Tax inspector's quest in 'The Cryptographer'

[R.A. Hettinga]

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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.

- -- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'

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