The Devil's Code
by John Sandford

Amazon.com
"Lighter was a block and a half from his home when a man stepped out of a lilac bush beside a darkened house. He was dressed all in black, and Lighter didn't see him until the last minute. The man said nothing at all, but his arm was swinging up.
Lighter's last living thought was a question: 'Gun?'"

An apt question coming from a National Security Agency (NSA) man, and the answer would be "Gun." The late Mr. Lighter had recently received some photos from Jack Morrison, a techno-wonk in the employ of AmMath, a high tech firm with a shaky government contract. Morrison asks the same question, and gets the same answer, apparently while participating in a gun-toting break-in at AmMath. But Morrison's sister, Lane Ward, doesn't buy AmMath's explanation of his death, and follows her late brother's last bit of advice: "If anything unusual should happen, get in touch with Kidd, okay?"

Kidd: an artist accomplished enough to live (well) off his paintings; a computer hacker extraordinary enough to live still better from hacking; an ethical thief pragmatic enough to read tarot not for divination but for cogitation. A honey of an antihero, in short, and the creation of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp, before he turned into bestselling novelist John Sandford. Kidd inhabited Sandford's 1989 debut, The Fool's Run, and its follow-up The Empress File, but was quickly abandoned in favor of the more popular and lucrative Prey series, featuring police detective Lucas Davenport.

Once convinced of Lane Ward's veracity and AmMath's complicity, Kidd begins, with his partners, the larcenous LuEllen and cyber-sleuth Bobby, to dig. The deeper they dig, the dirtier AmMath appears, the deader friends become, and the fancier Kidd's footwork gets as he dances dangerously close to AmMath operatives, the NSA, and the FBI.

The Devil's Code is no page burner. It is, however, a cleverly plotted and smoothly paced mystery with an intelligent, engaging, and satisfyingly complicated protagonist who is, Lucas Davenport notwithstanding, deserving of more page-time.


OxfordBooks.com and John Holleman, In Association With Amazon.com
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