BKHTHGRP.RVW 931126 Tor/Tom Doherty Assoc. 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 USA "The Hawthorne Group", Hauser, 1991, 0-812-51342-8 It's hard to consider that incisive analysis might come from a book which, in 1991, refers to Telex as a major high tech information source and talks of "faxograms". It is also hard to believe in the data security of a firm which uses six digit numeric codes as an access key (with no password backup) and, in addition, chooses them from significant dates in the users' past. For a thriller involving a "high tech everything" company and the NSA there is very little technology involved. After much is made about access codes and cards, initially, the only further mention for the next hundred or more pages is the assignment of a new access code when it becomes necessary for the heroine to operate the paper shredder. (Oh, please. And, while we are on the subject of office procedures, who ever heard of a major organization with only ten clerical workers, not so much as an office manager, and no office politics.) In one instance a character does give a reasonable description of a DES decrypting machine. In another, the NSA manages to "introduce" a virus into the Hawthorne Group's computers. (Oh, no! It's the AF/91 virus again!) (The first edition of the book was May of 1991.) It is extremely difficult to care what happens to any of the protagonists. The good guys are not so much lifelike as sordid, the bad guys are not so much evil as humourless. The heroine is apparently talented enough as an actress never to have had to take a day job, and yet, she has no self esteem. The hero is a young John Wayne who upbraids thugs for bumping people: he has all the personal sensitivity of a block of concrete. The plot is not developed so much as propelled by arbitrary fits and starts. Major developments follow from no internal logic. In spite of the disjointedness, however, there is no surprise or tension leading up to a "surprise" ending that is supposed to be a shocker. By that time, though, you simply don't care. ("The Cuckoo's Egg" has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies: this book has a recipe for hot fudge sauce.) (Plus an acrostic.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKHTHGRP.RVW 931126 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag