cover image Hardwired: A Silicon Valley Mystery

Hardwired: A Silicon Valley Mystery

Sally Chapman. St. Martin's Press, $22.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-312-15542-1

Data9000 Investigations, founded by Julie Blake and Vic Paoli (seen last in Cyberkiss, 1996) leaves its Silicon Valley office for the Johnson Space Center in Houston on this latest case. Margo Miller,Vic's former girlfriend who is employed by NASA, hires them to find the hacker who's jeopardizing Mission Control's communication system. In Houston, Julie and Vic learn that the world of of astronauts is a bit short on camaraderie. Because a delay in the upcoming shuttle mission could jeopardize NASA's standing with Congress, the duo are given a week to secure the computers. They learn from some astronauts that the computers went down on the last shuttle mission when the hacker's code came up on the ship's screen and a green light shone inside the shuttle. Now, all the crew members have the same dream about a green light. Julie finds an astronaut's body hanging in the lab of the mock shuttle. Then she finds another astronaut drowned in a testing pool. The deaths don't seem to concern anyone as much as agency politics: one astronaut is afraid Julie will report that she saw him lose his temper; another has cause to worry that he'll be dropped from the next mission. Vic identifies an outlaw satellite connection, but not even the government computers can crack the hacker's code. Julie and Vic's lives are threatened a couple of times before they finger the killer and hacker. Despite its hard-to-credit premise, this tale features two very likable protagonists who move the plot through the unusual space-program setting at a respectable clip. (May)