Ruthless.com (Tom Clancy's Power Plays) (Paperback)

"ruthless.com" is billed as involving computer technology and high drama in the IT business so I was looking forward to enjoying it. Unfortunately, I found it poorly written and totally unrealistic. Furthermore, the leading character comes off as a bit of an idiot and the leading bad guy is very unfairly based on Bill Gates. In other words, I didn't like the book at all.

The basic story is about the hero, Roger Gordian and his company, UpLink International, being targeted for a hostile takeover by the nasty Marcus Cain, who runs Monolith Technologies. But big business conflicts aren't exciting enough for a Tom Clancy book (even though Marcus Cain is into all sorts of dirty tricks including murder attempts) so there's a sinister over-plot involving some really nasty Asians who are using Marcus Cain as a pawn in their bid for total world domination.

And how do Microsoft-like companies find themselves involved in an international military power struggle? It has something to do with encryption technology... For example, the bad guys break into a privately-run high-security "crypto key repository facility" to steal the encryption keys for a US Navy nuclear submarine's communications links! This is ludicrous, both because modern encryption systems do not use "back-up keys" stored in any kind of "repository" and because the US military would never place such keys, if they did exist, in a privately-run repository.

In addition to finding the plot totally unbelievable I also didn't like the two main characters. Roger Gordian is supposed to be the hero but how are you supposed to identify with someone who's so dumb that he thinks that he can keep encryption technology out of the hands of terrorists by refusing to export it from the good ol' USA? The fact that some of the best encryption technology comes from Israel and is based on work done by Russian scientists isn't mentioned in the book. Then there's the plot-line about a hostile takeover attempt to which Gordian has stupidly made his company vulnerable, and his supposedly very clever way of getting out if this problem which basically involves him stopping being quite as stupid as he has previously been.

I also found it distasteful that the badies Marcus Cain and his Monolith Technologies are obviously based on Bill Gates and Microsoft. Marcus Cain went to Harvard but dropped out (was expelled), built up a company based on operating systems for computers, stole most of the ideas that his company's software is based on, is into philanthropy (but only as a PR trick), and is willing to do just about anything to crush a competitor. Anyone who knows the Bill Gates and Microsoft story can see the large number of similarities, but with everything distorted and exaggerated.

All-in-all a total waste of time. It should have been called "mindless.com".

Rennie Petersen