Review: Excellent and Surprising Mystery
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 24, 2012
Web of DeceitIt's great when you find an author new to you and particularly when that author has successfully combined two of your favorite things: computers and bird watching. In many ways, Web of Deceit reminds me of mysteries such as And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie were you follow the trail of several characters as they eventually cross for better or worse. The story starts with snippets of the characters as they try to grapple with technology and an infant World Wide Web at the dawn of the Internet age.When we first meet George Travis, he's already in a desperate situation, trying to use a public Internet workstation to determine what, if anything, is being said about him on the Web. His search is not just to feed his vanity--Travis is on the run and someone is creating horrendous lies about him to make it even more difficult for him to get help or claim he is innocent of wrongdoing.Thanks to the Internet, everyone believes Travis is implicated in the death of Chris Morgan, a man he met while bird watching.Ann is in a class to learn about the Web and how to create effective web pages for her job and coincidentally ran into Travis while they were both, also, bird watching.Likewise, Gareth Evans, editor of the North Wales Sentinel, is also grappling with the World Wide Web and modern technology in his efforts to pull together news stories to keep his business alive.This sets up the complex, suspenseful plot where the reader is never sure what will happen next. The characters are very real with good qualities and flaws that anyone can sympathize with. Ann is perhaps the most sympathetic as she tries to wrestle with the problem of how much faith to put in Travis and how much assistance to give him as he flees from the authorities in his efforts to find a way to prove his innocence.Travis, himself, often seems to be an unreliable narrator and several times I found myself wondering along with Ann just how much to trust him because like so many characters in Web of Deceit, each one has secrets that keep the suspense roaring along towards the conclusion.This is one of the few books where you truly are surprised at the twists and turns. As it speeds towards the end, the reader can't turn the pages fast enough to find out the next shocking surprise.For those, like myself, who are fanatical bird watchers, there are fascinating glimpses into birding in the U.K. and how being in the wrong place at the wrong time can have horrifying consequences.