Product Description
SJR Computer Systems is the largest, most powerful corporation of its kind. With secret tentacles that reach into all kinds of business, political, and government institutions, its power is mammoth. To Chicago cop Suze Figueroa, cyberspy is not in her job description - until a mysterious accident lands her computer engineer sister in a coma. Did her sister's "accident" have anything to do with the secret database at SJR Systems that she had just uncovered? With help from her beat partner, Suze investigates SJR and uncovers a greedy computer genius's horrific plan to commandeer the world's power centers. And he has the means to do it, using a method so insidious that even the presidency of the United States is vulnerable. Targeted by a network of on-line henchmen, as well as ruthless flesh-and-blood assassins, Suze must race to save her sister, herself - and the President of the United States.
Reviews:
Robin (USA: VA) (2011/05/15): From Publishers Weekly Computer-phobia strikes again in this competent but very busy, and not very imaginative, conspiracy yarn from the author of the Cat Marasala mystery series (Hard Case, 1994, etc.). Just like Sandra Bullock in the hit film The Net, Chicago computer programmer Sheryl Birch stumbles onto a secret program with evil implications. The program, made by SJR DataSystems, allows, among other possibilities, entry into the data records of Chicago hospitals?access that may have been used to kill someone. Before she can act on her discovery, Sheryl is run off a highway and plunged into a coma. Her feisty Chicago cop sister, Suze, pulls together a small band of trusted cops to take on SJR's diabolical honcho, Dean Utley. He, it turns out, has world-class ambitions, including taking over the Oval Office?via assassination. D'Amato knows her computers, and offers enough bit-cracking, e-mailing, browsing and downloading to please the most demanding armchair hacker. This isn't her strongest work, however. It suffers from a relatively simplistic plot and characters who aren't nearly as interesting as the electronic bits they fling at each other through cyberspace. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist Next to Dean Utley, the computer honcho in D'Amato's police procedural, Microsoft's Bill Gates seems laid back: Gates only tries to dominate his products' markets; Utley aims to control the world. With the customized systems Utley has installed at credit card companies, hospitals, and the Chicago Police Department, his band of amoral hackers and thugs could succeed. D'Amato, author of the Cat Marsala mysteries, starts slowly here, taking time to introduce characters coming at the case from several directions: Jesus Delgado, investigating a missing policeman's corpse that popped up in the Chicago River; Max Brown, CPD computer whiz; Susanna Figueroa and partner Norm Bennis, drawn in when Figueroa's sister, a computer engineer, spots strange programs and ends up in a coma. Once D'Amato hooks us, however, she offers a pulse-pounding roller-coaster ride as the tiny, isolated team of cops takes on the deadly cyberconspirators. Vivid and involving; well worth suspending disbelief. Mary Carroll
