Chasing the Dime

Chasing the Dime is Connelly’s departure from the more formulaic Bosch police procedural novels. In some ways, it reminds me of Richard Aleas (Charles Ardai)’s Songs of Innocence in that it features not some hard-boiled tough old detective, but a soft-boiled young innocent who somehow gets caught up in a crime world out of his control. Rather than an innocent hayseed like John Blake, Connelly uses as his main character, Henry Pierce, the geeky founder of a high- tech company about to snare its biggest investor yet.

Pierce, recently separated from Nicky, the former IT Manager of his company, has just gotten a new apartment in Venice, California, and with the new apartment, comes a new telephone number. Funny thing is the new phone show more number appears to be someone’s old number, a Lily, who is receiving countless calls from guys, guys who want her to come to their hotel rooms. After the fifteenth or so phone call, Pierce finds out the number is coming off a website and he is determined to find Lily and get her to change the number on her provocative website. Along the way, he realizes that no one has seen Lily in five weeks, that her apartment is covered with dust and that there is blood all over her bedsheets, and that by breaking into her apartment and investigating, his fingerprints are now everywhere and he looks like suspect number one, a John who maybe got obsessed with Lily and did her in. At least, that is what Detective Renner thinks when the bloody bed is reported to the police and Pierce can’t explain too well why he ended up in her apartment.

Pierce, of course, is warned off the case, first by a colleague of Lily’s, and then by the head of the website and his one-man army, Six-Eight, a nickname referring to the man’s height. After Pierce is pummelled into submission so badly that he ends up in the hospital and threatened with a murder trial, he continues to poke his nose into a case where it doesn’t really belong, first accusing one person than another of complicity in framing him for Lily’s murder, even though he never met Lily while she was alive.

It is a fast-moving story that only suffers when Pierce does stupid things that make the reader cringe and think why on earth is he being so stupid and leaving his prints on everything and inviting trouble. show less

A computer genius is on the verge of hooking a major financial backer for his nanotechnology firm when a strange coincidence — the new phone number he's issued when he and his wife split turns out to have belonged to a now-missing high-rent call girl — threatens everything he's worked so hard to achieve. This book never clicked for me. Part of it may be that I am pretty much a science idiot, and there is a lot of scientific babble slowing down the advancement of the plot. But the main reason was that I simply did not find it believable that such a smart guy, with everything on the line professionally, would allow himself to be distracted by a weird amateur-detective turn on behalf of a woman he had never met.

This was a quick, enjoyable read. A fast-moving story with unexpected twists, marred only by occasionally frustration at the mistakes made by the protagonist. But people do things for strange reasons sometimes, so I try not to judge. His main mistake was talking too much, especially to the police without a lawyer, but he didn't expect to become a suspect I suppose. Actually, his big mistake was probably getting too involved in the first place, but that's what made the story.

This was a standalone story for Michael Connelly, without any of his usual characters. Might have been interesting if Bosch had been the detective, but it was probably better without him for this one.

Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, Amedeo Technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him. Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her. With the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his show more search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of the Dollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde.) But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall. Despite those holes in the plot and a less than compelling protagonist, the novel succeeds due to Connelly's literary and expository gifts and his more interesting secondary characters.. show less

I don't listen to many audio books. I wish I hadn't listened to this one. I thought the premise was interesting: a guy gets a new cell phone and his new number was owned by a woman who was an escort. He continually gets phone calls for her. This happens on a Friday. Instead of changing his number immediately, he decides to try to find this woman to ask her to take the phone number off her online "dating" advertisement. My first thought was a forehead slap. I became increasingly put off by the actions this man takes. It was actually painful to listen to. I had to turn it off multiple times. I didn't care how many twists and turns there were to the storyline. I had absolutely no empathy for what I continually felt were stupid judgement show more calls on the part of the protagonist. I couldn't stand it. Although I wanted to know the call girl's story, I couldn't tolerate the foolish choices made. What I had hoped to be a good book to listen to while on an extended road trip, became a stressful situation for me. I was so disappointed. show less

Connelly is one of the few writers I can think of who never loses quality whether it's a series book or a non-series. Any book with his name on it is a guaranteed excellent read. This one is no different. Start up entrepreneur and scientist Henry Pierce gets a new phone in the apartment he has to rent when his wife throws him out. The new phone number, obviously belonged to a very busy prostitute before he got it. Why in the world would someone who's business is dependant on a specific telephone number just abandon it?

Scientifique de tout premier plan dans la recherche en matière d’ordinateurs moléculaires, Henry Pierce a fondé l’Amedeo Technologies, société en passe de breveter un système de fourniture d’énergie biologique révolutionnaire. Il est aussi, et c’est beaucoup moins drôle pour lui, en train de se séparer de sa petite amie, Nicole. Il a pris un nouvel appartement et demandé un nouveau numéro de téléphone, toutes tâches auxquelles son assistante de direction a veillé avec grand soin. Malheureusement, les premiers coups de fil qu’il reçoit s’avèrent des plus étranges. Tous émanent d’hommes qui demandent à parler à une certaine Lilly, dont on apprend vite qu’elle exerce avec un brio qui lui vaut une show more formidable clientèle le métier d’hôtesse d’accompagnement. Intrigué, Henry Pierce se demande qui est cette dame et commence à enquêter. Il découvre rapidement que son numéro de téléphone est donné sur un site web à caractère pornographique, le L.A. Darlings. Mais pas moyen d’entrer en contact avec cette Lilly qui, tout à fait involontairement, lui cause ces ennuis. L’affaire, qui aurait pu rester anecdotique, prend un très vilain tour lorsque Henry est attaqué dans son appartement et très violemment rossé par deux voyous qui le laissent pour mort. Qui est derrière cette histoire et pourquoi lui en veut-on pareillement à ce moment précis, telle est l’énigme qu’Henry Pierce devra résoudre au plus vite s’il ne veut pas voir sa société aller droit à la faillite alors qu’il s’apprêtait à décrocher le jackpot. Comment Henry Pierce, un savant de premier plan, se trouve pris dans un piège mortel au moment même où tous ses efforts allaient enfin être couronnés de succès. Très documenté sur le plan scientifique, cet ouvrage d’une grande rigueur de construction nous plonge dans une intrigue dont Alfred Hitchcock aurait beaucoup admiré l’horrible ingéniosité. show less