Ruthless.com

November 2, 1998
Intrigues are afoot to wrest UpLink Communications and its encryption program away from its owner, Roger Gordian. So good-guy Gordian assembles a maelstrom of operatives, congressmen and writers to fight back. According to the publishers, this novel is "created" by Clancy and Greenberg, who press the viewpoint that not all information is useful and that encryption technology in the wrong hands could jeopardize national and world security. The action sequences are strong and well paced; one only wishes the creators had spent some time on the one-dimensional characters. Gordian is as plain as they come, and most of the secondary characters are interchangeable. The book will be of most interest to those who are knowledgeable in encryption-technology issues and who have read the first in the Power Plays series, Politika. It's worth noting that the Power Plays series began with a computer game.

October 15, 1998
Software tycoon Roger Gordian is fighting both his own government and his archrival Marcus Caine over whether to permit free trade in encryption software, thus potentially allowing virtually everybody to either break into others' computers or impregnably defend their own and, either way, to create a potential danger to the U.S. Gordian's battles lead to corporate espionage, which in turn becomes entangled in Southeast Asian intrigues, at which point kidnapping, murder, and sabotage are added to the brew. Eventually, Gordian is left not only alive but victorious, and Caine is not only defeated but killed. The title page, by the way, reads "created by" Clancy and Greenberg, which suggests something different than "written by." But if Clancy wasn't the one at the keyboard, it was someone with substantially the same style, as much technical expertise, and an equal knack for creating fast-moving action. Indeed, though only about half the size of "Rainbow Six", which means some characters and scenes are undeveloped, "ruthless.com" may be a better introduction to the technothriller. The second entry in the mass-market paperback series, Tom Clancy's Power Plays, is a good read. Well done, author, whoever you are! ((Reviewed October 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)