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Book Review By eyal
Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly

Pierce is a chemist, working in the emerging field of nanotechnology. His relationship breaks down and he has to move out of their shared home and into a new apartment, which leads him to have new telephone number and address cards printed. Almost immediately he starts to receive calls from men asking for Lilly, Pierce is intrigued and quizzes one of the men, asking where he got this telephone number, which leads him to an escort web site.

Pierce finds out that Lilly has been missing for a couple of weeks and that a private eye hired by her mother has had no success in tracing her. Pierce starts to try to find her himself, working from the internet offices to the woman's home, speaking to another female escort who worked with Lilly and finding that there is a sleazy network behind the web escort service that both women worked for.

Poor Pierce cannot leave this alone, ignoring work commitments is not something he has ever done but now he finds himself looking into the woman on the internet. In tracing her he breaks one or two laws, and when he does find what could be evidence that a dire fate has befallen her, he has to lie to the police to cover up what he has done and deflect any attention from himself.

The policeman who takes over the investigation is thorough, and careful, seriously worrying Pierce that he will be caught in a lie and that the policeman will think that he has murdered the woman. It is here that the story falls down a bit. The policeman, Renner, is looking at Pierce as the best suspect in a case with no body, Pierce knows where the body is and has been beaten up by someone in an attempt to persuade him to leave the matter alone, but then the realisation comes that he is being framed and there could be only one way out, which is not the direction he wishes to take.

The ending is a let down. With only a few pages to go, and no end in sight, there it is! All of a sudden, the ending just pops out, leaving me with questions like how about this and that. It just ruined all the suspense that had been built up about how Pierce was going to get out of this very elaborate set-up.


Plot & Themes
Tone of story - suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
Time/era of story:
Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
descript. of violence and chases - 10 %
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 40 %
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 40 %
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 10 %
Crime Thriller Yes
Crime plotlets:
General Crime (including known murderer) Yes
Who's the criminal enemy here? - finding a known killer
If story PRIMARILY about main chr. being hunted... - hunted by killer/stalker

Main Character
Gender - Male
Age: - 20's-30's

Main Adversary
Identity: - an organization

Setting
Europe Yes

Writing Style
Amount of dialog - little dialog
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