Bobby is the Houdini of computer hackers: no password too cryptic, no firewall too sophisticated. When he disappears from cyberspace, Kidd is the man to find out why. To the straight world, Kidd survives as an artist, but in fact he's a criminal. Most of his crimes are committed with a computer, but sometimes he subs bullets for bytes. With help from LuEllen, his sometime lover and forever partner in crime, Kidd determines that Bobby's hard-copy life ended violently, after he tapped into a sophisticated government surveillance system. Attempting to turn the system--sort of a Total Information Awareness on steroids--against the elected officials who favored it, Bobby ran afoul of those he hoped to expose. Kidd and LuEllen take on the entrenched power structure with a combination of computer wizardry, cat burglary, and chutzpah. Kidd doesn't yet have the street cred among mystery fans of Sandford's other protagonist, Lucas Davenport, but give him time. Ultimately, thrillers are defined by the scariness of the villains, and the bad guys Kidd contends with are a special breed indeed, capable of rendering lives meaningless by the thousands with a few key strokes.