Been diving into the detective thriller novel genre for a while now. I'm almost done with Laguna Heat by T. Jefferson Parker. This one is actually pretty good.
But the one I finished earlier, Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly, was pretty awful. It purported to follow an early-stage tech startup as it tries to make the next big breakthrough and land funding--"chasing the dime". But the discussion of the technology and the whole startup culture was a bit off. Things like the company CEO being a Luddite for personal technology, when every Silicon Valley guy is glued to his Blackberry and wears his Bluetooth headset constantly, probably even in the shower. I know it's a device because the whole plot revolves around this guy getting the wrong number assigned to his new apartment phone, but really--there's too much suspension of belief here.
It's as if the author read about the startup experience in a different novel and that's what he aped for this story.
Laguna Heat, on the other hand, is a great hard-boiled detective novel. Just change the dates a bit, and you'd have Raymond Chandler.
Posted by jameshom at November 21, 2005 04:13 PM | TrackBack