The Devil's Code (Kidd)

The Devil's Code (Kidd)

The Army left Kidd with a dislike for bureaucracy and the skills to do something about it, but it didn't prepare him for the day a woman would call and tell him his colleague Jack Morrison was dead. Jack was supposedly killed by a jittery security guard who caught him raiding a company's files in the middle of the night, but that story just doesn't sit right with Kidd. The more he investigates the company and its ambitious owner, the more convinced he becomes that Jack stumbled onto something that got him murdered. And that unless he and LuEllen get to the bottom of it all quickly, the next bodies might very well be their own. Before the chilling Prey novels, Sandford made his mark with computer genius Kidd. Now Kidd is back, but his colleague Jack Morrison is missing, and Kidd himself is being targeted in a national manhunt. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Jack Morrison, a computer consultant to AmMath corporation, is shot to death in Dallas. It looks like a simple break-in gone bad, but the victim's sister, Lane Ward, doesn't believe it. She contacts her brother's old associate, Kidd, who has a secret life as an information highwayman--a thief who deals in software, data, and anything else of value that moves from modem to modem. Kidd uncovers a vast electronic conspiracy that involves both AmMath and a cadre of U.S. government bureaucrats who use technology to cover up murders and to blackmail prominent citizens. Despite the resources of the opposition, Kidd, along with his renegade band of hackers and telephone wizards, brings the bad guys to their knees. Sandford, whose best-selling Prey novels feature sometimes-nasty police detective Lucas Davenport, began his career with two Kidd novels but then rested the character for nine years. His return will have particular appeal for those readers with a sense of paranoia regarding the new Web world. Kidd is a unique protagonist whose toughness is derived not from flashing fists or big guns but from superior intellect and moral certitude. It won't be nine years before the next Kidd novel. Wes Lukowsky Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved John Sandford is the pseudonym of Pulitzer Prize���winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, The Night Crew , and Dead Watc h. He lives in New Mexico.