Reviews and More

I’m always late to get in on a hot trend. Just look at my last post, where it says I finally got an iPhone, a full two years after the initial release. This doesn’t only apply to tech products, either. I was late jumping on the Harry Potter bandwagon as well, and didn’t begin reading the series until the fourth book was released in 2000. But I ended up loving those books, and bought subsequent titles as soon as they were available — in paperback.

Since I enjoyed those books so much, I want to share the experience with my son. He’s just six now, so the content is still too difficult for him to read on his own, but in a few years he’ll be ready. I don’t want to pass on my cheapo paperbacks to him; I want to give him something more substantial, like this beautiful Harry Potter Boxed Set I saw on the Buy.com website.

This set contains all seven books from the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. These are all hardcover versions, and they come in a very nice, decorative box that looks like a trunk — complete with working lock and key!

This is collector’s set that any Harry Potter fan would love to have. It’s on sale for $117 right now, which is 40% off the suggested retail price of $195. Though that price might sound a little high, it’s actually a terrific deal when you consider the fact that each book originally cost around $18 when released in hardcover.

Anyway, I would love to get this Harry Potter boxed set for my son. Hopefully I’ll be able to save something out of my next couple of paychecks in order to buy it!

I’ve been taking a break from reading modern novels and mysteries in order to go back and enjoy some classics that I’ve missed over the years. And though I’ve never been a big fan of Rudyard Kipling, I thought I’d give Just So Stories a try, since I’ve heard that this is a terrific children’s book. Unfortunately, reading the stories in the year 2008 as an adult didn’t have nearly the same effect as the book must have had on children when it was published 100 years ago. I doubt that many of today’s kids would derive much enjoyment from Kipling’s stories now.

Plot summary Just So Stories is a collection of 12 short tales that are meant to explain the (fanciful) origination of things such as an elephant’s trunk, the alphabet, and a leopard’s spots. The tales are written for a child the author addresses as “Best Beloved”, and often carrying the tone of a parent talking to his offspring.

The 12 tales included in the collection are: How the Whale Got His Throat, How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Leopard Got His Spots, The Elephant’s Child, The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, The Beginning of the Armadilloes, How the First Letter Was Written, How the Alphabet Was Made, The Crab That Played With the Sea, The Cat That Walked by Himself, and The Butterfly that Stamped. There are many illustrations throughout the book, and each tale ends with a poem that more or less summarizes the main point made in the story.

My Reaction: Frankly, I didn’t think any of the Just So Stories were particularly memorable, nor did I enjoy reading this book. I have read several children’s books as an adult (The Wind in the Willows, Watership Down, etc.) so I don’t think my dislike for these stories stems merely from the subject matter. I really think that I just don’t like Kipling’s style!

It’s only been a couple of days since I completed this book, but I’ve already forgotten most of the tales. I remember how the leopard got his spots, how the rhino’s skin became so loose, and how the elephant’s trunk became so long, but that’s about it. A twenty-give percent retention rate shows that my mind was clearly elsewhere while reading these tales, so I wasn’t invested in the stories at all.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to modern readers, as I don’t think today’s kids would find the tales entertaining. They were pretty boring on the whole, but at least they were short!

While I’ve been pretty tough on some of Michael Connelly’s books in the past, I have to admit that I’m starting to like them more and more with each one I read. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t suddenly think Harry Bosch is the second coming of Philip Marlowe–far from it. But I do enjoy Connelly’s offerings as light, entertaining fare that I can get through quickly. The Closers, a 2005 novel featuring the further adventures of Harry Bosch, was exactly what I expected from a Connelly book. Nothing more, nothing less.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Harry Bosch has come out of retirement to rejoin the LAPD as part of a special program designed to bolster the number of experienced officers on the payroll. Anyone who has been retired less than three years can rejoin pending a few formalities, and since civilian life wasn’t really working out for Bosch, he decided to give it a whirl.

Bosch is assigned by the new police chief to the Open-Unsolved Unit, which LAPD-speak for cold cases. He’ll be working with old partner Kiz Rider, which suits Bosch just fine. They already know each other, and should be able to slip right back into their previous working relationship with no problems.

The first case Bosch and Rider draw is the 17-year-old murder of a high school girl named Rebecca (Becky) Verloren. The girl was apparently abducted from her Chatsworth bedroom in 1988, and then shot in the fields behind her house. After initially–and wrongfully–assessing the case as a suicide, the original detectives on the case recovered a murder weapon linked to a white supremacist named Roland Mackey. Since Becky Verloren was of mixed race (black father, white mother), Bosch and Rider surmise that this could have been a motivating factor in the crime. But the original detectives discounted the race card, and let Mackey go, citing insufficient evidence. The case has been open ever since.

The rest of the novel then covers Bosch and Rider’s new investigation, as they interview all the major players from the original case, including Becky Verloren’s parents and school friends, as well as Roland Mackey and a couple of other two-bit criminals from the area. Bosch and Rider manage to put everything together in the end, and bring Becky’s killer to justice at long last. Basically, if you’ve ever seen an episode of the CBS television show Cold Case, then you know the drill.

My Reaction: I actually liked The Closers a lot more than some of Connelly’s previous work. First of all, the cold case angle is a good one, and presents Bosch with a few investigative wrinkles that he’s not used to. Second, the story itself was fairly interesting and unpredictable. And third, Connelly eliminated a couple of tiresome scenes that usually appear in his books, namely, a love scene involving Bosch and a casual hookup, and a scene where Bosch threatens fellow police officers until they agree to help him.

I’m a fan of Cold Case, so I don’t mind that Bosch and Rider had to go back in time to dig up their information. I think this is the perfect assignment for Bosch, especially since he follows that “everyone matters or no one does” philosophy. What better way to show that everyone matters than by solving old cases?

This particular case, that of the Becky Verloren murder, was actually pretty interesting. Connelly did an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing throughout the entire novel. I was dreading a trite ending, with the father being the doer, but thankfully Connelly didn’t go that way. I also was in the dark about the real killer’s connection to Roland Mackey, and smacked myself in the forehead after the reveal. The answers are there; I just didn’t pick up on them.

I could have done without yet another police corruption saga. How many of Bosch’s old colleagues does Connelly intend on throwing under the bus with each successive novel? It seems that someone from Bosch’s past is always going down, but why? What’s the point? Wasn’t Irvin Irving actually on Bosch’s side before? I could have sworn that Irving helped Bosch out on a previous case, by providing him with an untraceable, unlocked phone when Bosch wanted to take care of a personal vendetta and by calling off Internal Affairs when they were in Harry’s face for one thing or another. Why make him a bad guy now?

Overall, The Closers was a pretty good read. It’s fast-paced, entertaining, and doesn’t veer off into useless subplots like earlier Connelly novels tend to do. If you’re looking for a light police procedural, you could do a lot worse than this one!

Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel The Kite Runner received a lot of attention when it was published in 2003. I listened to and read buzz about that book for a couple of years before I finally gave in and read it, but was disappointed with the actual story. So even though I heard that Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns was generating even more buzz, I didn’t exactly rush out to get a copy. But A Thousand Splendid Suns received even more positive reviews from both critics and consumers than The Kite Runner, and the good word-of-mouth continues even now, so I bought a copy for my Kindle — and loved it!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): All the action of the novel takes place in Afghanistan, beginning in the early 1970’s. The first part focuses on a young five-year-old girl named Mariam. We learn that she is an illegitimate child (a harami, and that she and her mother Nana live in a hovel while her father, the wealthy Jalil Khan, comes by just once a week for a short visit. Over the years, Mariam learns more and more about Nana and Jalil’s history, but unlike Nana, she believes that Jalil is a good man — until he shows his true colors on her fifteenth birthday and proves that Nana was correct all along.

Later, after a traumatic event leaves Mariam alone in the world except for Jalil, she turns to him for help. Jalil insists that there’s no way Mariam can stay in his house with his legitimate wives and daughters, so he instead finds Mariam a husband — something Jalil considers to be quite a feat since Mariam is a harami and all. Mariam doesn’t want to marry Rasheed, mostly because he is in his late forties and she’s just 15, but she has no real choice in the matter. Once the deed is done, she moves to Kabul with her new husband and begins her new life.

Rasheed is attentive at first, and mostly kind to Mariam. He desperately wants a son, but Mariam’s pregnancies always end in miscarriage. Once Rasheed realizes that she’s essentially “good for nothing”, his abusive side comes out. He criticizes everything Mariam does and hits her with a belt or his fists when he’s particularly angry about some minor thing. Mariam can do nothing except put up with Rasheed’s behavior.

Their lives change forever about a decade later when Rasheed decides he wants another wife. This time he chooses Laila, a young 14-year-old girl from the same neighborhood. By this time, Kabul is a hotbed of war and strife, and Laila’s parents were killed when an errant rocket struck their home. Now an orphan and pregnant by her true love Tariq (whom she believes to be dead as well), Laila quickly agrees to marry Rasheed in order to avoid the scandal of being unwed and pregnant.

At first Mariam resents Laila for coming in and trying to usurp her position. But after a while, the two women grow to love each other, united by their common hatred of Rasheed. They learn to protect each other as best they can, and in the end, one of them makes the ultimate sacrifice for the other’s chance at happiness and a good life.

My Reaction: A Thousand Splendid Suns started out a bit slowly, but once I really got into the story, I couldn’t put it down. It was very engrossing for the most part, and highly emotional as well. My heart went out to Mariam and Laila for all the hardships they suffered — and was thoroughly depressed to think of how often similar scenes must have played out in real life in Afghanistan.

One of the main criticisms of this book leveled by people who don’t like it is that Mariam and Laila aren’t well developed as characters. I’ve read some reviews saying that they’re basically a “stereotype” of suffering Afghan women instead of individuals. But I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Mariam was a bit plain, it’s true, but I thought that was the author’s intent. She never was supposed to have a sparkling personality or original thoughts — that was Laila’s domain. And in that respect, Laila did come across as a distinct individual with a unique personality, so I really don’t buy this particular criticism.

I have to admit that all the political stuff was pretty boring to me, especially since I was unfamiliar with the names of the Afghani warlords and government leaders that Hosseini referred to. I ended up skimming those parts so I could get back to the main story more quickly.

There’s no question that Hosseini likes tearjerker endings, and this is true of A Thousand Splendid Suns. I don’t cry over books as readily as I do over movies, but I couldn’t help myself with this one. If you’re a softie, you better have tissues ready for the last part of the book!

Overall, I was very impressed with A Thousand Splendid Suns. It’s not a perfect novel, but it’s definitely worth a read and is a much better calling card for Hosseini than The Kite Runner. Give it a try!

I’ve listened to several courses from The Teaching Company on a variety of subjects. For the most part, I’ve found them to be extremely well done: they’re engaging, interesting, and delivered in such a way that average people can understand the material even if they weren’t familiar with the subject to begin with.

The most recent series of lectures I listened to was called Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It. I didn’t actually read the course description before checking the CDs out of the library; I was just thoroughly intrigued by the title. I thought the lectures would cover things like how scientists can tell how hot the surface of the sun or the liquid core of the Earth is when they can’t actually take measurements. In other words, I was expecting to be treated to an endless stream of fun facts and trivia from the scientific world. How wrong I was!

The lectures, delivered by Dr. Steven L. Goldman of Lehigh University, were actually a lot deeper and more profound than I was expecting. He explored the nature of knowledge, beginning way back with Plato and the Greeks, and showed how scientists have been arguing and debating about knowledge and knowing for centuries. He describes numerous theories that were widely accepted by the scientific community at some point, but were then completely discarded decades or centuries later as new “knowledge” and theories supplant the old.

Some of the lecture titles in this course include: Knowledge and Truth Are Age-Old Problems; Competing Visions of the Scientific Method; Theories Need Not Explain; Trading Reality for Experience; Einstein and Bohr Redefine Reality; Truth, Ideology, and Thought Collectives; Challenging Mainstream Science from Within; Scientific Knowledge as Social Construct; and Intelligent Design and the Scope of Science.

As you can see, this is not lightweight stuff — indeed, most of the lectures went completely over my head. Consequently, I found the course to be pretty boring in comparison to others that I’ve listened to. I readily admit that the problem was on my end here, as I wasn’t expecting such a heady take on the subject of scientific knowledge. But if you’re interested in abstract notions of what knowledge truly is, then this could be a great course for you! If, on the other hand, you’re more interested in learning how scientists predicted the presence of (the former) planet Plato before they could even see it, you won’t find the answers here.

Despite the fact that I’ve branched out in recent months and haven’t been reading as many mysteries as I used to, I’m still trying to get through all of Agatha Christie’s novels in chronological order. This has been an ongoing task that I’ve been plugging away at for nearly three years now, and I’ve just completed Crooked House, published in 1949 as her 39th book. After being lukewarm on most of Christie’s novels, it was nice to finally get another one that I enjoyed thoroughly from beginning to end.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel is narrated by Charles Hayward, an Englishman stationed in Cairo during World War II. While there, he meets fellow Brit Sophia Lenoides, a worker in the Foreign Office. The two fall in love and begin a romance, but agree to defer their engagement until they reconnect at home when the war is over.

Charles finally makes his way back to England, where he learns through a newspaper obituary that Aristide Leonides, Sophia’s grandfather, has died. Upon meeting with Sophia later, Charles is surprised to hear that Aristide was actually murdered, and that someone living in Three Gables, the family manor, must have done it. Sophia wants the matter cleared up before getting engaged, so Charles agrees to help.

It turns out that three generations of Leonides family members live in Three Gables, a large but disproportionately built house (thus the “crooked house” in the title), and as all had equal access to the poison that killed Aristide and none have solid alibis, there are many suspects to work through. The family are hoping that Brenda Leonides, Aristide’s much-younger wife, is the killer, because they would hate to have the murderer turn out to be someone in their family, as apparently that would cause a bigger scandal. Brenda seems to have motive enough: she was carrying on an illicit love affair with Laurence Brown, the live-in tutor.

The rest of the novel then deals with the Scotland Yard investigation, of which Charles is an unofficial part thanks to a family connection. Suspects are focused on, questioned, have their alibis checked, and dismissed one by one until the surprising solution is revealed at the end.

My Reaction: As I said above, I enjoyed this novel right from the beginning. The murder took place relatively early, which isn’t always the case in Christie novels, so it was easy to get involved with the story and characters right away. Moreover, I was left guessing as to who the killer was all the way to the very end — and even then I didn’t settle on the correct suspect until the tell-all journal was uncovered. Christie did a great job of misdirecting the reader’s suspicions in this one.

If there was a weakness in the book, it was the fact that I didn’t know or care about the narrator that much. I had a feeling that he was a recurring character because it seemed as though Christie expected us to know background info about him without actually spelling anything out. If that’s the case, then I’ve completely forgotten where else Hayward appeared, so I was left wondering why he was chosen as the lead detective rather than one of Christie’s old standbys like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple.

That was just a minor quibble, however, and didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of Crooked House. This was one of the better Christie books I’ve read and is highly recommended!

I started listening to Michael Connelly audiobooks a couple years ago, and have slowly grown to appreciate them for what they are: simple, straightforward crime novels that have some entertainment value. As long as I don’t expect great literature, a bunch of well-developed characters, or a tightly plotted story, I’m usually ok with the experience. But Connelly’s 2004 book The Narrows failed to reach even those low expectations, and was easily the worst of the Harry Bosch series thus far.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Narrows brings together characters and plots from two of Connelly’s previous books. First, several years ago, FBI agent-turned-serial-killer Bob Backus, nicknamed The Poet, was hit in a shootout with other field agents as he was about to turn an LAPD officer into another one of his victims. The FBI, looking to put a positive spin on the story, claimed that The Poet was almost certainly dead, and pointed to a body found in the area Backus was headed as proof of that claim. But the crime lab was unable to make a positive ID, causing some in the Bureau to believe that he managed to escape.

The second plot deals with Terry McCaleb, a former FBI agent who retired after receiving a heart transplant and ran a fishing charter until his death from complications related to his surgery. McCaleb’s wife Graciela had reason to believe there may have been foul play involved, so she contacts retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch, now a private investigator, to look into McCaleb’s death for her. Bosch agrees, though he doesn’t really think there would have been any reason for anyone to murder Terry.

As the novel unfolds, these two investigations eventually merge, bringing Bosch together with FBI agent Rachel Walling to collaborate and take Backus down. After hitting a few dead ends and overcoming some obstacles, Bosch and Walling eventually do get their man, bringing The Poet’s crime spree to an end once and for all.

My Reaction: I didn’t like The Narrows at all, and I think the reason was the way Connelly chose to narrate the story. The book continually shifts between a first-person “I” perspective whenever Harry Bosch is front and center, but then changes to third-person limited when Rachel Walling is in the foreground. This was distracting and exasperating, and made it very difficult for me to get through the book.

Another reason I didn’t like the book is that these characters just aren’t as interesting as Connelly seems to think they are. I mean, sure, Bosch is ok, so I didn’t have a problem with him appearing here. But Backus, Walling, Graciela, and the other minor FBI agents aren’t that great — and certainly aren’t worth bringing back again and again. I wish Connelly would take the time to invent quality characters instead of going the easy route with these rehashes. Ugh.

The story was ridiculously complicated, which made it unbelievable. I had no idea why Backus needed to execute this master plan after successfully evading capture for so long. I’m no profiler, but I would have thought it would be enough for him to just kill the bookstore owner without the elaborate setup. He surely would have gotten away with it then.

Overall, The Narrows was a disappointment. As I said before, I’m not expecting heady literature when I read Michael Connelly, but this wasn’t even a good story. I suggest skipping this title, as it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the Harry Bosch series.

I’d never heard of Jodi Picoult before, but I decided to pick up her novel Nineteen Minutes after seeing it on Amazon.com’s Editor’s Picks of 2007 list. The subject matter seemed interesting, and with an average star rating of 4.5 after 448 customer reviews on the site, I figured this would be a pretty safe choice in terms of an interesting read.

What I soon discovered, however, is that Picoult is extremely long-winded, and that her writing is quite uneven. The novel was interesting at times, but positively dragged at others, making for a tiresome reading experience overall.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The quiet, peaceful town of Sterling New Hampshire is jolted awake one spring day when 17-year-old Peter Houghton goes on a Columbine-style shooting spree at the local high school. His rampage lasts 19 very long minutes, and leaves 10 dead and 18 wounded. Houghton is arrested at the scene by sheriff Patrick Ducharme.

While Peter sits in jail awaiting first his arraignment and then trial, the novel explores both the aftermath of his crime and the events leading up to that fateful day. So part of the action is told in flashbacks dating all the way back to before Peter was even born, when his mother Lacy, a midwife, befriended single mother-to-be Alex Cormier. That friendship would in turn lead to Peter and Alex’s daughter Josie being friends during early childhood, though the two would eventually drift apart as Josie became one of the cool kids while Peter remained an outcast. And part of the action covers present-day actions as Alex tries to figure out a way to help Josie deal with the trauma of losing her boyfriend in the shooting and Lacy tries to figure out where she went wrong with Peter.

By the time the novel reaches its conclusion, the reader has a far better — though not perfect — understanding of what Peter’s state of mind was at the time of the shooting and why he chose to express his rage in that manner.

My Reaction: Nineteen Minutes was a very frustrating book in many ways. First of all, as I said above, the novel was just far too long and could have really benefited from some heavy editing. There were many parts that I simply skimmed, including everything about Lewis Houghton and his happiness theories, as well as the relationship stuff between Alex and Patrick. These subplots added nothing at all to the main story, and thus felt completely out of place. Why even include this kind of filler? Peter, Josie, and Lacy were the most interesting characters and had the most interesting problems, so Picoult could very easily have made a compelling novel about these three alone.

The biggest obstacle to my enjoyment of the book, however, was Picoult’s portrayal of Peter’s bullying at the hands of the cool kids. Would fifth graders repeatedly pick on kindergarten kids to the extent of destroying three lunch boxes? I mean, we’re talking about 11-year-olds going after five-year-olds here. That does NOT happen. And as soon as property is destroyed (especially when it happens over and over again), parents and teachers do get involved.

The high school bullying was only slightly more believable. Yes, I’ve seen bigger guys shoving smaller kids into lockers or pushing them around or whatever, but again, does it happen every single day? The verbal assaults, calling Peter faggot and homo, were spot-on, and those would definitely happen on a daily basis. But the physical stuff and the blatant destruction of personal property (Peter having his glasses deliberately smashed) would not fly for very long — not in a middle-class school district like the one portrayed in this novel.

I thought the Josie “twist” was utterly ridiculous. She was having issues with her physically and verbally abusive boyfriend, but instead of breaking up with him she decided that shooting him would be a better answer? Um, okay… that’s a little extreme there, isn’t it? I at least understood how someone like Peter would reach his boiling point after all those years of bullying, but Josie had tons of other options.

And finally, the ending left a lot to be desired. Calling Matt Royston and Courtney Ignatio’s killings manslaughter was an absolute joke. I mean, what did Courtney even do to Peter besides pass that one e-mail on to Drew, who then spammed the entire student body? Are there people out there who really believe that a simple action like that would reduce her cold-blooded murder to a manslaughter charge?? Wow.

On the whole, Nineteen Minutes was very difficult to get through. There were too many boring parts, it was far longer than it needed to be, and most of the plot points were simply too unrealistic, even for fiction. I don’t understand all the praise this book has received, nor do I get why it’s on Amazon’s Editor’s Picks list. It’s not at all worth the time!

How to Read and Understand Poetry. I’ve always been interested in poetry, but when I read it, I can help but feel that I’m missing out on a lot of meaning and subtext that the author was trying to convey. Moreover, I wanted to learn about the mechanics of poetry, about how poets have to fit a certain number of long and short beats into each line and things like that. I figured that would give me a better appreciation for the actual craftsmanship of writing poetry. I hoped this lecture would help me achieve my goals.

The course is delivered by Dr. Willard Spiegelman, who teaches at Southern Methodist University, and consists of 24 lectures that are approximately 30 minutes long (if I remember correctly). Dr. Spiegelman addresses topics ranging from metaphor and metonymy to irony, tone, sentiment, and heroism. He also dissects a few forms of poetry in detail, including sonnets, villanelles, and free verse.

Unfortunately, I found How to Read and Understand Poetry to be a bit lacking in helping me do just that. I was expecting Dr. Spiegelman to talk mostly about forms and devices, while pointing out relevant examples along the way. But he took the opposite tack, and chose to talk about specific poems in depth to show how they illustrate the points he’s trying to make.

So in other words, while I can better understand the particular poems that Dr. Spiegelman referenced in his lecture, I cannot extrapolate his teachings to poetry in general. Does that make sense? I hope I’ve explained myself adequately!

Overall, this is not a course that I would recommend to anyone. It’s not likely that you’ll be able to approach any old poem from a more informed perspective after listening to or watching Dr. Spiegelman’s lectures — but shouldn’t you be able to with a title like How to Read and Understand Poetry?

Although I’m not a huge fan of Michael Connelly, I’ve grudgingly come to accept the fact that his books are entertaining enough for my purposes — meaning that they’re easy to listen to on my iPod while I’m working out, sitting in traffic, or doing housework. They don’t require my full attention, so I can let my mind wander a bit while still being able to follow the plot. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve got all of his works already loaded on my iPod, either, because that means my decision to listen to the books is already made. So when Chasing the Dime came up on my playlist, I didn’t even think twice about forging ahead with it.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Henry Pierce is a brilliant young scientist who is on the verge of perfecting a breakthrough in nanotechnology that will launch his firm, Amedeo Technologies, into the forefront of the field and make him a millionaire in the process. All he and his colleagues need to do is reel in an already interested investor named Maurice Goddard and apply for a few patents, and their futures will be set.

Everything is looking up for Henry except for his personal life. He has just split with longtime girlfriend Nicole — her idea — because he’s been spending all his time working at the lab (“chasing the dime”, going after profits) instead of working on their relationship. Henry has had to move out of the house they formerly shared, and into a new apartment, with a new phone number. Only the phone number isn’t so new. He soon learns that it used to belong to a prostitute, and since it’s still on the woman’s website, Henry’s place is inundated with calls from men hoping for a hook-up.

Henry tries to track down the woman himself in order to ask her to remove the number from her site, but he can’t find any trace of her. He does come up with a name, Lilly Quinlan, but beyond that, no one has seen or heard from her in a few weeks. This doesn’t sit well with Henry, as he feels something bad has probably happened to her. Because Henry had a sister in the same situation years ago, he can’t let go of the Lilly Quinlan mystery. He starts looking into her disappearance in earnest, and is soon caught up in a tangled web of deception and murder that eventually lead right back to Henry and his company.

My Reaction: I had mixed feelings about Chasing the Dime. I thought everything related to nanotechnology — with applications as diverse as better sunscreen or improved laptop memory — at Amedeo was very interesting, and if Connelly had made this a straight-up corporate espionage thriller, it would have have been a good book. But the way he had to tie everything in through that elaborate setup regarding Cody, Lilly Quinlan, and shady mobsters in the background made everything feel extremely contrived. Instead of saying, “Oh, that was a great plan!”, I was left thinking, “Was that really the only way to get to Henry?”

Sorry, but the sister angle didn’t seem like a strong enough motive to get Henry to abandon his patent application work in order to track down Quinlan’s whereabouts. I mean, his whole company’s future, as well as the future of all his employees (not to mention his own livelihood and career) were at stake on the project. There’s no way he would drop it all to find a missing prostitute. And the fact that Cody knew this was a sure way to throw Henry off his patent game was absolutely ridiculous. With all those millions riding on the plan, there’s no way they would go this route.

I do have to admit that I didn’t guess who the perp was until the very end. I thought it was going to be Nicole — and logically speaking, it probably should have been her. She would have been able to pull this off like ten times easier than Cody, but whatever. But that obviously wasn’t enough of a twist if I was pegging her as the suspect 50 pages in.

Anyway, Chasing the Dime was something of a disappointment. The nanotechnology angle was intriguing enough, but most of the plot was utterly preposterous, making for an unsatisfying read.