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A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who turns to crime fiction is bound to be well worth reading. John Sandford, or as he is known in his journalistic life, John Camp, has written quite a collection of thrillers with his Prey series being the best known. His Kidd series, of which THE HANGED MAN'S SONG is one, is less well known but is, nonetheless, utterly compelling. For the reader, there is no secret about the murderer's identity. James Carp is shown as he brutally slaughters black hacker Bobby. Bobby is not exactly challenging as a murder prospect since he is the victim of a degenerative disease which sees him confined to a wheelchair. Nonetheless, he puts up a good fight, although not as good as the fight put up by his laptop which was the object of the killing exercise. Kidd is a member of a hacker ring of which Bobby is an integral part. When Bobby doesn't keep an online appointment, alarm bells sound in his little community. Kidd and his sometime lover Luellen are busily working to ascertain if a casino is skimming undeclared profits but when the call comes that Bobby is down, the priority is to locate Bobby's computers and make unavailable to the authorities sensitive information that could damage the individual members of the ring. Kidd, Luellen and their friend John set out to discover the identity of the murderer and attempt to retrieve Bobby's laptop. Soon, stories begin to emerge in the media attributed to Bobby, stories that have political ramifications. Suddenly, very important people have an interest in retrieving the stolen computer. Sandford's prose is tightly written. He never wastes words and, in an afterword, claims most adverbs have been eliminated. Certainly, the pace of the action benefits from the tautness of what remains. Readers will gain an intriguing glimpse into the world of hackers in this book. Possibilities that most of us would not have envisaged rear their all too believable heads and make us wonder just how safe and private our own little computers might be. Sympathy for the reluctant protagonist, Kidd, the man who only wants to be left alone to be an artist, is evoked even as the reader watches him indulge in shady deals and overt violence. The brotherhood of the hackers is depicted as something that overcomes racial divisions, even in the most prejudiced communities. There is an element of the supernatural in the novel as Kidd, while at the same time deprecating the art, scries the future by using his Tarot cards: thus the titular Hanged Man. The book is a pleasing mix combining energetic entertainment, a dash of violence and an overall sense of awe at just what computer use and abuse may achieve.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, February 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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