Barbara D'Amato

This thriller, written in 2009, has themes ripped from today's headlines. Brenda Grant and Daniel Henderson were two minutes away from being in the World Trade Center when the first plane hits on the morning of 9/11. Their company was above where the plane hit and no one managed to get out before the towers collapsed. Brenda lost her fiance who was one of the company owners.

A few years later, Brenda and Grant have started a security company and have a mission to track down terrorists. When show more they find evidence by trolling chat rooms and the deep web, they try to pass the information along to authorities who can do something about their finds with varying degrees of success.

Sarah, an old college friend of Brenda's gives her a call one day to set up an appointment but, before they can meet, she dies in what looks like a street accident. Having a bit of the friend's point of view, we know that she was pushed into traffic by a man she just met. Brenda, who hasn't seen her since college, wonders why Sarah, who works for a software development company, wanted to meet with her.

Brenda and Daniel are also approached by a man from the government who gives his name as Allen Cooper who works for NSAA and wants to hire their firm for some security work. They are hesitant because they don't like working for the government but the money is too good to pass up. Coop begins to make a play for Brenda by asking her out and taking her to expensive places but Brenda's heart is still with the fiance she lost on 9/11.

Coop asks them to look into a new vote tallying program that will be used in the next presidential election which is only days away. It looks to be a really tight race between the incombent President Kierkstra, a corrupt politician from South Dakota, who took office when the President died of a heart attack and Governor Evan Harkinnon. Meanwhile, Brenda is still puzzled about Sarah's death and sends memo to all of her offices to see if anyone knows more about her. She hears from her office in Egypt that Sarah has some concerns about an election program she was working on but then the office goes silent.

Daniel flies out to see what is going on in Egypt and the story takes a James Bond twist as he becomes the target of unknown assassins and has to wend his way back home facing all sorts of danger and gathering data along the way.

The story was exciting and fast-paced. The villains were larger than life but our smart computer security experts are a match for them. I enjoyed the characters in this one and would recommend it to those who read thrillers. show less

Voting fraud isn't a topic one would normally think of as sexy or thrilling. However, Foolproof by co-authors Barbara D'Amato, Jeanne M. Dams and Mark Zubro, proves that even computer geeks can be the stars of amazing thrillers.

The story starts on 9/11. The two protagonists linger at a coffeehouse that morning, thus surviving the Twin Towers' collapse. In the aftermath, Brenda Grant (who lost her fiance, Jeremy, in the disaster) and Daniel Henderson, her gay co-worker, decide to start their show more own business – seeking out terrorists using their computer savvy. With the determination that comes from personal loss, they build an international business that thoroughly scours the Net for signs of terrorist activity.

Meanwhile, one of Brenda's school acquaintances (another woman who works in computers) makes an appointment to see her, but ends up having an unfortunate accident (oops, pushed into Manhattan traffic) before they can meet. In addition, the Cairo office sends the duo a mysterious message. Daniel follows up with a trip to Cairo. One he'll never forget.

Holding down the fort back in the New York office, Brenda must deal with the urbane Allen Cooper, who's hired the firm on behalf of the Feds to make sure the computer voting system is bug-free and reliable. Cooper's interest in Brenda quickly goes from professional to personal. Thus, while Brenda fights to maintain her professional distance from a client (while acknowledging that maybe it's time to let her guard down and put Jeremy's loss behind her), Daniel's running from people who are trying to kill him.

Intercut between these scenes, we see the President of the United States (a ranting idiot, ostensibly named Kierkstra, but the reader is free to fill in the blank) conferring with a mystery man named Alexander Cabot about a plot to steal votes in the impending election.

To read the entire review, go to: http://thriller-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/review--foolproof show less

June 2009 COTC Book Club selection.

I actually really liked this and plan to add some more of D'Amato's books to my mental to read list. I was actually surprised to see that this is the first book featuring Emily and her partner - D'Amato wrote it such that I felt there had been previous installments and we were expected to know about the police detectives. I did see that she has a novel featuring Polly Kelly, the Chief of Detectives South, so maybe our main detecting protagonists are show more spin-off characters. I found the information on autism fascinating and the depiction of the original treatments saddening. The resolution to the mystery was satisfying and the interactions of autistic murder suspect Jeffrey Clifford with Emily were pleasantly unexpected. show less

This book was a good police procedural with an emphasis on the wide spectrum of autism behaviors. I liked how the point of view switched from former patient Jeffery Clifford who has developed ways of coping with the world to detective Emily Folkestone who learns about how autistic people behave.