Henry Pierce has a whole new life - new apartment, new telephone, and new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a night-time world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities. Pierce tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met. Pierce's skills as a computer entrepreneur allow him to trace Lilly's last days with some precision. But every step into Lilly's past takes him deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy - and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear. "Chasing the Dime" has the irresistible velocity of film classics like "The Maltese Falcon" and "Chinatown", but with the extraordinary writing and style that have made Michael Connelly 'a crime-writing genius' ("Independent on Sunday").
This was not my favorite Connelly. Part of it is just me. Despite being a gigantic nerd, I don’t like reading about science and technology. Any time the plot got into the science of what Pierce and his company were trying to do, my eyes just glazed over. Beyond that, I found this mystery to be weak. No matter how much Connelly tries to justify Pierce’s involvement with Lilly’s disappearance (the old "my dead sister was a prostitute and I didn’t save her" excuse), I just couldn’t buy his obsession with it. By the time we get to the end and find out the truth about what’s going on, it all seems a little contrived. A manufactured conspiracy. Thankfully I’m already a Connelly fan, because if this was the first I’d read, I wouldn’t continue.
