This is the third book in the Kidd/LuEllen series and I admit, not one I really enjoyed.Kidd has been quietly working as an artist and making a decent living, but as he has gotten older, he has become fussier. This means his production is down and he is even choosier about what he sells to customers. So although the selling price for his paintings is higher, with his production down, his income is declining. We are keyed to an opportunity for him to supplement his cash flow by taking a hacking job. Jack Morrison, one of Kidd’s computer hacking friends who was working as a consultant at AmMath, has been shot dead by a security guard. He was allegedly caught accessing top secret computer files that were off limits. Kidd is called in by Jack’s sister Lane, who is convinced the story about his death is not true. She is even more skeptical when she is warned by a posthumous note from Jack, that if anything unusual happened to him, she was to contact Kidd. Other events follow which convince Kidd that Lane is right. The story is a bogus one.Although initially reluctant to be involved, Kidd recruits LuEllens’ help when he finds there are connections between a rogue hacking group called Firewall and AmMath, the company Jack was working for when he was killed. Firewall is accused of sabotaging the IRS by sending hundreds of bogus filings and crashing their computer system. Rumour is that Firewall is planning more mayhem because of the government’s Clipper2 project, the project Jack was working on at AmMath. That project involved an encryption code that would give government the capacity to access everyone’s computer mail. Kidd’s name and those of many of his hacker friends have been identified as part of Firewall, but neither Kidd nor his friends know anything about it. Once Kidd knows that Firewall and AmMath are connected, he must find out how and why. It is not just his friend’s killing he is trying to understand, but now his life may be at risk as well.In this third book in the series, we learn nothing further about the two main characters Kidd and LuEllen, except that LuEllen really enjoys golf. There has been no development in either of their characters since the first story in the series and the reader naturally feels less involved with their life or their crimes. In fact it is hard to really care about them. The story is packed with action, but the scenes just move from one action scene to the next. And even in the end, we are left hanging, unsure what happened to some of the other characters in the story.Although the technical talk has eased off since the first novel, it is still an inherent part of the story and although a bit boring at times, it does not drag down the story as much as it did in the first book. It is not always easy to follow, but Sanford includes enough in the dialogue to bring the reader up to speed with the device which essentially drives the plot. Without characters to care about, that is all there is left. One thing I have enjoyed though, is how Sanford keeps bringing back characters from previous books and builds them into the current story line. In this one, John and Marvel reappear from the last book in the series.I hate to give Sanford’s such a low rating. I have read several books in the Virgil Flowers series and every book in the Prey series and really enjoyed them. But in the Prey series, Davenport developed as a character as the years went by and he grew older and wiser. This to me is what the Kidd series lacks, a character we come to know and understand and care about over time.
This is the third book in the Kidd/LuEllen Series and in my opinion is much better than the second one, The Empress File. Kidd, a successful painter, has a sideline of illegal computer activities. His latest adventure begins with a pair of seemingly unrelated murders. Terence Lighter, a midlevel bureaucrat for the National Security Agency, is shot to death and a day later, Jack Morrison, a fellow hacker is also shot to death, supposedly on a break-in of an encryption company, AmMath. Morrison's sister is convinced her brother was an innocent victim and convinces Kidd to help her uncover whatever led to Jack's shooting.Kidd, along with LuEllen and some of his fellow hackers and other undesireable friends discovers that AmMath is into some pretty shady dealings. Simultaneously he is id'd as a member of a terrorist group named Firewall. This makes him the target of an intense federal investigation by both the FBI and the NSA. Sanders does an excellent job of creating the mysterious world of hackerdom. His characters are always well drawn and interesting. That's true of this book as well. He also does a good job of describing some very exciting incidents and also ratcheting up the suspense all done with a relatively light touch and underlying humor. The ending, while a bit of a stretch is nevertheless satisfying. The only drawback of the story is that the high tech world is moving so fast that some of the techniques used by Kidd and others are already out of date. Still, it's a worthwhile read.
Do You like book The Devil's Code (2001)?
This is book 3 of the Kidd books. In this book we learn more about Kidd and LuEllen relationship and also about Kidd's relationships in the hacker community as one of his fellow hackers gets killed and Kidd gets invovled because the dead hackers sister shows up to ask for his help. This leads to a US government contractor up to no good. Things get tense and people die and Kidd has to take some drastic action to protect himself and LuEllen and to keep the US government off their trail as well. This is intrigue, tech, and some good charaterizations with a action plot that is a fun read. It is a step above the usual action based novels with some depth in the plot and the characters think Deep Impact vs Armagedon and that is how it comes across to me. This is a good series to read for light summer entertainment fair with a little more meat on the bones.
—Kris
I read many M/T series of which Mr. Sanford has 3 running concurrently. Generally, most of the series authors write in the 3rd person. On occasion, they will write a book in the 1st person with the main character as narrator.I usually don't enjoy the 1st person books as much. I can't state this as fact, but when the author switches to 1st person, I think it changes the descriptive text vs. conversation balance. Often not for the better.As soon as I started this book and realized it was in the 1st person with Kidd as narrator, I was apprehensive. I have to admit that after getting into the book, Mr. Sanford handled it very well. His clean style, good pacing, etc. were present as always.If someone wanted to start reading in the M/T genre, Sanford would be a great place to start.
—Dave Levine
I was happy that Sandford revisited the Kidd series even after seeing success in his Prey novels. Kidd isn’t the normal type of hero you see in these books and that is what I like about it. With a criminal for a main character, a group of hacker as backup, and a cocaine addicted love interested, Sandford is able to come at the thriller in a unique angle we don’t get from a lot of other books of the genre.The one real knock I have against this book is it loses some of the ‘fun’ of the Prey or Flowers series. I am not sure if it is because the characters are on the other side of the law, or just their personalities, but I found it harder to connect with them now that I have read some of Sandford’s other works. If I was to read this book without having read the Prey series, it would have qualified as a solid 4 stars. Sadly, my expectations for Sandford based on his other works drops Devi’s Code down a step.http://homeofreading.com/the-devils-code/
—Travis Starnes
