-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 <http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/11/19/features/9295722&sec=features> The Star Online: Lifestyle Friday November 19, 2004 Tax inspector's quest in 'The Cryptographer' Review by JOANN KOH The Cryptographer Author: Tobias Hill Publisher: Faber and Faber If cryptography is the science of concealing something, such as "the blueprint of a gun in a conversation about snow", then Tobias Hill himself must be an expert cryptographer. If he had meant to be so, that is. This book is full of brilliant insights - but I had to dig for each nugget, because he is not always clear. Or direct. But perhaps it is because Hill is good at getting under his characters' skin (he won the 1998 PEN/MacMillan Award for Fiction for his debut novel, Skin). Then again, perhaps he is too good. In the book, the protagonist Anna Moore, tax inspector A2 grade of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue Service, is paid to doubt what her "client" says (client being a euphemism for those we must investigate), and Anna Moore doubts plenty. In trying to show us how the mind trips up when doubting, Hill may have caused us to stumble, too. It is quite an exercise of tenacity, by page 20, to reread what Anna says or doesn't say - to make sure what Anna says, or doesn't say, is what Anna means exactly. But then again, this is stream-of-consciousness writing, and novels with ambiguity of this level do not sit well with me. That said, however, if you enjoy ideas and feel up to a challenge, this novel could be for you. It is the year 2021, when Soft Gold, an unbreakable form of electric money has replaced paper money. Anna is assigned to investigate John Law, cybergenius, cryptographer and inventor of Soft Gold, for an undeclared sum of four million dollars in an account in his son's name - a surprising sum to be secret about for a quadrillionaire. For Anna - who believes that after a certain point, we begin chasing money not for money's own sake, but for the love of someone we have, someone we want or hope to be - this is the beginning of an obsession. Anna wants to know whom John Law thinks of, when he thinks of money. In this invented world, the future belongs to John Law. But the world of the future fears him as much as they respect him. For a man who knows how to embed "encrypted information in the genetic code of plants and flowers", (the patent of which, at age 17, he sold to the US government for seven and a half million dollars) may also embed a deadly virus in our bodies should he wish to quietly exterminate us. A man with so much wealth can vacuum his gut ever so frequently and outlive us - a demigod amongst mortals. And so on and so forth. Law creates the downloadable Soft Gold freeware, which he guarantees is totally secure because no computer has yet been invented that can break the code. But he also knows it is human nature to want to break an unbreakable code, for by breaking it, not only does one discover its defects, one also exceeds its inventor. So, it is just a matter of time when Soft Gold gets broken into and John Law becomes a hunted man. This time, Anna is assigned to hunt him down. Concealed within are two love stories, involving old loves Anna and Lawrence and new loves Anna and John. Lawrence waits patiently to re-ignite a stalled relationship, but Anna feels she no longer loves him; she has betrayed his trust, once; she feels she trusts him though. But she doesn't know if she can trust John Law, although she wants to; the second pursuit, on a personal level, is for her to find out if she can. Because without trust, she knows, love will not be possible. Read The Cryptographer for the thinker in you, and not the "feeler". And welcome to the invented world of Tobias Hill. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ3sRsPxH8jf3ohaEQKAbQCdGIemIF+TWyd0UMIBMIcXHqbjNbsAn0lr MhB9HFVzSPb1hODcURwLubGk =ypcr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----