Chasing the Dime [Hardcover]

Michael Connelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2002

Henry Price has a whole new life-new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Price is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a nighttime world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities. Price tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met.

Price's skills as a computer entrepreneur allow him to trace Lilly's last days with some precision. But every step into Lilly's past takes Price deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy-and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, Amedeo Technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him. Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her. With the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of the Dollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde.) But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall. Despite those holes in the plot and a less than compelling protagonist, the novel succeeds due to Connelly's literary and expository gifts and his more interesting secondary characters. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

The copy on the galley of Connelly's slick new thriller doesn't mention Hitchcock, but most reviews probably will, with the novel's many surprises and "wrong man" plot line. Even the opening echoes Hitch's North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant's mistaken interception of a bellboy's page leads to disaster; here it's nanotechnology entrepreneur Henry Pierce's getting a phone call that triggers the trouble. The call is for a prostitute, Lilly, and it's the first of many; turns out that the Web site on which she advertises, L.A. Darlings, has Pierce's new home phone number next to a photo of gorgeous Lilly. But when Pierce visits the Web site's offices, he learns that Lilly has vanished. Where has she gone? His search to find the missing woman-prompted by his insatiable curiosity and by memories of his tragic, long-ago hunt for his sister, also a prostitute-draws Pierce into mortal danger. It also pushes him into conflict with the law, for when the cops cotton to Lilly's disappearance, Pierce becomes the number one suspect-serious bad news for this scientist whose company is being visited by a major investor in just a few days. Connelly's plotting is shrink-wrap tight, his characters-particularly Pierce, whose impulsiveness is balanced by his measured applications of the scientific method to analyze his plight-are smartly drawn. It's the rare reader who will be able to finger the villain behind all the mayhem. While very entertaining, however-this is the perfect book for a long airplane ride-the novel lacks the moral resonance and weight of Connelly's most impressive works, such as City of Bones.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (October 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316153915
• ISBN-13: 978-0316153911
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (264 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing ' a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles , was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly has followed that up with 18 more novels. His books have been translated into 31 languages and have won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Shamus, Dilys, Nero, Barry, Audie, Ridley, Maltese Falcon (Japan), .38 Caliber (France), Grand Prix (France), and Premio Bancarella (Italy) awards.

Michael lives with his family in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm astonished by the negative reviews, May 23, 2003

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chasing the Dime (Hardcover)

I wonder if those critics who panned Chasing the Dime read a different novel than I did. Michael Connelly is a brilliant writer--one of my very favorites, right up there with James Hall and Dennis Lehane. His books are dark, full of atmosphere and fascinating characters whose lives impact the stories they move through. His works are not only successful thrillers, but like Lehane and Hall's works, also extremely literate. I'm always pleased to see a series writer write stand-alone books as well, and here Connelly moves away from his Hieronymous Bosch novels to introduce a new character.

The criticisms that the protagonist Henry Pierce's actions are not well motivated seem absurd to me. Pierce isn't a Pierce Brosnan/James Bond superhero--yes, he is a genius scientist, but one who moves uneasily in social circles (he's just lost his fiancé through his own ineptitude in that regard), and furthermore one who bears an enormous burden of guilt at his sister's death--in short, he's more than a bit of a nerd (admittedly a high-functioning one!). When he tries to get in touch with a gorgeous girl on a porn site instead of the phone company, I'm not surprised at all. He comes to believe that this beautiful woman is in trouble and consequentially tries to help her--this is supposed to be unbelievable? I simply don't understand the criticism. The point is exactly that Pierce reacts in a way that most of us would not--it is that which makes him who he is, the guilt and the social awkwardness, and his curiosity. If Pierce were not the strange, driven character he is, not only would we not have a book, but Pierce would still have a fiancé, and his company would not be on the verge of a huge financial success, he would not have had to move out and get a new phone number, and none of the events of the novel would have transpired as they do.

I found Chasing the Dime to be a superior thriller, up to Connelly's usual high standards. I won't discuss the plot details more, but the characterisations are well done and the storyline gripping and believable. I've not been entirely uncritical of Connelly in the past--A Darkness More than Night didn't work for me in spite of its wonderful title. But Chasing the Dime did, absolutely, and I look forward with great pleasure to Lost Light.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping and suspenseful...A MUST read!, October 15, 2002

By 

Nick G - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chasing the Dime (Hardcover)

Henry Pierce is starting his life over. After his girlfriend leaves him, Henry moves into a new apartment and with his new apartment comes a new phone number...a number that belonged to someone else. Shortly after his new number is activated Henry begins receiving calls for Lilly, obscene calls from men wanting sex.

Anxious to put a stop to the calls, but curious to find out find out more about Lilly, Henry begins searching for information only to discover the young woman mysteriously disappeared and nobody seems to care.

Henry sets out on a quest to find out the truth about Lilly and the world she lived in, only to discover a world he's never known. A world of sex, escorts, websites, secret identities, and murder.

The deeper Henry becomes involved in this world, the farther he is from escaping it and a wrong decision could cost him his life.

`Chasing The Dime' is one of THE BEST thrillers I have read this year. The plot of a simple wrong number, turns into a terrifying ride of relentless suspense. From page one the reader is held captive in a race against the clock thriller that stuns with every turn of the page. It's fast-pace, gripping plot and creepy underworld setting will keep even the most jaded thriller readers on the edge of their seat.

Michael Connelly is the leading writer of crime fiction, as far as I'm concerned, and his on-going `Harry Bosch' series is about as good as they get. But, when an author strays from writing their successful series, we as reviewers (and fans) become leery if the novel will be any good, well that is not the case with Mr. Connelly...three of his best novels are NOT part of the Bosch series, `The Poet', `Blood Work', and now his newest novel `Chasing The Dime'. Any reader not tempted to stay up all night to finish this novel is much stronger than I am, because I stayed up well into the night to finish it.

`Chasing The Dime' will rocket up the best-seller list's, and prove Michael Connelly a master of the thriller/crime genre.

A MUST read!

Nick Gonnella

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars regarding Henry, April 5, 2008

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Chasing the Dime (Mass Market Paperback)

Henry's on the verge of the deal of a lifetime, worth more than the dime taped to his wall. But he's had to move to a new apartment, and boy, did he get the wrong number on his new phone! Michael Connelly has devised a terrific plot, and we're still in SoCal, but Henry is no Harry (Bosch). He's a scientist, not a detective. Although the back story is a poignant one, serving as his motivation for his uncharacteristic curiosity about the previous owner of that phone number, the way he becomes involved in the disappearance of the sexy LA Darling Lilly is, well, just plain dumb. Henry also lacks Bosch's depth and humanity, and though decently written, Dime's strong plot simply cannot carry the day by itself. The character with the most presence is the odious villain little Billy Wentz. Still, a so-so mystery by Connelly is better than the best shot taken by many another, less gifted writer. 3 stars.