Chasing the Dime
by Michael Connelly
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ConnellyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-08
ISBN: 044661162X
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Warner Vision
Book Reviews of Chasing the Dime
Book Review: Fun...but implausible
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been slowly working my way through most of Michael Connelly's books and got this one at my local library. I was a chapter or two into it before I realized it was not part of the Harry Bosch series, but it was a nice change of pace to have some new characters. The main character in this book was quite different from Bosch, but there were also a number of similarities in terms of his tenacity and deductive abilities to eventually emerge victorious against formidable odds.
While an overall fun read through the first 90% of the book, the closing chapters revealed a web that was simply too tangled to be plausible. And for this reason, I'm only giving it 3 stars instead of the 4 or 5 I generally award to one of Connelly's books.
In this book, our protagonist is Henry Pierce, a 30-something wunderkind who is poised to revolutionize the computing world via organic, molecular circuits that will obsolete the silicon-based chips from which today's computers are built. The technology will shrink today's supercomputers that fill a room to something the size of a dime - and hence, the title of the book. Pierce has just broken up with his fiance and is in the process of moving into a new apartment. He's also in the process of filing his patents on this new technology and securing a major venture capitalist to fund the additional research needed to take his ideas from concept to reality.
In the midst of all this, Pierce discovers that the new phone number assigned to his apartment apparently used to belong to a professional "escort" by the name of Lilly. Frustrated by the dozens of wrong numbers he's getting each day from callers seeking mystery woman Lilly's "services," Pierce is all set to call the phone company and change his number - but then curiosity gets the better of him and he decides to find out who this "Lilly" is and why she seems to have disappeared.
The remainder of the story takes us on what can only be termed as Pierce's "obsessive" hunt for Lilly. Along the way, he encounters far more than he bargained for and we sometimes find ourselves cringing at his stupidity. As the story draws to a climax, Pierce finds himself accused of a murder he didn't commit and desparately trying to keep his company and its promising technology from the grasp of an unseen and unknown foe.
Up to that point, the story was a reasonably exhilarating ride. But then, like a race car that blows a gasket on the last lap, the book fell apart with the checkered flag in sight. Connelly reveals the identity of Pierce's foe, who - like a cartoon villian - is obligated to explain his impossibly complex plot to our protagonist. Pierce outwits him, and everybody (except our antagonist and his associates) goes on to live happily ever after. The end.
Just one problem. The impossibly complex plot was just that: impossible.
The book reminded me of the 1998 movie "The Game" starring Michael Douglas. In "The Game" we're led to believe that a person (in this case Douglas's character) could be psychologically profiled so completely and precisely that his every move could be anticipated, even in the most complex of situations with dozens of alternatives.
Suffice to say that Connelly takes us down a similar track in this story. It didn't work for me in "The Game" and neither did it work for me in "Chasing the Dime."
All in all, it was a truly fun read until the final couple of chapters. But like a DVD with "alternate endings" among its bonus features, when I reached the end, I found myself wishing I could turn the page to find an alternate ending that was more plausible and satisfying.
Summary of Chasing the Dime
The phone messages waiting for Henry Pierce clearly aren't for him: "Where is Lilly? This is her number. It's on the site." Pierce has just moved into a new apartment, and he's been "chasing the dime"--doing all it takes so his company comes out first with a scientific breakthrough worth millions. But he can't get the messages for Lilly out of his head. As Pierce tries to help a woman he has never met, he steps into a world of escorts, websites, sex, and secret passions. A world where his success and expertise mean nothing...and where he becomes the chief suspect in a murder case, trapped in the fight of his life.Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, Amedeo Technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him. Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her. With the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of the Dollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde.) But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall. Despite those holes in the plot and a less than compelling protagonist, the novel succeeds due to Connelly's literary and expository gifts and his more interesting secondary characters. --Jane Adams
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