2002 Past Reviews:
 Reviewed in December, 2002
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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 in December, 2002
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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 dieing 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 a insightful peek into hacker culture, the pressures of taking a small privately held company public and quite a bit about computer security.
Reviewed in November, 2002
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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 in November, 2002
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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 in October, 2002
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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 in 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 in September, 2002
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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 in September, 2002
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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 in August, 2002
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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 in August, 2002
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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 in July, 2002
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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 in July, 2002
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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 Silicon Valley setting and the word "mouse" in the title would be about computers, no? No! It's about genetic engineering. A knockout mouse is a rodent with a gene removed. Computers do figure tangentially in the plot and the milieu teems with computer people, but they take second place to the science. A good first novel with lots of well-explained detail about genetic engineering.
Reviewed in June 2002
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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 in June, 2002
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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 in April 2002
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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 in April, 2002
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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 Georgetown home. Detectives Frank Kearney and José Phelps lean toward suspecting a cyber-stalker serial killer based on traces left on the computers of two other murdered women, but cannot discount enemies made by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist's hard-hitting reporting or a missing brother with ties to the IRA. As they weave in and out of the worlds of elder statesmen, crack dealers, car thieves and dot com millionaires, Kearney and Phelps put their own lives in jeopardy.
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 Washington D.C., especially the scenes that centered around my old stomping grounds of Eastern Market and Ft. McNair. The writing was exceptional, the plot twisty and the characters three dimensional - I want to read more about them. Highly recommended.
Reviewed in March, 2002
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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 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 in March, 2002
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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 in February, 2002
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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 in February, 2002
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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 in January, 2002
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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 in January, 2002
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Sex and Murder.Com, by Mark Richard Zubro
Hardcover, Minotaur Books, 2001, 265 pages, $23.95
The co-founders of Chicago's answer to Microsoft are brutally murdered and detectives Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick don't buy the glib story that they were everyone's darlings. They uncover a sordid revenge-of-the-nerds sex game that the victims have been playing for years and a sad trail of failed companies that the young entrepreneurs gobbled up.
Without spoiling too much of the plot, the success of the company was based less on genius than on fraud. They hacked into promising small high-tech companies, and when they were hired to plug the security holes, they installed a back door that allowed them unlimited access to the other companies' secrets. The high tech details are excellent, but this is the sixth book in the series, and I felt like I had dropped in on the middle of a private conversation. Too much space was devoted to not very funny banter and the home life of the gay half of the detective duo and not enough to setting up the plot. Wait for the paperback.
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