cover image Codebreaker

Codebreaker

Katherine Myers. Salvo Press, $16.95 (296pp) ISBN 978-0-9664520-9-9

Taking a page from Helen MacInnes, romance author Myers (Winter Flame; Dark Soldier) has produced a thoroughly modern suspense/chase thriller with a bit of romance. Beautiful federal code-breaker Meg Parrish, working under cover at Signet Corp., a software firm in Portland, Ore., penetrates computer security and copies a database so valuable that the company's CEO, Willis Dent, sends his security chief to kill her and recover the disk. Meg's handsome Signet colleague, Ross Eckland, saves her from rape and murder, and they begin a flight from Signet, from federal intelligence agents and, suddenly, from threatening strangers with mysterious motives and aliases. In their escape across Oregon, California and Arizona, the pair face one danger after another, including pursuit by helicopter and two high-speed car chases. Numerous flashbacks and subplots involve electronic surveillance and tracking, encryption, DNA and genetics research, the federal intelligence community and the ethics of cloning. Once Dent and the evil corporate and federal pursuers get their just deserts, Meg and Ross finally realize they're probably in love. Myers is good at describing scenery and interiors and at explaining many small tricks, including how to make an egg sound like an exploding bomb. However, readers may need a notepad to keep track of the characters and their aliases. Simpler would have been better. (July)