The Hanged Man's Song

"Bobby is the deus ex machina for the hacking community, the fount of all knowledge, the keeper of secrets, the source of critical phone numbers, a guide through the darkness of IBM mainframes."

John Sandford is well-known for his Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport, but I find the books of the Kidd series, featuring Kidd and his cat-burglar friend LuEllen, even more entertaining. Kidd is a hacker extraordinaire, an artist, and a Robin Hood type for the tech age. In The Hanged Man's Song, Bobby, a legend in the cyber world and a "friend" of Kidd's, has been beaten to death in an apparent break-in.

After identifying the body of a man he's never met face to face, Kidd realizes that whoever killed Bobby also stole his laptop. A laptop that contains potentiallty incriminating information about Kidd and a host of other cyber contacts that Bobby maintained.

Kidd's race to find the killer leads from his stomping grounds of St. Paul, Minnesota, to the drought damaged countryside of rural Mississippi, to the walls of Washington, D.C. where Kidd uncovers a government conspiracy that threatens the reputations and livelihood of a majority of the nation's elected representatives.

The Kidd books are entertaining in their sideline focus on the techniques of computer hacking and basic burglary. In The Hanged Man's Song, Kidd and LuEllen take us to Radio Shack, Target, Home Depot and an all-night supermarket to buy ordinary gear, including a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, to use in clever, illegal ways.

Clever use of technology aside, the Kidd books are gritty, violent, and intense. Even the heroes lurk in shadows.

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