STONEFACE

Jailbreak artist/security consultant Allen Cage's first hardcover case pits him against Freeman McKee, christened ""Stoneface"" by two kids, Ben Hollister and John Malone, whom he terrorized in a Houston grade school. Now grown, fled to L.A., and making big bucks from a revolutionary computer-chip coating that Ben's formulated, the two find him in their high-rise one night and hire Cage to keep a rendezvous he's demanded. Stoneface doesn't take kindly to the interloper, and the upshot is a major diversion from Cake's arguments with live-in Caprita Arciaga over having children, as she spends half the story tied to a bed in the Eros Motel, and he's forced to round up Ben, John, and the formula for that coating. Trouble is, John's dead, Stoneface has an alibi, and the formula's already been published in Business Week.... Guaranteed to elevate your blood pressure--and make you glad you're only one of Jones's readers and not a member of his cast.