From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 18 15:30:46 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!cyclone.news.idirect.com!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "Watch Me", A. J. Hoyt Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 17 Aug 1998 17:11:59 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 57 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2088 "Watch Me" by A. J. Hoyt Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade Everything I know about hacking and law enforcement I learned from thriller novels. When you want to find out who made a (direct dialed, non-800, caller pays) call, look up the *recipient's* billing information. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and Usenet newsgroup names have no particular format as long as you use lots of periods. Gopher is a security tool. All serial killers are computer experts. Serial killers are trusting enough to give intimate and incriminating information to anonymous strangers, as long as they seem to like violence. Internet MUDs (Multiple User Dungeons) are pretty much all graphically based. The best way to store an online session is on a standard VCR. A few people who work for the government can get into pretty much any commercial computer system or network, but the rest don't even know how to turn the machines on. Former law enforcement agents who have advance warning that a violent killer is tracking them take absolutely no precautions at home. Only serial killers look for trapdoors in programs. All credit card transactions are posted immediately. With one of the most long term and profligate serial killers of recent memory, assign the case to a retired agent with no status or resources on an unofficial basis. If you can break in to a bank or other highly secured system, leave your connection live for several days or weeks. It is easier to hack the local telephone company system than to check smoke shops for an identifiable brand of pipe tobacco. You can tell who owns a modem by breaking into the local telephone company system. Computers generate faxes that can be sent to someone via modem after they have been printed in hardcopy. One of the venues for a short scene in the book is Vancouver, and the trip is presented in a fashion that can only bemuse natives. Vistas are described that can't be seen because of intervening stands of trees, neighborhoods are misplaced, and houses are set wrong way round on hillsides. The technical material in the book seems to be like that as well: depicted either from a faulty memory or poorly understood reference sources and promotional literature. Thrillers are not noted for character development, but it is singularly lacking in this book. While deep, dark past traumas are hinted at, they are too oblique to make the central figure's deterioration convincing. As we delve deeper into the lead villain's past we find no revelations, just a vicious cipher as far back as can be found. In fact the book contradicts itself, implying both a loss of memory, and remembrances that arise from beyond that point. There is a subtext about violence towards women by men, but it is simply allowed to dangle as a useless appendage to the story. In the end, gratuitous violence wins out, which sort of negates the subtext, wouldn't you say? %A A. J. Hoyt %C 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010 %D 1995 %G 0-312-95997-4 %I St. Martin's Press %O U$6.99/C$8.99 212-674-5151 josephrinaldi@stmartins.com %P 370 p. %T "Watch Me"