Author Lee Gruenfeld has created an intricate web of characters and plot to develop an engrossing story about technology, the law, power, greed and revenge. The main character is ambitious and beautiful attorney, Rebecca Verona. Working for a large firm under the thumb of obnoxious Allen Wysocki, Rebecca has managed to flourish and develop a reputation as an aggressive and skilled litigator. She is moving up in the world and she knows it.

However, all that is jeopardized when Wysocki demands she take on James Perrien as a new client. Seems Perrien must defend himself on federal charges of selling an extremely powerful computer chip to the Chinese. Used for encryption devices, this chip is capable of creating codes which would be unbreakable (and therefore undesirable) by US intelligence spies. (We don’t want an American company to sell technology to other countries which would make it harder for us to spy on them.)

James Perrien and his cutting edge company Tera-Tech claim to be innocent of the charges against them. Perrien says he didn’t make the chip, although he wishes he had. It seems the technology evident in this computer chip is considered to be years away and would be extremely valuable to the company who markets it. So, who made the chip?

Rebecca Verona doesn’t care who made the chip. In fact, she wants nothing to do with this case, or the defendant. Unfortunately for Rebecca, James Perrien was a weak moment in her romantic past. The married and quite deceitful Perrien used her and casually threw her away. While Rebecca thinks Perrien is dirt, and very capable of evil deeds, she doesn’t think he is guilty of this one. So where did this extraordinary chip come from?

This is where the expert of The Expert comes in. Radovan Terescu is the one man who can be the expert witness for the defense. Brilliant and charming, he alone is considered the foremost authority on this type of technology. But there is a problem. Terescu hates Perrien, and with good reason. Perrien has stolen Terescu’s best and brightest researcher away from him. It becomes Rebecca’s difficult task to persuade Terescu to work for Perrien’s defense and mount a case against the government’s formidable charges.

The man on the government side, prosecuting attorney David Zuckerman, is part of this formidable force. He is also another of Rebecca’s ex-lovers, the one she dumped for Perrien in fact. Obviously, things get complicated for Ms. Verona.

Author Gruenfeld uses his own expertise with technology and the law to create an intricate and intriguing tale. The technology discussed in the story is put simply into layman’s terms and is quite fascinating, even for the most technophobic. In fact, the dissection of the chip itself is more interesting than your typical mystery post-mortem. The author also places Rebecca with clever sidekick attorneys, Justin Ehrenright and Arno Steinholz, who provide humor, legal assistance and sandwiches when called upon.

If there is one weak point here, it is that Rebecca is not always quite believable as a feminine character. (A preoccupation with her bloated breasts and menstrual cramps seemed a bit unconvincing from a male author.) Also, her long held rage against an uncle and her past as a skater seemed to interfere with the story more than aid her character development. Still, she becomes more real as the story progresses to a clever climax.

The Expert is a well-developed mystery featuring modern communications technology as its center. Whether you love or fear computer chips (and all that they imply), the one featured in this tale runs reliably at high speed.

--Martha Moore