Kickback

Sheila Carpenter is a graduate whose true genius lies in computer programming. Her skills have garnered her job offers from IBM, Microsoft and many others, but she decides to go with the Washington D.C.based Douglas Murray and Associates. They're a computer consulting firm, and they assign her to two places, Friday afternoons she is to spend at Robinson, Michaels and James, and the rest of her week she works for the trucking firm Metropolitan Trucking Services. She's excited about both opportunities. In MTS, she likes her immediate supervisor, Pam, and falls in love with her state-of-the-art computer equipment and comfortable office. As with all books, such happiness is short lived. Not long after the CEO and his crony enter her office and demand that she create a program that essentially takes an invoice from an order, processes it, and along the way causes it to completely disappear, creating another invoice -- the final total su! bstantially less -- in its place. When she seems reluctant, they push her, threatening her loved ones. They are insidious....a trucker begins dating her best friend, her Aunt's property becomes the subject of Eminent Domain. Someone breaks into her house, and she feels like she's being followed. She's falling hard for Matthew, who works for the law firm. Pam often warns Sheila about him, telling her that Matthew isn't what he seems. It creates a noose that tightens the more she resists, and soon she'll have to use all of her wits to keep herself from being killed.

Terrell, simply put, shines at pacing. She slathers on the tension, giving the reader the shortest periods of relief, making a book that is nearly impossible to put down. Her romance with the handsome paralegal, the friendship she wants to have with Pam are just part of the excitement, since you don't know what the true intentions are behind either of these character's motives. Her frustrations with the authorities are cleverly done....the policemen's reluctance to help are not written in a satiric way, but are very realistic. I could go on and on about how cleverly she chains events together so that they overlap just slightly, never giving the reader a point where he or she can say, "OK. I can quit now and finish it tomorrow." It seems each time that Sheila manages to extricate herself from a situation, she lands in another worse than the one before. Yet it is not her fault, the situations are created by her need to see just! ice done, her unwillingness to go along innocently and trust that the company is doing everything above the board. It is not just her sense of honor that prompts this, but her certainty that if this program's true talents come to light, she'll be the one held ultimately responsible.

Ms. Terrell has an extensive background in computers, one that serves her well here. Writing a book where much of the focus is on the programming aspects of computers, the author runs the risk of either making a mistake or boring her audience to tears. Terrell uses her expertise with a light hand, carefully stowing what we need to know in the background. She has a very solid way of explaining things so that those of us who couldn't program our way out a paper bag understand exactly what Sheila's doing. Since we're able to follow along, we're also able to cheer her on.

Sheila is sharp, realistic, and very brave. The fact that she is such an incredibly likable woman is part of the magic of this book, helping the pacing along by making us need to now what's going to happen to her before we turn off the lights.

5 out of 5 trench coats
--Cindy Lynn Speer, GWN Book Reviewer
9/3/2002