Choppy, ditsy tale of a Gen-X slacker on the trail of a homicidal hacker who uses exploding floppy disks to eliminate fellow hackers who blunder through the ``back door'' of a data- encryption program. Coming off their nonfiction exposÇ of the hacker elite, Masters of Deception (1995), technology journalists Quittner and Slatalla deliver a cumbersome, talk-soggy cute-kids-in-peril adventure that often reads more like a niche-marketed YA. Harry Garnet, having failed to land a permanent job with a Syracuse firm after graduating from law school, is content to let another lazy summer slide by living in the Adirondacks and doing odd jobs around a nearby lakeside resort. One morning he innocently delivers a package containing a fatal floppy disk to math professor Frederick Ames and his slender, red-headed archaeologist daughter Annie. The disk explodes inside the professor's computer, killing him and putting Garnet in the hospital. Fascinated by Annie, Garnet later follows her to Manhattan, where he discovers an ``urban crypto militia'' that hangs out at Cafe Info, a computer-wired restaurant. There, he's befriended by the wealthy and pony-tailed Lionel Sullivan, a software designer who thinks that some madman is blowing up innocent computer geniuses who, like Professor Ames, have found a deadly flaw in a data-encryption program called Patriot, designed to protect user privacy on the Internet. Garnet agrees to use his untried legal skills to stop Patriot before a congressional subcommittee votes to impose it on the cyber community, while Sullivan helps him and Annie navigate a virtual- reality maze to find the killer. Quittner and Slatalla describe their hero's hapless heroics with a fey insouciance that becomes as cloying here as in their previous psychokiller whodunits (Mother's Day, 1993; Shoofly Pie to Die, 1992). Some fascinating cyber-scenes about how distinctive personality traits seep through the most impersonal computerized disguises, but abundantly clunky dialogue and cutesy asides stall the suspense.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-688-14366-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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