Amazon.com Review
Joe Hutsko is a very visible high-tech journalist whose byline pops up everywhere from the
New York Times to such citadels of nerdiness as
Computer Life and
Multimedia World. Unlike many of his peers, however, he has an insider's acquaintance with the industry. He spent his early 20s working for Apple Computer--mostly as an advisor to boardroom buccaneer John Sculley, who was then wresting control of the company from Steve Jobs. And indeed, his first novel,
The Deal, is clearly a rerun of that celebrated corporate fracas. In this case, visionary wonk Peter Jones is busy running Via Computer into the ground. His rival, Matthew Locke, is determined to put the company's founder out to pasture and restore Via to a sound financial footing. Will the bottom line triumph? Or will the forces of virtue--meaning the spacy, Silicon Valley version of individualism--prevail in the end?
To Hutsko's credit, he's introduced some variation into the story. The Deal is set in the 1990s, which means that the Internet can rear its virtual head at various points throughout the story. The author also ventures into the bedrooms of his protagonists, all of whom seem to have at least a nominal difficulty with boy-girl relations. Still, it's hard not to match up Peter Jones with his real-life counterpart: "Of slight build and tenuous stance, his physical composure was that of a lanky high school student. Yet his eyes revealed more. They were the eyes of a man wise beyond his years, whose mind operated at a cycles-per-second rate equal to ten brains (or so the story went)." Without these correspondences, in fact, Hutsko's debut would be pretty thin grist for the mill. But for people seeking an entertaining, thinly fictionalized Book of Jobs, The Deal will do just fine. --Bob Brandeis
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Hutsko debuts with a clumsy effort to re-create the near-demise of Apple Computer with a thinly disguised cast of fictional alter egos. Hutsko, who worked closely with Apple CEO John Sculley, casts Peter Jones in the role of Apple founder Steve Jobs. As the novel opens, Jones is unseated from his position by his best friend, Matthew Locke, a buttoned-down Sculley type who engineers a power-play and steals control of Jones's innovative computer company, Via Technology. While Jones reels from the loss, Locke moves in for the kill, forming a strategic alliance with Via's former rival, ICP, the narrative's IBM-equivalent. As Jones licks his wounds during a Maine sabbatical with the help of an older computer inventor named Byron Holmes, the power-hungry Locke defies the wishes of his boss, ICP head William Harrell, to turn the alliance into a full-blown merger. Jones and Holmes combine to reinvent the hand-held computer, with some assistance from a comely coed named Ivy Green, who supplies the software after seducing Jones and then bears his child in one of several ludicrous romantic subplots. The explosive growth of Internet technology lends a myopic, nostalgic feel to the self-congratulatory climax, which celebrates Jones's triumph over his former partner with a new hand-held computer that implements a semi-intelligent voice-recognition system?not exactly a surprising development. Hutsko's plotline suggests he is an Apple fanatic seeking to rewrite history. Author tour. (Jan.) FYI: The New York Times on the Web will serialize The Deal in its technology section.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
