Thu, Mar 10, 2005
When FBI agent Don Eppes finds several murders are linked to counterfeiting, his mathematically genial brother Charlie uses his skills to do what other investigating methods -as used by Agent Kim Hall, Don's colleague and ex in his Albuquerque days, a blank chapter in his past for Charlie- failed to, locate the forging and identify who did the graphical artwork required for his old-fashioned, relatively hard to detect fakes with real printing presses and watermark, not computer printing: it's a missing artist, who must be kidnapped and will probably by murdered as a liability for the counterfeiters...
Thu, Mar 31, 2005
When Riley, who practiced an ingenious pyramid method of skimming numerous bank accounts for over half a million dollars, is strangled, exactly the same way -not revealed to the press- as Lisa Bayle, for whose murder Don Eppes' investigation once put Cliff Howard in jail after a plea bargain-confession, Don now fears the wrong man was arrested. Charlie helps him quantify the unlikeliness of a coincidence and seriously doubt the forensic evidence. Electrician Jose Salazar, whom Don suspects, still turns out to be innocent of Lisa's murder, but Charlie realizes that's not the point: what if a third person committed both murders, linked rather by the victims?
Thu, Apr 28, 2005
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt's former college days friend Jonas Hoke, the Senior computer-science researcher, who develops for Robert Oliver's firm Lorman group with gifted college drop-out Scott Reynolds a classified program to evaluate government projects, is murdered in his Hollywood Hills home; data were stolen from his computer, which only contains a coded program for analysis of baseball statistics. Hoke's financial divorce complications seem irrelevant, although his wife had a relationship with their security system installer Lucas Grant. However Charlie finds that Hoke actually used the same kind of advanced statistic analysis and performance prediction on other data, cleverly masked under meaningless baseball numbers: Hoke applied this method cutting-edge to calculate human performance prospects in real life, based on various governmental and other data, potentially far more valuable...
Thu, May 12, 2005
A prison transport bus crashes after maneuvers by two other vehicles, several inmates escape, including the dangerous McDowd. Charlie gets on well with CHP Officer Morris on the scene and works out mathematically it was no accident, both other drivers probably were in the game. Dad is worried Don might be returning to the period he regularly worked in fugitive retrieval, especially now a former colleague, burly federal marshal Cooper, is on the same case. After finding a lesser fugitive, Charlie's mathematical probabilities approach helps reconstructing the remarkable movements of McDowd in LA, which leads to a worrisome motive relating to a DEA case and likely further accomplices...