bang. Jeri literally sprints around the San Diego following the bomber's
ruthless instructions to stop Sprinter before California explodes.
Sprinter has made for TV movie
written all over it - picture a young heroine with long legs and body-hugging
spandex pitted against pure techo-evil. Sprinter 9000
is a plausible next-step in computing (well, not the exploding bits…) and it's
a nice touch when the feds bribe thousands of hackers attending a local
convention with $3,000 and a subscription to the CyberTimes
to beat the clock and break the bomber's code. If you like lots of action, this
fast-paced novel will keep you guessing until the end.
reviewed:
November, 2001
Don't Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami, by Sharon Kahn
Hardcover, Scribner, 2001, $24.00, 298 pages
Ruby gets
snookered into going on a cut-rate cruise of the Jewish Caribbean with the gang
from Temple Rita. It's a cruise to die for. Willie Bob Gonzales, guest lecturer
and an expert on Converso, or forcibly converted,
Jews, drops dead on the boarding plank. Kevin, the klutzy rabbi, is corralled
into delivering the promised lectures and scoops up Willie Bob's laptop to crib
from his notes. He enlists Ruby, the only computer consultant in Eternal, Texas
before half of the Silicon Valley moved there to join Dell Computers, to help
him read the files. With the assistance of a mysterious reporter from "the
only daily paper in San Antonio," Ruby uses her computer skills to solve a
nasty mystery.
A key plot device hinges on Ruby's
digital camera. A mugger grabs her 64 MB compact flash card, not realizing that
the incriminating photos are stored in the camera's internal 8MB memory. Ruby
is smug about having one of the few cameras with both internal and flash memory
and I couldn't sleep until I figured out what it was. It must have been the
Kodak DX3500. Ruby gets to flex all of her high tech muscles, from covertly
slipping Willie Bob's files onto her zip drive to cracking the password on a
Palm. This is a funny, well-written book with an engaging local twist. Recommended.
reviewed: February, 2005
Concrete Hero, by Rob Kantner
Paperback, Harper Mystery, 1994, $4.99, 394 pages
Detroit PI Ben Perkins, roped into
auctioning off a free investigation in a public TV benefit, is “bought” by an
BBSs were
still a novelty when this was written and Kantner
does a nice job of explaining the technology. Also a sequence about recovering
deleted files. Interesting characters that you can care
about. This is a series and it makes more sense if you read them in
sequence, but it stands up okay on its own.
reviewed:
July, 2000
Nancy Drew: The E-Mail Mystery, by Carolyn Keene
Paperback, Pocket Books/Minstrel, 1998, $3.99, 148 pages
Carson
Drew has a slew of clients who, against their best interests, abruptly decide
to settle out of court. Nancy, hired as a summer temp to clean up old case
files from her father's law office, snoops around looking for an answer to this
puzzle. She stumbles across an e-mail log that indicates that one of the firm's
employees may be leaking privileged information to a rival firm and pokes
around in computer files, chat rooms and cyber cafes to unmask the culprit.
This isn't your grandmother's Nancy
Drew. The yellow roadster, old-fashioned even when I read the books in the
early 1960s, has become a blue Mustang, Dad's secretary has evolved into
"Ms" Hanson, and Nancy has taken up running, complete with Nikes and
a Walkman. The computer details are basic, but right on the mark, covering
elementary corporate security and chat room etiquette. Gal pal Bess might need
help with her growing Internet addiction and there seems to be a cyber café on
every street corner in River Heights. When I was a kid I read every Nancy Drew
Mystery about ten times. Look where it got me! The E-Mail Mystery would make a
perfect gift for a pre-teen girl or a delightful trip down memory lane for more
mature
reviewed: January, 2005
The Forgotten, by Faye Kellerman
Hardback, W.C. Morrow, 2001, $24.95, 363 pages
Los Angeles Police detective Peter Decker takes it personally when a troubled young man desecrates the Jewish shul his family attends. He suspects he has accomplices for a white supremist group but he can’t prove it, and the kid seems to be contrite. Six months later the teen is brutally murdered at a nature camp run by a pair of psychologists, and Decker catches the case.
The technological hook is that the
psychologists have hired a hacker to break into the computers that house
standardized tests, such as the SAT and
reviewed: March, 2005
Country Comes to Town, by Toni L.P. Kelner
Hardback, Kensington, 1996, $18.95, 308 pages
While her college professor husband
spends a month in
Even though the heroine of this
series is a programmer based in
reviewed:
August, 1999
Chameleon, by Shirley
Kennett
Paperback, Pinnacle Books, 1998, 367 pages,
$5.99
Columbus Wade is a sociopathic 12-year-old who graduates from torturing the
family pets to constructing virtual reality computer scenarios in which he
bumps off his teachers. But that's just a rehearsal for the real thing. The
mother of his best friend is PJ Gray, a police department psychologist who uses
virtual reality modeling to solve crimes. Columbus gives her the creeps, her
son's behavior takes a weird turn and she is torn between a mother's love and
doing her job to unmask a ruthless killer.
This engrossing book is third in a
series. Kennett is a former computer systems consultant who gets the technical
details exactly right. Computers don't dominate the plot, but the use of a
combination of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to reconstruct
crimes is a compelling concept. This is a real page-turner, with a chillingly
evil child at the center of the plot. Recommended.
reviewed:
November, 2000
Fire Cracker, by Shirley
Kennett
Paperback, Pinnacle Books, 1997, 327 pages, $5.99
Billy
faked his death when his was 15 and reemerged as "Cracker," bent on
revenge against the stepmother he wrongly thinks killed his father ten years
before. Now in his early 20s, he hacks into the computer system of the hospital
where his stepmother works as a doctor and alters online records, bumping off
three patients and pointing the finger at "Mama Elly."
PJ Gray and her virtual reality homicide simulation team at the St. Louis
Police Department are called in to reconstruct the crime s and trap the killer
before he strikes again.
reviewed:
February, 2001
Gray Matter, by Shirley
Kennett
Paperback, Pinnacle Books, 1997, 307 pages, $5.99
In her
inaugural mystery, psychologist PJ Gray moves to St. Louis to set up a new
Computer Homicide Investigations Project, or CHIP. Before she even finds a
place to live, she's confronted with her first case. A musician and a ballet
dancer are killed under bizarre circumstances, a perfect test for the validity
of her virtual reality modeling crime-solving technique. Her reconstruction of
the crimes provide the details needed to catch the killer, grizzly misfit who
believes that by eating the brains of his talented victims he will ingest their
genius.
I read the two later books in this
series, Fire Cracker and Chameleon, before I got to the debut novel. I'm still
intrigued by using virtual reality for solving crimes. The details are
engrossing, right down to the jury-rigged headgear that bears a striking
resemblance to a spaghetti strainer. The crime details are gruesome and not for
the faint of heart. Recommended. Be smarter than I was and read them in order.
reviewed:
June, 2002
Night Work, by Laurie King
Paperback, Bantam Books, 2000, $6.50
The Ladies
of Perpetual Disgruntlement are amusing and terrorizing San Francisco by
cornering men who have abused women and children, immobilizing them with stun
guns, binding them with duct tape and attaching rude signs to their naked
bodies. The humor withers when a man is killed under similar circumstances.
Detective Kate Martinelli and partner Al Hawkins
explore the worlds of the Internet, feminist theology and alleged Hindu bride
burning in an effort to stop the killing.
Without revealing too much of the
plot, all of the dead men were fingered in a Web site modeled along the lines
of some anti-abortion sites that furnish detailed information about alleged
perpetrators but never go so far as to call for a hit. For Web designers, there
is a disturbing implication that just by linking to a site that links to such a
site - several degrees of separation - one could become an accessory. This book
is strong stuff, with horrifying and thought-provoking images of Kali as the
goddess of female vengeance.
reviewed:
October, 2000
Tender Malice, by Catherine Lanigan
Paperback, Mira Books, 377 pages, 1999, $5.99
Hill
Country geek girl Karen Curie lives at home with Dad, never had a date and
works as a code monkey in an Austin high tech firm. This changes overnight when
she enters the final keystroke in her own foolproof computer security program,
Mastermind. She quits her job, moves into town with a glamorous roommate, is
pursued by two gorgeous guys and sells her program for billions. A dream come
true? Not quite. One of the boyfriends is out to steal her life's work, but
which one is it?
Did I mention that this is romantic
suspense? Or did you figure that out on your own? If you can get through the
young-virgin-in-peril subplot without gagging, the computer minutia is
intriguing. Mastermind goes around the atoms in a firewall (do firewalls have
atoms?) and reprograms itself after each chess-like move so it can't be traced.
One of the key clues is altered colors on the Windows display. It's a good book
of its type, but not my type.
reviewed:
March, 2004
Doctored Evidence, by
Donna Leon
Hardcover, Atlantic/Gove, 2004, 256 pages,
$22.00
When a nasty old woman is murdered,
the police are eager to close the case by pinning it on her Romanian
housekeeper, who fled the scene and in soon killed in an abortive chase. Not Commissario Guido Brunetti.
Working behind Vice-Questore Scarpa’s
back, he and his sidekicks, Inspector Vianello and Signorina Elettra, the Scarpa’s secretary, hack deep into computer, banking and
phone records and find a trail of blackmail that points to a more plausible
killer.
This is the 13th book in
the series but only the third to be published in the United States. I’ve read
them all as British imports and am in love with all of the characters, the
feasts prepared by Brunetti’s wife Paola and the
fog-shrouded Venetian backdrop. The elegant mysterious Signorina
Elettra is the computer guru of the bunch, seemingly
able to break in to any database and methodically passing her skills onto apt
pupil Vianello. With just enough high tech content to
make the cut as a computer crime, this is a wonderful series that should be
read from the beginning to savor the full effect.
reviewed:
December, 1998
Back/Slash by William
H. Lovejoy
Paperback, Pinnacle Books, 1997, $5.99, 528
pages
A cyber-terrorist dubbed by the
media the "Frowning Face" can crack into any computer system, from
the Internet to banks, hospitals and the CIA. As data is destroyed and security
compromised, the world erupts in turmoil. While an international task force
tries to solve the crisis, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Computer
Crimes Squad secretly enlists the aid of ace hacker "Renegade" who
goes mano-a-mano with the Frowning Face. Is :-( a
lone crackpot with a left-wing political agenda or an international
conglomerate fomenting turmoil to give their new online service a boost?
Not for the faint-hearted: at times
this novel sounds like John Woody giving his packet switching lecture to the
Jumpstart Internet class (although John would never suggest telnetting
via an e-mail address!). At the core of the plot is the stark reality of how
much of everyone's life is tied to computer networks. When they go down, we do
too. If you don't take it too seriously and get a kick out of picking apart
inaccuracies and inconsistences you will have fun
with Back/Slash.
reviewed:
August, 2003
The Paris Option,
by
Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds
Paperback, St. Martin's, 2002, $15.95, 425 pages
Terrorists blow up the Pasteur
Institute in Paris. Covert One, a secret U.S. Intelligence Agency, fears that
Emile Chambourd, a scientist there, was close to
developing a workable DNA computer. Chambourd is
presumed dead and his prototype is missing. Their worst fears are confirmed
when secure military communications go haywire - only a molecular computer,
capable of evolving, is capable of conducting the rapid computations needed to
crack the codes. Covert One agents are dispatched to Europe to recover the
prototype and save the world.
This is the kind of book my husband
call a "shoot-em-up." Lots of action,
little character development. I was disappointed that there wasn't more
technical explanation of the DNA computer - if I hadn't read other novels (for
example, Prey and Society of the Mind) I would have been
totally lost. Not Ludlum at his best, although the series did make the New York
Times bestseller list.
reviewed:
January, 2001
The Prometheus Deception, by Robert Ludlum
Hardback, St. Martin's Press, 2000, 509 pages, $27.95
Retired
spy Nick Bryson is plucked out of his quiet life of a college professor in a
West Virginia backwater to save the world. The CIA tells him that the
Directorate, the super-secret agency that employed him, was really a GRU front
and everything his knows about his family, his failed marriage and his career
is an elaborately contrived lie. Bryson is stabbed and shot, poisoned and
pestered, bopped on the head and betrayed by those he trusts as he infiltrates
the highest echelons of power to uncover the truth.
If you're looking for a computer
crime, hang with this one. Computers aren't mentioned until way past page 200,
and don't take over the scene for another hundred pages past that. It's worth
the wait. Without giving away too much of the zig-zagging
plot, the key issue is the ever-present tension between privacy and security.
Technology has made it possible to collect masses of information on individuals
and organizations. It is worthwhile to give governments access to your medical
and credit records if doing so could stop a terrorist act? Lots of geeky
details. Ludlum has been writing thrillers for thirty years and has lost none
of his power. Recommended.
reviewed:
March, 2002
Dog Days, by Daniel Lyons
Paperback, Plume/Penguin, 1998, 302 pages, $12.95
Reilly and
Evan are Boston's geek golden boys, writing cutting-edge computer code,
destined to become the next software millionaires. Then their project is
scrapped, Reilly's girlfriend dumps him for a marketing weenie and a
neighborhood goon slashes the tires on his classic BMW. Reilly steals the goomba's champion greyhound, holding Coco for ransom and
hacking into the mobster's bank to retrieve the ransom money.
The second half of the novel is set
at the Florida greyhound tracks and is not nearly as compelling to our nerdy
audience. The earlier scenes of young geeks battling numbers crunchers and the
delicate, nasty hierarchy among high-tech workers are classics, rivaling
Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. Recommended.
reviewed:
August, 2003
The
Courier, by Jay MacLarty
Paperback, Pocket Star Books, 2003, $6.99 352 pages
Simon Leondovitch, an international courier, is
hired by a Swedish firm to ferry papers and disks to their parent company in
California. The nervous chemist who hands over the material slips in a second
package - two computer disks to be sent to New York, address as of yet
undetermined. He says he'll call later with the address but he can't - he's
dead. The disks contain lab results of tests revealing that a new miracle diet
drug causes fatal liver damage. The California pharmaceutical company hires a
"hunter" to recover the disks and Simon is forced to go into hiding
to protect the disks and his family.
An edge-of-your-seat book; I couldn't put it down. Especially
interesting from a techie standpoint is the way that Simon keeps connected
while on the road - cell phone modems, patching into analog phone lines in a
pension, hot connections from the airport lounge, Internet Cafes in Amsterdam -
and his use of chat rooms to stay in touch. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
May, 2004
Firewall, by
Henning Mankell
Paperback, Vintage Crime, 2003, $13.00, 405 pages.
Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander is disturbed by the case of two teenaged girls
who kill a cabbie as easily as they would squash a bug, but the plot thickens
when the murder is linked to the unexplained death of a computer consultant who
keels over while making a cash withdrawal at an ATM. Computers are the key to
the crimes, and the police, aided by a young hacker, race to break through the
firewall of a malicious gang before more people die and something horrible (I
won’t give it away) happens.
One of my favorite mysteries is the noir Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, also set in Sweden, which ended with Wahlöö’s death in 1975. These are similar in nature:
methodical police procedurals, intricately and carefully plotted, with
believable characters and a dollop of social commentary. This is the seventh in
the series and the only one to feature computers, but it makes up for the lack
of technology in its predecessors. Lots
of hacking and a sad commentary of the vulnerability of our technology-driven
society. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
September, 1999
The Millennium Project, by Joseph
Massucci
Paperback, Leisure Books, 1998, 360 pages,
$5.99
An embittered and crazy chip
manufacturer has planted rogue chips in the country's satellite defense system
and the computers used by financial markets. Abetted by a doomsday cult leader
with a highly trained kamikaze army, he uses paranoia about the Y2K bug to
create chaos in the defense and aviation industries while going after his real
target - takeover of the world's financial markets. Center for Disease Control
scientists team up with army special forces to stop him.
The computer details are superficial
but frightening. Among the items covered are a next-generation biological computer
that uses a DNA soup as its memory and the power that a dominant manufacturer
can covertly accumulate by strategically placing its hardware and software in
critical systems. At heart, this book is what my husband, John, calls a
"shoot-em-up." After about page 12 I lost
track of the hundreds of people killed and tortured in gruesome and graphic
ways. It's a comic-book novel, not terribly sophisticated, but readable. If you
like this sort of thing, it's not bad, but certainly not at the top of my list.
reviewed:
May, 2003
The Bride's Kimono,
by
Sujata Massey
Paperback, Avon, Oct. 2002, $6.99, 400 pages
Rei
Shimura, an expatriate Japanese-American antiques dealer, is hired by a
Washington D.C. museum to courier several valuable kimono from Tokyo and to lecture
on kimono wrapping at the exhibit opening. To her horror, an uninsured Edo-era
(1615-1857) bride's kimono is stolen from her hotel room and a young Japanese
woman she befriended on the flight over is found dead in a dumpster, carrying Rei's passport. Accused by the police of murder, larceny
and even prostitution, Rei tries to juggle her
complicated romantic life and a visit from her parents while trying to recover
the lost kimono and find the murderer.
The computer connections are
tenuous, but this is the first book I've come across that featured eBay as an
outlet for disposing of stolen antiquities. For that alone it is noteworthy. Rei is a computerphobe so I doubt
she'll be dealing in antique Japanese computers in future books. This is the
third of this series that I have read - the combination of traditional Japanese
culture and antiques coupled with contemporary Japanese life is fascinating.
reviewed:
December, 2001
Death's Domain, by Alex
Matthews
Hardcover, Intrigue Press, Sep. 2001, 370 p., $23.95
In her
sixth mystery, Cassidy McCabe is stunned to read her own obituary in the local
weekly, an obituary with nasty allusions to a tragic incident from her youth
that she had long buried. The obit is quickly followed by a series of subtly
threatening e-mails. Cassidy, a social worker in private practice, realizes
that her husband is in grave danger from a deeply disturbed enemy nursing an
ancient grudge against her and hustles to unmask her persecutor before he takes
his or her revenge.
Lax network security provided the
entry for a determined hacker to insert Cassidy's obituary without the editor's
knowledge; the elaborately animated threatening e-mails, sent through an
anonymous remailer, suggest to Cassidy that her
tormentor has advanced computer skills. Her husband hires a hacker to break
into university records to identify an old friend's college boyfriend. Although
there are numerous high-tech aspects to the plot, calling this book Death's
Domain is a bit of a stretch. The book sometimes becomes a little too cute
(Matthews won a medallion from the Cat Writer's Association, enough said) and
the psychological self-analyzing, although totally in character given Cassidy's
job, is a little too angst-ridden for me.
reviewed:
September, 2001
Booked for Murder,
by
Val McDermid
Paperback, Spinsters Ink, 2000, 260 pages, $12.00
Lindsay
Gordon, by her own assessment a `cynical socialist lesbian feminist
journalist', flies to London to rescue a friend who is the prime suspect in the
murder of a former lover. Penny, a successful children's book author, was
turning her hand to her first adult novel and was killed by an exploding beer
bottle, a method lifted straight from her book. Meanwhile, another friend turns
to Lindsay for help to unmask coworkers who are jeopardizing her video company
by producing porno flicks.
During the course of her adventure,
Lindsay relies on Penny's admirably compulsive backup discipline to track down
a floppy disk of the missing novel, breaks into a computer system to coax back
incompletely deleted files and plants several cleverly backdated incriminating
documents. Linday's hard-earned computer skills are
showcased but the deft plot and camaraderie among the characters are the stars
of the show. Scottish writer McDermid is just
starting to develop an American following and this engaging book is a good
starting place.
reviewed:
December, 2001
Killing the Shadows,
by
Val McDermid
Hardcover, Minotaur Books, Oct. 2001, 422 p, $25.95
A serial
killer is murdering well-known crime writers by reenacting the most gruesome
parts of their best-selling books. Psychological profiler Fiona Cameron, busy
with a case in Spain, is drawn into the case because her lover, Kit, fits the
victim profile to a T. When the killer kidnaps Kit, Fiona abandons her computer
and hightails it to the Scottish Highlands to save him.
Fiona's ace in the hole is crime
linkage and geographical profiling software that helps predict where a serial
criminal lives or works by drawing sophisticated map overlays. Other high-tech
touches are a heavy reliance on e-mail and the use of true crime Web sites to
keep abreast of the rumors surrounding the mystery. McDermid
is a gifted writer; A Place of Execution, published last year, was an Edgar
award finalist. Recommended.
reviewed:
October, 2001
Under the Color of Law, by Michael McGarrity
Hardcover, Penguin-USA, 2001, 272 p., $23.95
In his
sixth appearance, Kevin Kerney, just installed as the
Santa Fe police chief, is confronted with the murders of the estranged wife of
a U.S. ambassador and a retired Maryknoll priest
dedicated to shutting down the School of the Americas. When an FBI
antiterrorist team attempts to shut Kerney out of the
investigation, he smells a rat and follows the trail to a ruthless cell of
intelligence agents turned assassins.
The motives eventually coalesce
around hush-hush software that would allow our government to snoop on South
American governments and the outrageous premise that our military will brutally
and enthusiastically kill its own citizens to keep the secret. The computer
details were sketchy and confused; I never could pin down exactly what this
software did. Fans of the series have praise author McGarrity
as the "new Hillerman," who sensitively and
eloquently portrays the landscapes and clashing cultures of the Southwest. I
saw none of that in this over-the-top conspiracy mish-mash.
reviewed:
September, 2000
The Chaos Protocol,
by
Nancy J. McKibbin
Paperback, Malmesbury Books, 356 pages, 1999,
$19.95
Annette is
a beautiful, intense Y2K manager being courted by two men. Leo, besotted with
Annette, abandoned a challenging job with a top company to slog through bank
code, just to be near her. Volodya, a Russian émigré,
charmed himself and his crew into a major contract. Someone has used the chaos
surrounding Y2K remediation to introduce a computer worm into the banking
system and Annette's two likable suitors are the most likely culprits.
I have sworn - several times - never
to review another Y2K thriller. I lied. As a thriller, it's not very thrilling.
After mulling over my dissatisfaction for a few days I came up with the reason
- it's really a romance! However, the technical details are the best of any of
the Y2K books I've read. This book contains the first understandable
explanation of a worm that I've ever seen, and its description of the Y2K
problem and solutions are right on target. It's worth a few hours if you
stumble upon it but don't you dare shell out $20 for this so-so paperback.
reviewed:
August, 2002
Blood Double, by Neil McMahon
Hardback, Harper Collins, 2002, $22.95, 240 pages
An
unconscious John Smith is brought into physician Carroll Monk's emergency room
suffering from a drug overdose. Monks recognizes him as a billionaire computer
wunderkind who is set to announce an IPO of software that can untangle genetic
codes at the speed of light. When the patient disappears and his ER is burgled,
Monks is drawn into a shadowy world of genetic manipulation, corporate
cover-ups and murder.
Garbage in, garbage out. The
software used data from Finns and Korean prostitutes as its baseline, and
people fear, with good cause, that it could be used to create designer babies
and deny insurance coverage to vulnerable populations. The ethics of using
flawed technology to make life and death decisions is a compelling ethical
dilemma. Genetic testing seems to be the next new thing in thrillerdom
(recall last month's review of Knockout Mouse) so look for more like this in
the future.
reviewed:
September, 2002
Firewall, by Andy McNab
Paperback, Seal Books, 2002, 528 pages, $6.99
After a
badly botched mission, former British SAS soldier Nick Stone is in the doghouse
with the Firm. He takes a freelance job with a Russian organized crime boss to
infiltrate a chipmunk-cheeked computer nerd into a guarded compound in Estonia
to download the contents of their computers onto an IBM Thinkpad.
Nick thinks he's engaging in a bit of harmless industrial espionage, but when
the target turns out to be military secrets, he finds himself double-crossed
and stranded in the bleak, arctic Estonian countryside pursued by skilled and
ruthless enemies.
Despite the title, computers take a
distant second place to action and adventure. The firewall the Nick must breach
is computer security surrounding a program called "echelon," which
intercepts satellite transmissions and searches for significant key words.
Helsinki, where much of the action takes place, is the most wired city in the
world and there are amusing references to infants will cell phones. Although
not as thoughtful as LeCarré, McNab
is on par with Alistar McClain and far, far better
than the best of Clancey. The authenticity is perfect
and the suspense exquisite. Recommended.
reviewed:
June, 2005
The Consultant, by John McNeil
Hardback, Coward,
McCann & Geohegan, 1978, out of print, 297pages
Chris Webb will tell you: he’s the
best computer consultant in
As far as I can determine this is the first mystery novel featuring a realistic computer crime. I expected a quaint period piece but it’s brilliant: as fresh as the day it was written, despite the IBM 370s, punch cards and remote access by teletype. The plot involves what Chris dubs a “weevil” and what we would now call a Trojan horse: a hidden program that that attaches itself to the operating system, does its dirty work then overwrites itself with meaningless data. Highly recommended and worth tracking down at a library or used bookstore, especially for anyone who remembers those earlier days of corporate computing.
reviewed:
August, 2001
Burn Factor, by
Kyle Mills
Hardback, Harper Collins, 2001, 384 pages, $25.00
Young
computer programmer Quinn Barry takes a low-level job at the FBI in hopes of
worming her way into an agent assignment. A false positive match on an old DNA
database that she is tweaking frustrates her. When she keeps niggling at what she
considers a minor coding error she is banished to the boonies. Her reputation
and professional pride on the line, Quinn sticks her nose into the middle of a
high-level cover-up involving a serial killer and a secret revival of the star
wars missile defense system.
All the best computer stuff is in
the beginning of the book, when Quinn pulls an all-nighter and triumphantly
ferrets out a few lines of hidden code that cause the search engine to reject a
particular DNA sequence. The picture of a smart programmer worrying the code
like a dog with a bone is a sweet one and challenges our naïve faith in the
integrity of data. Mills is a competent young thriller writer with a
substantial following; I find his characters a bit thin and his plots
improbable, but there's plenty of action to keep you turning the pages.
reviewed:
March, 2001
The Beryllium Murder, by Camille Minichino
Hardback, William Morrow & Co, 2000, $24.00, 262 pages
Gloria Lamerino, a retired Berkeley physicist, hotfoots back to the
West Coast to visit old friends and snoop into the death of a former colleague.
Although beryllium guru Gary Larkin's death is marked down as accidental,
Gloria suspects that the scientist is too cautious to inhale a lungful of the
deadly dust. Her doubts harden when a teenager who wrote a school paper about
beryllium disappears. Rebuffed by the police yet determined to see justice
served, she barrels into the midst of the investigation to capture a crafty
killer with a venal motive and ingenious method.
How timely! Express-News subscribers have no doubt been following Roddy Stinson's expose of the mystery surrounding Kelly Air
Force Base's sinister beryllium room. Minichino is
working her way through the periodic table of the elements (she should live so
long to get to Lawrencium) and beryllium, as good chemistry students will
remember, is number four. The scientific details are abundant, precise and
jargon-free. The computer tie-in, without giving away too much of the plot,
involves computer hacking. You'll get more out of this book if you work your
way through hydrogen, helium and lithium first - and stay tuned for boron!
reviewed:
March, 1999
Reaper, by Ben Mezrich
Harper Fiction, paperback, 1998,
$6.99, 407 pages
A Boston
paramedic stumbles on a horrific scene - eight lawyers participating in a
teleconference have died sudden and frightful deaths, their organs calcified.
He and an army virologist suspect that these and a handful of other similar
incidents are tied to the beta-testing of high bandwidth TV/computer combo that
is soon to be switched on in ninety-five percent of American households. Light
emissions from the screen appear to activate dormant viruses present in
everyone's immune system, causing death. Only days away from the "big turn
on," the heroes have to figure out what's wrong and who's responsible,
then pull the plug before the entire country is put in jeopardy.
Soon to be a made-for-TV movie on
TBS, this one kept me on the edge of my seat. It addresses some serious
computer issues, such as data security and encryption, the danger of giving one
company too much power over our information technology, and the potential for a
computer virus go berserk. Nicely done medical details, too. The characters are
likeable and the plot is action-packed. Lightweight, but highly recommended.
reviewed:
November, 2003
The Weedless Widow, by Deborah Morgan
Paperback, Berkley, 2002, 194 pages, $5.99
Jeff
Talbot, and ex-FBI agent turned antiques picker, shows up for a fishing trip
and finds the owner of his favorite bait and tackle shop murdered. With the
help of his wife, an agoraphobic who expertly uses the Internet as her
connection to the outside world, he figures out that the victim had been
spending the past few months visiting Internet auction sites trying to figure
out who stole - and was now selling on e-Bay - a bunch of antique fishing lures
stolen from his collection.
This is the second in a new series -
fascinating books for those interested in antiques and computers. There's quite
a bit about Internet auctions in this volume, and there is even a "webliography" of related Internet sites at the end.
Recommended for those who like a cozy mystery with interesting characters and
just a touch of technology.
reviewed:
December, 1999
The Year 2000 Killers, by Wenda Wardell Morrone
Hardback, Thomas Dunne Books, 1999, $23.95,
342 pages
Consultant Lorelei Muldoon hires
teen hacker Rudy Persichs to write a Y2K bridge, a
program that acts as a barrier to noncompliant data entering a network. Rudy is
murdered, and the first time his program runs a midtown New York hotel
explodes. As a joke, Rudy inserted a simple yet elegant virtual device driver,
which Arab terrorists steal and exploit. They kidnap Lorelei and hold a
10-year-old COBOL protegee hostage to help
reconfigure the program. An intriguing cast of characters - from Lorelei's
absentminded father to a cab driver - race against the clock to unmask the
terrorists.
As I'm reading my stack of Y2K
thrillers, I'm noticing a trend - the threat is not the millennium bug itself,
but rather the possibility of terrorists exploiting the confusion and
uncertainty of January 1, 2000 to breach security, tap into networks and wreak
havoc. The computer details are well done, explaining complex concepts clearly
without being condescending. Good suspense following the team as they figure
out how the program works and unveil the terrorists' plans. Recommended.
reviewed:
November, 1998
A Calculated Risk, by Katherine
Neville
Paperback, Ballantine
Books, 1994, $6.99, 343 pages
A young banker, infuriated that her
boss not only vetoed her proposal for a much-needed computer security upgrade
but also squelched her chance for a plum job at the Federal Reserve, launches a
plan to embezzle millions as a demonstration of the bank's vulnerability. Her
mentor joins the fun by betting her that his scheme to waylay Wall Street bonds
just long enough to skim the interest can net more cash in a shorter time.
A delightful romp with a parade of
cock-eyed characters and a rare insider's view into how money moves around the
globe. The technical details were dazzling and the relative ease with which the
protagonists cracked the system may drive me to stash my money under the
mattress. Somewhat marred by a mushy romantic sub-plot and a series of
flashbacks to the 18th century that never resolves itself with the contemporary
action, but still worth reading.
reviewed:
October, 1999
Ulterior Motive, by Daniel
Oran
Hardback, Kensington Books, 1998, 310 pages,
$22.95
A Megasoft
project manager stumbles upon a murder in progress in the company parking lot
and by the next day all traces of the dastardly deed are covered up. Teaming
with a journalist and a programmer buddy, they probe deeper and uncover a link
between the murder and the presidential campaign being waged by Megasoft's CEO. Fired and discredited, they run for their
lives while trying to understand and expose a massive conspiracy.
Oran is the former Microsoft manager
who invented the start button and the task bar in Windows 95. My hero. His
humorous - and depressing - depiction of the corporate culture of a big
Seattle-based software conglomerate rings true. Nerd touches include
reconstructing deleted files, cracking passwords and back-door access built
into widely-distributed software. A fun book and an easy read. The paperback is
now available.
reviewed:
September, 2000
Hard Time, by Sara Paretsky
Hardcover, Delacorte Press, 1999, 385 pages,
$24.95
When
private investigator V.I Warshawski stops to help an injured
woman abandoned on the Chicago streets, the police try to frame her for a hit
and run. To protect herself, she starts snooping into the young Filipina
nanny-turned-prisoner's life. As she closes in on the city's biggest security
firm, crooked cops, a global entertainment empire, a state senator and a
woman's prison she becomes a prisoner herself and draws on deep reserves of
courage and compassion to clear her name and expose corruption.
This long-awaited novel is Paretsky's ninth in the series but the first since 1994.
The haunting prison details are based on a Human Right's Watch report on
women's prisons and are horrifying. Computers, although not taking center
stage, crunch their data throughout the novel. An online service, Life Stories,
is used by everyone to dig up the dirt on everyone else. The discipline of
backing up her data every night helps Warshawski keep
an innocent man from being framed. And, in the end, cracking the obvious e-mail
password of someone who should have known better brings the whole evil shebang
to a halt. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
October, 2004
The Body of David Hayes, by Ridley
Pearson
Hardback,
Hyperion, 2004, $23.95, 344 pages
When embezzler David Hayes is
released from prison he immediately contacts Liz Boldt,
wife of Seattle Detective Lou Boldt. Liz is head of
the bank’s IT office and once had a secret affair with Hayes, nicknamed “Chip”
because he had control of everything in the bank with a computer chip in it.
The $17 million is still floating around somewhere, the Russian Mafia is after
Hayes, and Liz is his best bet for gaining access to the bank’s mainframes.
Pearson is a popular police
procedural writer; this is the ninth in the Lou Boldt
series. The computer details are relatively sparse: an episode in an Internet
Café; crooks watching a meeting by scheduling it under the eye of an
Internet-enabled highway camera; and, of course, the embezzlement from the
bank’s mainframe. Well written, interesting characters. You’ll get more out of
it if you read the series in order.
reviewed:
April, 2002
The Seville Communion, by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Paperback, Harcourt-Brace, 1999, 375 pages, $14.00
A
diabolically clever hacker breaks into the Vatican's computer system, leaving
an urgent plea to "Save Our Lady of the Sorrows." The Curia sends its
dirty tricks man, Father Lorenzo Quart, to Seville to visit a crumbling Baroque
church threatened by developers. What results is a dark battle between
tradition and modernity, greed and sacrifice, sacred and secular.
The writing is elegant, the
characters engaging but the real star of this novel is Seville itself. The
computer sections are a scream. I adored the cassocked young Irish Jesuits
tending the server, torn between their duty to guard the Pope's e-mail and their
grudging l admiration of the talented hacker. The hacker's identity is a daring
surprise that will leave you grinning. Perez-Reverte
writes what have been called "thinking man's beach books," and this
one is highly recommended.
reviewed:
February, 1999
Terminal Games, by Cole Perriman
paperback, Bantam Books, 1994, $5.99,
546 pages
High-tech fantasy turns into a
real-life nightmare when members of the exclusive online service Insomnimania are murdered. The L.A. cops write off Marianne
Hedison as a crank when she calls with a tip that the
murders might have been committed by Augie, a clown
in her computer, but start taking her seriously when she downloads an animation
from the "snuff room" that contains details that only the murderer
could know.
A chilling depiction of what happens
when the fuzzy borders between fantasy and reality become blurred. Lots of
technical details for the geek audience. My favorite character was Prichard, a
systems operator who maintains a virus menagerie and feeds his pets software to
gobble up and keep them thriving. A highly original plot that will keep you
guessing until the chilling ending. Be warned that there are explicit scenes in
the "pleasure dome."
reviewed:
September, 1999
01-01-00: The Novel of the
Millennium, by R.J. Pineiro
Hardback, Forge Books, 1999, 320 pages,
$24.95
On December 11, 1999 all the
computers in the world stop for 20 seconds. The next day they stop for 19. The
day after for 18. It seems to be a countdown to the millennium, but a countdown
to what? The FBI pinpoints the source of the presumed virus to a remote Mayan
ruin in Guatemala; Japanese astronomers in Peru hone in on the same location
when they receive what appears to be a signal from an extraterrestrial
intelligence. Throw in a gang of ruthless terrorists hired by a French
bureaucrat to dog the FBI's footsteps and steal their discoveries, and you have
a real nail-biter in your hands.
Austin-based AMD engineer R.J. Pineiro has penned his best book ever, sort of Indiana
Jones meets the Y2K bug. The mathematical puzzle is intriguing, and all of the
evidence is laid out before you so you can match wits with the protagonists.
The details of how a virus is traced are fascinating, introducing concepts such
as cocoons and sniffers. The Mayan subplot had me
scrambling to the Internet to learn more. Highly recommended!
reviewed:
May, 1999
Breakthrough, by R.
J. Pineiro
Paperback, Tor
Books, 1997, $6.99, 381 pages
Jake Fisher's organic bio-chip,
using proteins to process information, is at the heart of a radical new
computer, one hundred times faster than current PCs. Jake and his Russian
émigré sidekick are within months of putting his new chip on every desktop.
Everyone else is out for blood. The "vulture capitalists" want to
sell him out to cash in on their investment. The CIA and FBI plot to stop him
before the silicon chip industry goes belly-up and destroys the stock market.
And the Germans hire a hit man to bump him off and steal his ideas so they can
corner this lucrative niche and revive an economy drained by the absorption of
the East. Jake goes on the lam to save his patents - and his life.
The intriguing possibility of
organic memory is fascinating but the real gripper in this plot is the
realistic portrayal of how venture capitalists manipulate high-tech industries.
Pineiro, an engineer with AMD in Austin, wrote a real
winner.
reviewed:
February, 2003
Cyberterror, by RJ Piniero
Hardback, Forge, 2003, $25.95, 400 pages
Alamo PC has been good to R.J. Piniero. We invited him to speak at our meeting. We
listened, enthralled, as he read from his novels. We bought his books, asked
for his autograph, invited him back. So how does he thank us? In his very next
book, in chapter one, HE BLOWS UP SAN ANTONIO. If we cheer louder next time, Rogelio,
will you blow up Austin instead?
Terrorists hacked into the computer
programs that regulate San Antonio's gas mains, increasing the pressure so that
the lines exploded. San Antonio was reduced to rubble, 70,000 dead. The new
federal Counter Cyberterrorism Task Force is soon on
the tail of Cuban mercenary Ares Kulzak, a slippery
terrorist bent on revenge for the murder of his parents by U.S. troops during
the Bay of Pigs invasion and his beautiful Lebanese sidekick, Kishna. Through Florida, into New Orleans and Austin,
ending in San Francisco, the good guys battle the bad guys pitting both brawn
and brain in a battle for the survival of America.
The virtual reality battles are just
as gripping as the physical world fights and the intelligent agent software
programs, freed of their Turning inhibitors, are brilliant antagonists. I
learned more about practical uses for the Ada
programming language and von Neumann's solution to the problem of infinite
regress than I have a right to know. Piniero has a
knack for explaining complex, cutting edge technology in an understandable way,
and there's lots of technology to explain.
Perhaps because it opened in San
Antonio, this novel scared the heck out of me. Here we are worried about
terrorists infiltrating our borders while much of the havoc described in this
book could be carried out with the terrorist a continent away.
Although Piniero
doesn't address it, San Antonio has become a hub for defense against cyberterrorism. Anchored at the University of Texas in San
Antonio, the new Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) is
training a new generation of cyber-professionals to protect the information
infrastructure that underpins our entire economy. Attracted in part by the Air
Intelligence Agency on Security Hill at Lackland Air
Force Base, more than 40 private companies here are in the infrastructure and
assurance field. The number is expected to double in the next five years,
fuelled by a new Information Technology and Assurance Academy which will train
workers at the high school through graduate school levels.
So next time, R.J., annihilate
Amarillo. Level Lubbock. Terrorize Tyler. But leave San Antonio alone. We're
ready for you.
reviewed:
July, 2002
Conspiracy.com, by R.J. Pineiro
Paperback, Forge Books, $7.99, 2001, 421 pages
With the
ink barely dry on their Stanford diplomas, Mike and Victoria are lured by
too-good-to-be-true job offers to move to Austin. They soon suspect that they
have fallen into something dangerous and illegal, their misgivings conformed
when they are enlisted by the FBI to rat out their companies. His software
company and her bank are in an unholy alliance with a rogue element of the IRS
to launder money that is being diverted to bolster Castro's Cuba. Battling an
enemy who will kill to protect their evil scheme, the agent uses guns and force
while Mike employs his programming and hacking skills to expose the villains
and save their lives.
The first few chapters sound like
John Grisham's "The Firm," but the high-tech details make this a gem
for nerds. Mike's value to the company is a virtual reality/artificial
intelligence/security database interface that he developed as part of his
master's thesis. The final showdown reads like a computer game with real life
battles played out on a virtual terrain. A fascinating glimpse into the future.
Pineiro was a presenter at the June Alamo PC monthly
meeting.
reviewed:
September, 2002
Firewall, by R.J.Piniero
Hardcover, Tom Doherty Associates, 2002, $25.95, 493 pages
When
Computer mogul Mortimer Fox keels over from a heart attack he leaves half of
the access codes to a U.S. military spy satellite with his bodyguard, Bruce
Tucker. His estranged daughter, Monica has the other half. The code, called the
Ultimate Encryption, is guarded by an artificial intelligence clone scheduled
to self-destruct if not contacted in 30 days. Monica is abducted from a Mafia
boss's estate on the Isle of Capri by East German agents hired by the North
Koreans (really!) and Tucker is branded a shoot-to-kill traitor by his former
CIA bosses. The two are in a race to converge passwords before the code shuts
down or the enemies get it.
Mainstream reviewers dinged Firewall
for taking too many detours into computer la-la land, but we geeks appreciate Pineiro's fine hand with the geeky underpinnings of the
high-tech thriller. This is Pineiro's richest novel
yet, with finely nuanced characters and a twisty yet coherent plot that will
keep you turning the pages. The AI is so well drawn that he counts as a third
protagonist; he finally overloads his circuits from mourning the suffering is
real-time camera record of the suffering of the world. Recommended.
reviewed:
March, 2002
Shut Down, by R. J. Pineiro
Paperback, Forge, 2000, 367 pages, $7.99
Planes crash,
factories explode and trains derail across the U.S When the cause is traced to
faulty computer chips the problem lands on the desk of FBI analyst Erika
Conklin, a one time hacker sentenced to duty with the Feds in lieu of prison.
Erika uncovers a horrifying cyberterrorism scheme
launched by a cabal of highly placed Japanese businessmen and bureaucrats who
are alarmed by Japan's failing economy and scheme to undermine confidence in
the dominant American chip manufactures. Erika uses all of her hacking skills
to find all of the faulty chips and stop the Japanese before more innocent
Americans die.
Rogelio Pineiro
is the director of K-8 engineering at AMD in Austin, and he knows his stuff.
The paperback came out in October and was slightly revised to reflect the
events of 9-11. Shut Down is a geek reader's dream, even containing a short
lesson on how to read the 1 and 0s of computer code. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
July, 2000
Y2K, by R.J. Pinero
Paperback, Tor Books, 1999, 384 pages, $6.99
CIA field
agent Kate Donaldson resigns rather than take the fall for a badly botched
mission to protect the participants in a Y2K conference in London. She moves to
Austin, opens a high tech security firm and is soon entangled with the same
terrorists that ended her legendary 19-year career. Serbian strongman Slobodan
Milosevic is determined to exploit the Y2K bug to extort money from developed
nations. One of Kate's clients - and new romantic interest - has developed a
program that can ferret out two-digit dates and fix them. The Serbs steal the
program with the intent of un-fixing the fixes. She battles ruthless killers in
Austin and Belgrade to save her sweetie and keep the powerful and dangerous
software out of terrorist hands.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief on
January second - never again would I have to read another Y2K thriller. Pineiro's latest kept beckoning me from the bookshelf,
though, and I'm glad I succumbed. The explanation of the Y2K problem is
impeccable, and reminded me that because of the "windowing"
techniques that patch rather than fix many programs, Y2K ain't
over 'til it's over. His high tech terrorist scenario is plausible and
frightening. There are several harrowing descriptions of Serbian torture
techniques that are not for the faint-hearted. You will learn how to say
"thank-you," "I'm sorry" and "rape" in
Serbo-Croatian. Austin-based AMD employee Piniero
always offers a fun and fast-paced thriller, and in Y2K he gives Alamo PC
members a bonus with a San Antonio-born heroine.
reviewed:
September, 1998
Hard Drive, by David
Pogue
paperback, Ace Books, $5.50, 288 pages, 1995
A brilliant, greedy programmer turns
traitor and plants a destructive virus in a groundbreaking MacIntosh
voice recognition program. The bug is designed to be discovered before the
product is shipped to cause enough of a delay to allow the competition to
release their rival product first. The virus slips through during the beta
testing and ends up in the final release version. A band of young programmers
race against the clock to kill the virus and save their company.
If you read this book you will
never, never, never insert a floppy disk, download a program from the Internet
or even breathe before you run a virus checking program. This is an engaging, fast-paced
and realistic scenario of how a virus spreads and the awful destruction it can
wreak. There were tears in my eyes as an officer of the Houston Mac Users Group
ignores the beeps of his anti-virus program and spreads the virus throughout
Texas. Pogue is the author of the popular "Mac for Dummies" books and
he knows his stuff. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
March, 2001
Lucy Crocker 2.0:
a Novel, by Caroline Preston
Hardcover, Scribner, 2000, $23.00, 352 pages
Life is
pretty good for Lucy Crocker, but after she suffers a string of miscarriages
her husband distracts her by prodding her to design a computer game. Maiden's
Quest becomes a bestseller and her life falls apart. The cosy
software house that her husband founded becomes a heartless corporation, he
starts sneaking off to hotel rooms for tantric
massages with his PR director and her twin sons spend their days ogling
Internet porn. Control of the Maiden's Quest sequel is wrested away from her
and the dreamy heroine is transformed into a busty gun-toting bleached blonde.
Enough! A dispirited Lucy escapes to a family cabin in the Wisconsin north
woods to reinvent herself and her dysfunctional family.
I confess: this is neither mystery
nor thriller, but the computer details are so rich that I couldn't pass it up.
The marketing details were especially compelling. Even though Maiden's Quest I
was the best-selling game ever, surveys indicate that most games are bought by
teenaged boys who lust after sex and violence so let's pander to the lowest common
denominator in the sequel. This type of thinking gets my dander up and the
novel captures the tyranny of focus groups perfectly. Lucy Crocker was a
book-of-the-month club selection and highly recommended for those who favor
Oprah-type books with a high-tech twist.
reviewed:
August, 2000
Foolproof, by Dianne Pugh
Paperback, Pocket Star Books, 1998, 514 pages, $6.99
Bridget
and Kip Cross disagree about the future of Pandora Software, their cutting-edge
game company. Bridget wants to take it public; Kip just wants to program the
latest Slade Slayer scenario and sleep with 5-year-old Brianna's nanny. However
you slice it, Bridget will win - she's the majority stockholder. But not for
long. She's brutally murdered, Kip is pegged by the cops as the chief suspect
and their traumatized daughter is the only witness. Broker Iris Thorne is
appointed trustee of little Brianna's shares. Is the murderer the cutthroat
venture capitalist, a sinister media watchdog group, one of Kip's
bimbos or Kip himself?
Although the technical details are
skimpy, video game shoot-em-up culture is a running
theme throughout the book. You'll get some amusing insights into how a computer
game is developed and how the companies producing them are financed. The
characters are amusing, the plot twisty and the writing competent. A good book
to read on the beach.
reviewed:
January, 2000
The Ultimate Rush,
by
Joe Quirk
Paperback, St. Martin's Press, 1999, $6.99, 400 pages
Chet Griffin
is a twenty-something. living-on-the-edge pierced and tattooed, rollerblading
courier. He harbors a secret crush on a lesbian bass player/daycare worker, and
his best friend and next-door neighbor is Danny, a paraplegic programmer. He
sleeps naked with a boa constrictor wrapped around his torso, lives on sugar
and is on federal probation for computer hacking. His life is about to turn
weird. When his boss pays him a bundle to deliver computer disks, he's marked
as the fall guy in a battle involving Chinese and Italian Mafiosi, corrupt San
Francisco police officers and investment bankers. Chet pieces together the
pieces of a lethal insider-trading scam and figures that the only way to get
out alive is to expose the criminals.
Once Chet is lured back into hacking
there's no stopping him. He worms his way into hacker bulletin boards, go
head-to-head with arch enemy MP Phred (feared to be a
fed), breaks the code on scrambled disks, phreaks the
phone company and taps into his boss's computer. There is enough techo-minutiae to keep even the most die-hard geek happy.
The chase and escape scenes are awesome. If I hadn't already destroyed my knees
playing volleyball, I would have rushed out to buy a pair of inline skates to
try the bit where he leaps over a car door. The writing was excellent, even
poetic at times, but be forewarned that the character's alternative lifestyles
are described in sordid detail. The outrageous characters come across as
touchingly vulnerable and naïve. This was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Recommended.
reviewed:
August, 1999
Flame War, by Joshua
Quittner and Michelle Slatalla
Paperback, Avon Books, 1997, 291 pages,
$12.00
Lawyer wannabe Harry Garrett tries
to impress beautiful girl-geek Annie Ames by helping her figure out who bumped
off her father with an exploding diskette. They play footsie
with the Crypto Urban Militia, an underground organization opposed to the
government's plans for public-key cryptography and a warped genius who is
marketing a program that thumbs its nose at the feds by guaranteeing absolute
privacy for every user. Harry and Annie stumble through secure networks,
retrace her father's secret life in computer MUDs and
MOOs and uncover a dastardly plot to take over the
world.
I kept expecting Nancy Drew and the
Hardy Boys to show up for a guest spot in this embarrassingly childish book.
The characters are cutesy and the plot transparent. But maybe I'm just hostile
at paying twelve bucks for a book that took less than an hour to read. With a
few exceptions, the technical details are on target, with realistic
descriptions of life in an online fantasy world and a decent explanation of the
issues surrounding data privacy. I'd like to know, though, how they managed to
get online without a modem and how a diskette bloated with enough C4 to make it
explode fit into the itty bitty laptop slot without anyone noticing.
reviewed:
June, 2003
Earthquake Games,
by
Bonnie Ramthun
Paperback, Jove, 2001, 352 pages, $6.99
A suicide at a military base and the
discovery of the mutilated corpse in Colorado's Great Sand Dunes draw police
detective Eileen Reed into a nightmare involving the "Taos Hum,"
suspected alien abductions and killer earthquakes. An ambitious politician gets
appointed as a regional FEMA director and steals plans for one of Nikola Tesla's odder inventions: an earthquake machine.
Under the guise of legitimate government-sponsored experiments, he carries out
his real plan, to create a monstrous disaster, declare martial law, and take
over the Western US.
Computers play a minor, yet critical
role. Reed's boyfriend, a Defense Department war gamer, uncovers map
coordinates that predict the location of earthquakes hidden, using a technique
called steganography, in soft porn pix on a dead
scientist's zip disks. He's able to plug the data into his computer simulation
(using a souped-up laptop he calls the Frankenputer) to unearth the motive for the crimes. This is
the second in an excellent series - Ground Zero was reviewed in January, 2001.
Geeks of all varieties will find this a satisfying read.
reviewed:
January, 2001
Ground Zero, by Bonnie Ramthun
Paperback, Berkley, 1999, 341 pages, $6.99
Terry
Guzman, a Department of Defense war game programmer, is found dead in a locked
room, a sharpened screwdriver protruding from her back. Everyone has reasons
for wishing Terry dead. An indifferent programmer, she has been blackmailing
fellow gamers to clean up her code, and a string of other dead bodies hint at
her participation in a spy ring that stretches from the Rockies to Uzbekistan.
Colorado Springs cop Eileen Reed teams up with CIA analyst Lucy Giometti to solve the locked room mystery without revealing
the country's highest secrets.
First-time novelist Ramthun was a Defense war gamer herself and she got the details
just right: the tension, anticipation, camaraderie, even the donuts. The how-dunnit facet of the plot is quickly solved, and a knowledge
of computers helps you outguess the detective. The who-dunnit
has a computer solution as well. Two strong women protagonists are rare in a
computer/military mystery but Ramthun pulls it off
with elegance. Her second book, Earthquake games, has just been released in
hardback.
reviewed:
November, 1998
Trading Reality, by Michael
Ridpath
Paperback, Harper Collins, 1998, $6.99, 440
pages
The founder of a virtual reality
development company on the brink of a major breakthrough suspects that his
stock is being manipulated and asks his brother, a London bond trader, for
advice. A few weeks later he is murdered. The brother takes control of the
company and gets a crash-course in virtual reality as he tries to save the
fledgling business, track the source of the strange market fluctuations and
unmask his brother's killer.
Something for everybody in this
tightly written thriller, especially for those interested in how high-tech,
high-stakes startups are financed. There was an intriguing glimpse of how bonds
will be traded in the future -- the London trader uses an experimental virtual
reality program, "bondscape," to guide him through
a rough day's trading caused by Alan Greenspan's prediction of a rise in
interest rates. The author is a former bond trader who now works with a venture
capital firm. He knows his stuff.
reviewed:
June, 2001
The Devil Went Down to Austin, by Rick Riordan
Hardback, Bantam Doubleday Dell, June 2001, 336 pages, $23.95
UTSA
professor and part-time investigator Tres Navarre is
preparing for a summer gig teaching English lit at UT-Austin when he learns
that his older brother put up the family ranch as collateral for a software
startup. Someone sabotaged Garrett's innovative security program during beta
testing to force a cheap sale. A partner is murdered and Garret is in the frame
for the hit. Tres has to tie up the loose ends to
save his brother and the ranch.
San Antonio's own Rick Riordan,
winner of the Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus awards, will be at Remember the Alibi
Mystery Bookstore on June 16 at 2 p.m. to sign his new book. This is the fourth
entry in the hip, literate and fast-paced Tres Navarre
series but the first one with a high-tech theme. The plot revolves around a
back door in the software that gave the saboteurs a way in to toy with the
sensitive files of the companies involved in the beta test. Even though it's
set in Austin there are enough San Antonio references to sustain our local
pride. After you read this one you won't rest easy until you catch up with the
rest of the series
reviewed:
June, 2003
Claire and Present Danger, by Gillian Roberts
Hardcover, Ballantine, 2003, 256 pages, $23.95
Philadelphia
high school teacher and part-time sleuth Amanda Pepper interviews a new client,
who wants her prospective daughter-in-law checked out. The fiancée is a mystery
woman, whose friends and lovers have been felled by accidents, suicides and
even murders. When the client herself dies, the fiancée begs Amanda to discover
why her life is such a wreck.
Computers play only a minor role -
one of Amanda's students is undergoing a crisis, and she tracks it down to a
nasty blog, a WebLog
maintained by a popular student who is using the Internet to ruin the
reputation of the persecuted freshman. This is the first mention of a blog I've seen in a computer crime novel. This is the 11th
in the popular series.
reviewed:
April, 2003
The Dutch, by Les Roberts
Hardcover, St. Martin's, 2001, $23.95, 293 pages
A grieving
father, needing closure, hires Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich
to find out why his daughter committed suicide - "did the Dutch" in
cop slang. Ellen Carmine seems to have been a homely, lonely and overweight
young woman who found fulfillment in her career as a successful Web designer.
Deeper probing reveals that she has been spending all of her spare time in lonleyhearts chat rooms and her employer makes most of its
money peddling porn. Just as Jacovich figures out
that Ellen was murdered, links to a snuff film start popping up and two tough
guys try to bully him into dropping the case.
This is the 12th in a solid series. Jacovich, a computer neophyte, hires his teenaged son's girlfirend to explain the intricacies of chat rooms, and
readers can learn along with him. Beware that some of it gets more explicit
than the more prudish among us may feel comfortable with. There is also some
password cracking and a mini-seminar on Web link marketing. A decent private
eye tale, well told, although a little preachy in places.
reviewed:
October, 2002
Purity in Death, by J.D. Robb
Paperback, Berkeley, 2002. $7.99, 355 pages
In the New
York City of 2059. police lieutenant Eve Dallas is called to the scene of a
gruesome crime that is soon attributed to a group of high-placed vigilantes
using a computer virus to kill off the sexual predators and drug dealers that
the justice system let off the hook. The virus is the first known to be
passable to humans. By manipulating visual and audio stimuli, the virus causes
a fatal brain infection. As Eve and her sidekick Peabody track down the
conspirators, her husband, Roarke, and a team of
police computer experts, "e-men" - attempt to isolate the virus
without falling victim themselves.
Although this series attempts to
realistically portray the world 50 years hence, I found the computer
predictions laughably timid. The mayor's PR guy, for example, hands over
calendar information on a floppy disk, when even today we can just beam that
information handheld to handheld. Computers do play a major role in the plot,
however, and futurists might find it amusing. J.D. Robb is a pseudonym for
popular romance writer Nora Roberts. I found the sexually explicit interaction
between Dallas and Roarke sleazy. If you like this
genre - sci-fi/crime/romance - you might want to
start at the beginning of the series as much of the character development
presumes that you've read them all.
reviewed:
December, 2000
The Devil's Code,
by
John Sandford
Hardback, Putnam, October, 2000, 321 pages $25.95
After a
ten-year hiatus, Kidd's back A cryptic message a murdered colleague left for
Kidd sets him on the trail with gal pal LuEllen and
hacker buddy Bobby in search of a clutch of hidden Jaz
disks. Kidd is soon alerted that he has been falsely fingered as a member of
"Firewall," a group of rogue hackers that has been disrupting
government services. All roads lead to a sinister contractor ostensibly working
on the Clipper Chip but snatching and selling classified satellite photos to
foreign governments on the sly. Kidd has to solve the crime to save his life
and it wouldn't ruin his day if he made a little money on the side.
This is geek writing at its finest.
Fans of Sanford's "Prey" books might get frustrated at the leisurely
pace of this laid back caper, but the technical details are believable and
intriguing. When the sister of a recently murdered colleague drops in on Kidd,
he's crouched on the floor stringing together recycled PCs, networking them
into a super computer. There are also hackers, denial of service attacks,
cryptic disks, government security, telephone phreaking
and computer bulletin boards -- you name it, it's here. Although I enjoyed this
book, wait for the paperback. It's good, but not a hardback keeper.
reviewed:
October, 2000
The Empress File,
by
John Sanford
Paperback, Berkley Pub Group; 368 pages, 1991 (reissue), $7.99
A small town
cop with an itchy trigger finger and a new machine gun takes down a 14-year-old
computer genius, mistaking his bag of rocky road ice cream for a snatched
purse. The black citizens of the sleepy Mississippi Delta town decide enough is
enough and call in Kidd, an artist who fills in the dead time with a spot of
tarot card reading, burglary, mayhem and computer hacking. He and his sometime
lover, LuEllen, use their computer skills to sting
the corrupt mayor and town council . . . and snap up a bit of much needed cash
on the side.
My copy of this book is so old that
the author appears under his real name, John Camp, instead of his more famous
pseudonym, best-selling author John Sanford. Fans of Sanford's "Prey"
books will find this one to be more of a caper than a thriller, with crackling
dialog and a fast-moving plot. In this pre-Internet era, most of the computer
action involves BBSs and hacking. This is the second
in a series - "Fool's Run" was the first. The third book, The Devil's
Code, just hit the shelves in October. Before you grab the sure-to-be
bestseller, catch up on the prequels.
reviewed:
May, 2004
The Hanged Man’s Song, by John Sandford
Hardback, Putnam, 2003, $25.95, 321 pages
Kidd and LuEllen
are back on their fourth outing. The renegade hacker pair is alarmed when
Bobby, the center of their occasionally criminal network, drops out of sight.
They don’t know his real name and have no idea where he lives so it takes a
while to discover that he’s been murdered. While they mourn the loss of this
man they never met they realize that they must recover his stolen laptop - who
knows what secrets lie within? With the help of a precocious ten-year-old girl
hacker, they cross the country, elude a renegade CIA agent and look for the
missing computer.
Sanford is much better known for his
“Prey” series, but I find these better written and immensely more entertaining.
These are odd novels - lots of action, lots of laughs, amusing characters and
violence galore. As with all of the books in this series, there is plenty of
technology. Best to read them in order: Fool’s Run, The Empress File, The
Devil’s Code, then this one. Recommended.
reviewed:
December, 2002
Pearl
Harbor Dot Com, by Winn Schwartau
Paperback, Interpact Press, 2002, $9.99 512
pages
Computers start malfunctioning across the United States. Eccentric high
tech journalist Tucker Starre, reentering the
workforce after his wife was murdered by a cyber stalker, suspects terrorism.
He's right. A Japanese industrialist, a child during the bombing of Hiroshima,
has collected a corrupt crew of craven crackers to destroy American computers
as revenge for World War II. Starre is the only one
who suspects a coordinated plot instead of random breakdown. He mobilizes a
rag-tag team of hackers to get to the root of the cyber terrorism before the
country is brought to its knees.
Schwartau wrote this book as "Terminal
Compromise" in 1990. It had a small distribution and many, he says,
accused him of being a paranoid scaremonger. This is a re-write that eliminates
the Y2K issues present in the first book and adds post-9/11 insights. This is a
great techie book - lots of detail about our country's reliance on computers
and the generally lackadaisical attitude towards computer security. Extracts
from the book are on his Web site, www.security-aware.com
reviewed:
May, 1999
The Center, by David
Shobin
Paperback, St. Martin's, 1997, $4.99, 346
pages
When Maxine Lassiter's sister needs to have her tonsils removed she
checks her into The Center, a revolutionary new hospital where computers, not
doctors, treat the patients. The Center reports back that little Christine died
of an unsuspected heart defect, but the records are missing and her body is
never released. Maxine turns to one of the hospital's creators to help solve
the mystery. Something has gone terribly wrong with The Center, but is its
being caused by the computers or humans?
The Center raises serious questions about high-tech medicine. Can a
robot replace a surgeon? Is an algorithm a substitute for a diagnostician? Is a
cure more important than compassion? Are we too trusting of technology? The
author is a doctor himself and his dark vision of the future of high-tech
medical care is terrifying.
reviewed:
April, 2001
Eyeball
Wars: A Novel of Dot-Com
Intrigue, by David Meerman Scott
Hardback, 2001, Freshspot Publishing, $24.00, 351
pages.
Richard Williams, the playboy slacker son of an overbearing media mogul,
is exiled to California to run the family's fledgling Web site. Just as Richard
starts grasping the potential of the Internet, his father withdraws his backing
and sets up his wayward son for dismal failure or self-made success. As the
last of the money trickles away, Richard has to grow up or give up.
By page twenty I was convinced that if I had to spend one more minute
with Richard Williams I would puke. By page 100 I was rooting for him to
succeed. Trust me, Richard and his buddies grow on you. Not strictly a mystery,
but plenty of intrigue. This book takes a thoughtful stance on the tension
between the old media and the new, with insightful and funny commentary on what
the Web must deliver if it is to succeed commercially. I loved the experimental
Japanese toilet that analyzes body wastes and instantly transmits the results
to your physician over a secure Web connection. The scene where Richard and his
buddy rush to hook up a presentation in an unfamiliar conference room is sure
to resonate with the slideshow crowd. Great insight on the inner working of
venture capital. A must-read for anyone involved in e-commerce. It made me
laugh and made me rethink the design and purpose of several of my Web sites. An
unbeatable combination.
reviewed:
August, 2002
Easy
Money, by Jenny Siler
Paperback, St Martins, 2000, $6.99 353 pages
Raised by a drug runner dad in Key West, Allie Kerry will courier
anything, anywhere, any time. The easy money is a pickup outside of Seattle.
Just a computer disk. No sweat, right? Wrong. The hot hidden data on the list ties
a massacre during the Vietnam War to a drug running scheme in the present day.
People will kill to keep it secret and the lure of easy money turns into hard
bargain for Allie.
This was Siler's first novel - she's since published another and has a
hardback due out in September. She has proved to be a lyrical writer with a
feel for plot and a compelling, hardboiled heroine. The computer disk, although
a bit player, had a unique twist. The hidden data was concealed in a computer
game and was revealed only when the game was won. Don't expect to see Allie's
computer buddy in a sequel - he's toast.
reviewed:
November, 2001
The
Raptor Virus, by Frank Simon
Paperback, Broadman & Holman, 2001,
$12.99, 344 pages
The Chinese government is masterminding a cyber-terrorist attack on the
U.S., embedding a rogue circuit on Pacific Rim-made circuit boards that will
cripple the telecommunications infrastructure. Paul, a yacht broker and
part-time CIA researcher, hears murmurs of the scheme and consults his friend
Hanna. The Chinese, wary of Hanna because of her success in foiling a previous
Chinese Y2K plot, first try to fob her off with a well-paying but time wasting
programming job and, when that doesn't work, send a hit squad after her and her
new husband and stepson. Paul, meanwhile, races to smuggle a defector out of
Hong Kong so that the chips can be repaired before the U.S. economy is ruined.
The plot is excellent, with plenty of high-tech suspense. It made me wonder
whether it is wise for us to rely so heavily on cheap computer components made
in nations that are not sympathetic with U.S. interests. On the downside, the
writing was dreadful, getting bogged down in irrelevant detail and in a style
that would make your high school English teacher cringe. Although I didn't
realize it when I bought it, the book is categorized as Christian fiction. I
have nothing against that genre, but these protagonists come across as
self-righteous prigs and those who do not embrace fundamental Christianity may
be made uncomfortable by the smug preachiness of
parts of this book. The author is a computer consultant in Dallas.
reviewed:
March, 2000
Coffin's
Got the Dead Guy on the Inside, by Keith Snyder
Paperback, 1999, Walker and Co, 287 pages, $5.99
Struggling electronic musician Jason Keltner
is so engrossed with composing a music fragment that he forgot to earn the rent
money, so when spymaster Norton Platt offers him big bucks to baby sit a
computer geek he reluctantly signs up for the job. There is a murder during
their first outing, and the bad guys suspect that he swiped a mysterious
"dongle" needed to crack the code for a new compression technology
that will revolutionize computer games.
The title refers to an old joke about musicians: "What's the
difference between a cello and a coffin? The coffin's got the dead guy on the
inside." The writing is fast-paced and funny, the plot wacky, and the
characters appealing. I only knew of dongles as the easily lost and breakable
appendages to laptop modems, but apparently they can serve other purposes (I
won't give it away.) This fun book - the Three Stooges meet the Maltese Falcon
- will probably appeal most to a 20-something audience, but its well worth
reading.
reviewed: October, 2001
Murder.Com:
The Dark Side of the Net,
by Sarah St. Peter
Paperback, Dageforde
Publishing, 1999, 250 p, $7.99
Successful software saleswoman Elizabeth
Strong emerged from an abusive childhood with her psyche held together by
bailing wire and duct tape. Her fragile sanity crumbles when her father, a
recent Alcoholics Anonymous convert, reappears and asks for forgiveness. She
gives him an old computer and gets him onto the Internet so they can keep in
touch, then mails him a disk elaborately rigged to release a deadly puff of
deadly botulism bacteria when the disk is inserted into the drive.
In real life the author is a stand-up
comedian but don’t expect a funny book – this is a dark novel about the
disintegration of a personality. The explanation of rigging the disk with
botulism is almost too real, written with more clarity than most computer
manuals. If I hated you, I now know enough to kill you this way. The title is
misleading – there is nothing .Com about it, except Elizabeth’s use of the
anonymity of the Internet to buy botulism. Recommended, but be prepared to be
depressed at the end.
reviewed: October, 2002
Oxford
Exit, by Veronica Stallwood
Hardback Scribner, 1994, 184 pages, $20.00
Kate Ivory is roped into a part time undercover job in the cataloging
department of Oxford's Bodleian Library. The library has recently automated its
card catalog and someone is using a loophole in the programming to steal rare
books and sell them in the black market. Kate has a nagging suspicion that the
thefts are somehow linked to the death of an intern, and puts her life in
danger to solve the crime.
Once you get over the unlikelihood that one of the world's preeminent
libraries would hire a romance writer with a knack for word processing to catch
a sophisticated computer hacker, the book is great. Lots of computer details,
engaging characters, a wonderful Oxford setting and a hilarious look at the
dark side of librarians. The computer database glitch is described in
believable detail. The scene of the annual Dewey Decimal System contest was a
hoot. Out of print; I got my copy at the Cody branch library, and the audio
cassette is still on the market. Recommended.
reviewed: June, 2005
Dirty Deeds, by Mark Terry
Trade paperback, High Country
Publishers, 2004, $12.95, 192 pages
Meg Malloy, after making millions from the sale of her software company, takes a trouble-shooting job to help a friend recover the donation records of a mega-church that disappeared in a crash of their secure Web server.
Nice debut novel for what promises
to become a series. Great technical details about data recovery, video
enhancement (did I forget to tell you about the porn video starring the
pastor’s daughter?) and a clever Trojan horse program.
reviewed: February,
2002
Camp
Conviction, by Natalie Buske Thomas
Paperback, Independent Spirit Publishing, 2000, 200 pages, $7.95
Nudged by a former client, Serena Wilcox, "the pizza-loving
detective," ships her assistant Karyn and family
off to snoop around Camp Conviction, a right-wing Bible enclave in Northern
Wisconsin. "The Chosen" interpret the Book of Revelations as a
prediction that the government will implant computer chips, the tools of Satan,
into our heads. As her colleagues are experiencing a near-fatal hayride, Serena
takes on the case of Jill, a lonely widow who has spilled too much of her
personal life into an Internet chat room. The cases converge, and a happy
resolution is achieved at (where else?) a pizza parlor.
This is a simple book, a Nancy Drew turns thirty caper, with
surprisingly good computer details. Jill's experience on the "women over
30" chat room, where a con man studies her postings to create a
sympathetic female buddy, is a harrowing warning about the often false intimacy
of the Internet. The author is a gutsy young mother who started her own
publishing company when the established presses brushed her off and developed a
loyal following. A quick, fun read.
reviewed:
October, 2003
Secrets
of the Wholly Grill, by Lawrence
Townsend
Hardback, Carol & Graf, 2002, $25.00, 330 pages
Thinksoft®'s new product - a modem-connected grill that
uses a special barbecue sauce infused with smoke crystals™ - is launched with a
massive marketing campaign that puts a shrink wrapped package of marinated steak
tips into every mailbox. The catch - the shrink wrap comes with an end user
license agreement. By breaking the seal you agree to two pages of legal
gobbledygook that gives Thinksoft® total
control of your food and your grill. Bumbling Lenny buys the $1,200 grill to
cook his free steak and is literally hooked. His grilling misadventures end up
as the centerpiece in a class action suit that challenges the broad language of
software licenses.
This is a powerful satire. By extending the licensing language and
methods (by opening this package you agree . . .) now generally accepted for
intellectual property to tangible goods - grills and food - the greed and
arrogance of software manufacturers is exposed and challenged. This is one of
the funniest books I have ever read, lampooning the social and legal
conventions we have become conditioned to accept. I read it straight through,
laughing all the way. One of my top ten: highly recommended.
reviewed:
August, 2004
Live Bait, by P.J. Tracy
Hardback, Putnam, 2004,
23.95, 320 pages
Four elderly Minneapolis-St. Paul residents, three of them holocaust survivors, are brutally murdered. The detectives, with the help of the Monkeewrench software gang, dig into the past to find the killer.
Monkeewrench,
the computer company that starred in Tracy’s first book, has developed a
program, FLEE, that helps police departments sort and analyze large amounts of
data collected in homicide cases. They’re getting ready to take their portable
computer crime lab on the road, which (I hope) means more books featuring this
engaging crew. Some neat bits about facial scanning and recognition software –
they’ve developed a program that can match faces right off the Internet.
Believable characters, a great plot with a surprise ending (which I won’t spoil
for you) and nice use of technology. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
April, 2003
Monkeewrench, by P.J. Tracy
Hardcover, Putnam's, 2003, $23.95, 384 pages
The staff of Monkeewrench software is devastated
when three local murders follow the scenarios of the beta release of their new
computer game, Serial Killer Detective.
They are an oddball crew, college friends who had been traumatized by a
friend’s murder. In fear for their own lives, they changed their names, skipped
town and developed a game where the killer is always caught. Initially hesitant
to blow their cover by calling the St. Paul police, they come to the sober
realization that there are 17 more scenarios available for download from their
Web site - and 17 more potential victims. The killer could be one of the beta
testers, their old nemesis come back to haunt them - or one of the Monkeewrench crew themselves.
P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of a mother-daughter writing team. This is
their first book and it is a sure-fire winner. The plot was fast-paced, the
ending a shocker, and the Monkeewrench crew crackled
with tension and energy. The technical challenge of figuring out which beta
testers have progressed far enough into the game to have knowledge of the fatal
scenarios is a clever puzzle that database gurus will enjoy. Highly
recommended.
reviewed:
September, 2004
The Bug, by Ellen Ullman
Hardback, Doubleday, 2003, $23.95, 355 pages
It’s 1984 and Ethan, an admitted mediocre programmer working on one of the first graphical, mouse-based interfaces for a database, has a persistent bug in his program. It’s intermittent, and the testers keep failing to get a core dump. Finding the bug starts consuming his time and eroding his confidence; his home life falls apart, his neighbors threaten to kill him.
If you do any C programming, read
this book NOW. There are vast swatches of code reprints and you can test your
skills to see if you beat the bug before the fictional programmers do. The
narrator is a quality assurance tester, and her perspective is also
enlightening. At heart, this is a philosophical novel about the boundaries
between man and machine. Highly recommended.
reviewed:
April, 2001
The
Man of Maybe Half-A-Dozen Faces, by Ray Vukcevich
Hardback, 2000, St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95, 245 pages
Prudence hires Skylight Howells, private eye, to find her brother,
Pablo, who is hiding in virtual reality, a suspect in the death of his business
partner. Prudence gets more than she bargained for. Skylight has multiple
personality disorder and his agency is staffed by alter-egos: Lulu, Dieter, Scarface, Dennis, the Average Guy . . . a whole cast of
loonies. Someone with a powerful grudge is bumping off bad technical writers,
like the guy who wrote a software manual and forgot to explain how to quit the
program. Skylight must find the killer before more bad writers end up in the
recycle bin of life.
I've been tempted to throttle the authors of some of the manuals I use,
so the premise was totally believable to me. It covers the gamut of computer
topics, from anonymous remailers, to virtual reality,
online hypertext help files and mailing lists. Vukcevich
is a computer programmer in the brain development lab at the University of
Oregon and has the technical detail down cold. This is a tightly crafted book
that sucks you into a frenzied world of bizarre characters and spits you out
delighted, exhausted and wanting more. It's a challenging read that required
considerable concentration to keep the surreal characters and complex plot
straight. Can't wait for the sequel.
reviewed:
October, 2001
Fatal
Practice, by Marvin J. Wanner
Paperback, Bookmark Publishing, 2001, 466 pages, $7.99
Robert Isen leads a boring life as a dentist
in Corpus Christi, filling cavities and shyly fantasizing about his beautiful
Costa Rican assistant. His world collapses when his brother-in-law and
nine-year-old niece are killed in a New York mob hit. In his pain and rage he
links up with a group of cybervigilates who exchange
revenge fantasies in Internet chat rooms. Although he soon comes to his senses,
his identity lingers on the Internet and he is forced to flee to escape the
wrath of the Mafia.
This first novel lacks polish but the characters are believable and the
plot compelling. It's a good read. A nasty rival for the beautiful Amanda's
affections clones the dentist's laptop hard drive and keeps the vigilante
identity alive long after the protagonist lost interest. An FBI agent feeds the
chat room flames. A toe briefly dipped into the dark side of the Internet can
turn into a life-threatening nightmare. You have been warned.
