Full tilt, into the chaos
Once upon a time, the respectable classes looked upon crime as shocking -- on the eruption of violence in everyday life as exceptional, on a body found in the library astonishing. In a society where the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2001 records 15,980 homicides for the year, a corpse is less astonishing than a library, crime is routine, respectability a volatile variable and events -- with all their chads left hanging -- tend to be unaccountable and opaque.
Michael Connelly is a compelling conjurer of chaos theory adjusted to breaking news, and his “Chasing the Dime” a stunning exercise in suspense and sci-fi technomagickry. Henry Pierce, a 34-year-old chemist and Stanford PhD, is the head of Amedeus Technologies, a catherine wheel of cutting-edge computer science. Holder of numerous patents in the areas of molecular circuitry and molecular memory, he is piling up ever more discoveries and inventions.
As the curtain rises, Amedeus is racing to develop the first practical molecular computer, whose power and possibilities will revolutionize the world of electronics. Vastly more powerful than silicon-based chips, molecular computer chips would unleash a tide of dime-sized computers to turn digital e-literacy into global illiteracy that would change the world -- and the bank balances of a lot of people too.
But Pierce has just been abandoned by Nicole, whom he still loves after a three-year tryst (relationships have limited shelf lives in Southern California, especially when mates spend too much time in the lab and not enough in bed). The breakup leaves him discombobulated, just when Amedeus prepares for the visit of a promising potential investor. It also leaves the Amalfi Drive house to Nicole, while Pierce moves to Santa Monica.
But no sooner has he moved into a newly rented beachfront apartment than his phone begins to ring with calls for someone named Lilly; his electronic message box bulges with appeals for her. Who is Lilly, what is she, that all the men pursue her? She must be a prostitute. But then why did she suddenly drop out of circulation, bequeath her number to the phone company and lose so much business?
Pierce’s quest for explanations provides a crash course in electronic gadgetry (impressive) and electronic security (less so) and a vivid guided tour through the maze of adult entertainment, Web site porn, escort services, digital pimping and Internet sleaze (bad for participants, good for profits), as well as the billions being made off the electronic sex trade.
The search for Lilly eats into Pierce’s sanity, affects his research, threatens his safety, jeopardizes his very freedom. What started as a freelance investigation becomes an obsession pursued at a breathless beat. The interests of his firm will not slacken it, nor will the attentions that gangsters and police lavish on him.
All this keeps one panting until the cliffhanging finale, in which the underlying plot and its malicious generator are revealed; Pierce is vindicated (which is good, because the death penalty process, as real cases past and present often show, wastes a great deal of time). So Connelly abides by the rules of classic detective stories by offering a logical explanation, in the end, that reintroduces (some) order into the chaos that he has craftily orchestrated. His plot doesn’t always hold water: Pierce’s sudden infatuation doesn’t quite convince; his personality is more annoying than engaging; his motivation more meretricious than credible. But griefs and annoyances of this sort are minor irritants. When everything moves full tilt, who has the time to think?
