Chasing the Dime

Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, AmedeoTechnologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliantchemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the formerintelligence 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 ofcallers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previouslybelonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry'scuriosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautifulyoung woman, can't tell Henry how to find her. With the same single-mindednessthat made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missinggirl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his ownsister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of theDollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde.) But thatmotive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at sucha critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for afall. 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 moreinteresting secondary characters. --Jane Adams

Michael Connelly is a former journalist and has won every major prize for crime fiction. He lives in Florida.