Subject: REVIEW: "Watch Me", A. J. Hoyt

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Aug 1998 17:11:59 -0400

"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 [email-masked]
%P   370 p.
%T   "Watch Me"