Reader’s Diary

Daniel Suarez

“Daemon” is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.  Its central character is a dead millionaire computer game designer who has left behind a hidden network of programs to wreck havoc on the world.  His system, the “daemon” of the title, is  manipulative, remorseless, and will be familiar to anyone who has even been defeated by non-player-characters in a computer game.

Some of Suarez’s characters fight the daemon and, as the book progresses, some choose to join it in what amounts to a world-wide cult .   The plot shifts from a story about those who fight the daemon to one about the nature of the war that the daemon has been designed to wage.  To say much more would spoil the fun.

Suarez, a computer consultant, knows his stuff.  The security holes and hacker antics he uses are real or close enough to real to be plausible.  Later in the story some of the technology he incorporates is a little over the top, but by that time the reader has been sucked into the story and everything seems authentic.   Suarez may be to computer security what Tom Clancy is to submarine warfare.

If the book has a flaw, it’s the ending.  After coming close to falling apart after a chase sequence that is too much like an action movie Suarez  springs a couple of surprises but doesn’t  give the reader much of plot resolution.  This isn’t such a big flaw now that the sequel is available,  but it’s rude of authors to leave their readers with so many loose ends.

Complaints about the ending aside, “Daemon” is a great read.  It reminded me of “Neuromancer” in that they both create engrossing  fictional worlds based on our current hopes and fears about technology.  I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Laney Salisbury

For about 10 years John Drewe sold dozens of fake paintings in the English art market.  The art was the work of his partner-in-crime,  John Myatt, a failed painter.    The frauds all had a history, or “provenance”, consisting of bills of sale, exhibition catalogs, and correspondence recording their passage through time.  It’s provenance that seals the value of a work of art, and  Drewe was smart enough to realize that a provenance that looked authentic would cover up any anachronisms or faults in Myatt’s painting.  Drewe, posing as a philanthropist, gained access to museum archives in Britain and not only removed material that he used for forge documents, but inserted material so that a prospective buyer of one of Myatt’s fakes would, on researching the work’s history, find an impeccable pedigree.

“Provenance” is the story of Drewe’s criminal scheme which not only defrauded collectors and dealers but which polluted the history of art by his meddling in the archival records.   Myatt co-operated with the authors, and the sections on his part of the crime are vivid.  Drewe didn’t talk to the authors (and probably would have lied if he had), so his part in the story is fuzzier.  I was left with the feeling that there is a lot more to this story (for example, Drewe’s real past and the mentioned-in-passing works sold by Drewe but not painted by Myatt) than the authors were able to dig up.

In addition to being a good story, it raises questions about the market’s valuation of art, for if buyers are happy with a work, why should its history matter so much?

David Meyer

In this small volume, the author of “Memoirs of a Book Snake” recounts some of his experiences collecting books on stage magic.  It’s a pleasant read for someone who likes books about books (as I do) but the most interesting parts are his stories of visiting now-vanished magic stores.

Jim Steinmeyer

This is a history of stage magic.  More preciously, it’s the story of certain large stage magic illusions that, mostly, use mirrors.  Now I know what the phrase “it’s all done with mirrors” really means.

Steinmeyer’s attempt to use Houdini’s disappearing elephant as the mystery that structures the book doesn’t work very well:  the book reads like a series of loosely-connected essays.  The author is at his best when describing specific magic acts, making it possible to imagine yourself in the audience of many famous magicians of the past.  Also interesting are his descriptions of how magic changed with the end of vaudeville as well as his repeated but always well-illustrated point that it’s the presentation, not the “secret”, that makes for a great illusion and how a well-conceived and executed trick is as much a psychological manipulation as a mechanical invention.

Stuart Neville

I like thrillers, and I like books set in Northern Ireland.  Given that this book is a thriller set in Northern Ireland, I expected to enjoy it.  It’s a well-written page-turner about a former IRA killer, recently released from prison, who is haunted – literally – by his dead victims.   Naturally the victims want revenge.  The setting is interesting: Ireland is at peace and newly prosperous and some of the former combatants are thriving while others struggle and old divisions still exist.  The big flaw – a fatal one – is that there is not a single good person in the book.  The protagonist isn’t a hero and his life, while sad, isn’t really tragic.  Everyone’s motives are suspect and no one earns the reader’s affection or even sympathy.  I enjoyed reading it but its grimness left a bad aftertaste.

Julian Stockwin

I was really looking forward to this book, since nearly all the books in the Thomas Kydd series have, like the previous one, been consistently excellent.  Sadly, this one is a disappointment.  Kydd and his friend Nicholas Renzi get involved with Robert Fulton’s work on the submarine, both undercover in France and in England.  The largely factual history of Fulton’s experiments are interesting, but I wanted to see Kydd and Renzi develop further.  This one just doesn’t move the series along.