Chasing the Dime

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Would you risk your life for a woman you've never met? A thriller about a simple wrong number that opens a line into terror. From the award-winning No. 1 bestselling author.

Henry Pierce has a whole new life - new apartment, new telephone, new number. When he checks his machine, he discovers messages for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a night-time world of escort services, websites, sex and secret identities. Pierce tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met.

Pierce traces Lilly's last days, but every step into her past takes him deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy - and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear...

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Once again, Connelly (Blood Work) keeps the reader's heart racing and the pages turning. After a messy breakup, Henry Pierce is just settling into his new apartment and new life. However, any peace he might find ends as soon as he checks his phone messages for the first time. There are several, all left for a woman named Lilly. She apparently had the number before Henry, and the messages seem to indicate that she's in some sort of trouble. Because of an incident deep in his past, Henry decides to locate Lilly and attempt to help her. Needless to say, he quickly finds himself in over his head, dealing with web pornographers, gangsters, and thugs, trusting nobody while trying to save both Lilly and himself. Connelly takes what could have been a typical suspense thriller and turns it into something exceptional through nonstop action and surprising twists. This one will move quickly off the shelves in public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/02.]-Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Fairfield, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Former journalist and Edgar Award winner Connelly (City of Bones) skillfully unfolds a story of obsessive curiosity and taut psychological suspense ideally suited to audio translation. A burgeoning technologies company, broken engagement and new apartment leave little time for 34-year-old workaholic chemist Henry Pierce to even check his messages. But when he does, he realizes his new telephone number was formerly that of a beautiful prostitute named Lilly, who's still receiving dozens of messages, but hasn't been heard from in over a month. Veteran audiobook narrator and actor Davis provides crisp, stage-honed vocals, with his versatile characterizations easily shifting from the Valley talk of an aging surfer/computer hacker to the hesitant pleas of Lilly's johns. Haunted by his own sister's murder, Henry eschews his normal all-business demeanor and plunges head first into the seedy sex underworld, where he befriends a hardened escort, makes a grisly discovery that may prove Lilly's demise, as well as his own, and is fingered as the prime suspect by the cops. Davis's masterful dramatizations deliver the perfect complement to Connelly's sophisticated mystery, sure to attract fans of his Harry Bosch series, as well as new listeners. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Forecasts, Sept. 16). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Connelly is as hot as it gets right now. His last Harry Bosch novel, City of Bones [BKL Mr 1 02], made the jump from genre favorite to mainstream best-seller, and his 1998 stand-alone thriller, Blood Work, has been transformed into a Clint Eastwood film. His new stand-alone is a bit of a departure--more concept thriller than noir mood piece--but it's a grabber from the beginning, and the subject matter is utterly compelling. Henry Pierce is a high-tech entrepreneur on the verge of a breakthrough in an experimental field called molecular computing. More powerful and much smaller than the silicon version, molecular computer chips will make possible such marvels as diagnostic computers that can be dropped into the bloodstream. But what will power the molecular computers on their journey through the body? That's where Pierce's soon-to-be-patented invention comes in, but only if he can get the necessary funding--and if he can keep his mind off the phone calls he's been getting at his new apartment, calls intended for a hooker named Lilly, who may be in serious trouble. Recognizing the parallel between Lilly and his late sister, Pierce is drawn into the hooker's world, hoping to save Lilly as recompense for failing to save his sister. Savvy readers will be able to spot the real villain and connect many of the dots before Pierce does, but that won't diminish their fascination with the marvelously detailed particulars of both experimental computing and online sex for hire. Connelly brings the two worlds together in a slam-bang finale that will leave fans gasping. --Bill Ott

Kirkus Book Review

And now for something completely Hitchcockian from the chronicler of Harry Bosch (City of Bones, p. 205, etc.): a wrong number that spins into a full-court press against the beleaguered hero's liberty and life. Henry Pierce, the workaholic chemist who's about to take his company, Amedeo Technologies, into the stratosphere with a molecular-based computing technology he's demonstrating to a big backer, hates the apartment he had to find when he was dumped by his fiancee, Amedeo's ex-intelligence officer Nicole James. What he hates most is the phone number, formerly the property of Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo is so dazzling that Henry's phone is ringing off the hook with calls for her. Most guys would just get the number changed and move on, but Henry, who improbably can't bother to e-mail all those contacts he already gave the number to, wants Lilly to take it off the L.A. Darling Web page instead-and then, when his best efforts don't succeed in turning her up, wants to find out why she's dropped out of sight. Spurred on by his childhood failure to rescue the prostitute sister who fell victim to a serial killer, he puts so many questions to so many unwilling associates of Lilly's that it's obvious he's stepping on some serious toes. As it happens, the police and the bad guys converge on him at exactly the same time, squeezing him into the classic can't-trust-anyone pose perfectly suited to his combination of brains and paranoia, until even the light switches at his office stop responding to his voice. Has he stepped into somebody else's nightmare, or has he been the real target all along? Connelly diabolically teases readers with bits of exposition while scaring the hell out of them in the most accomplished slice of Hitchcock since the Master's heyday. The result is a tour de force of nerve-shredding suspense.