We’re always told not to judge a book by its cover, but Elaine Taylor, author of Final Betrayal, her publisher and commercial booksellers are banking that you will. “The image of the woman wearing only her underwear is provocative, but it’s not gratuitous,” says Taylor, explaining that the image could be her protagonist Catherine Calabretta, filmed rather intimately without her knowledge. “And it’s R-rated,” Taylor adds with a laugh. “It’s pretty hard to have a book about a woman’s sexual awakening and keep it completely tame.”
But beyond the steamy sexual themes is a different, very chilling one: the incremental loss of privacy. “Catherine’s privacy was invaded in a very low-tech manner,” Taylor concedes. “But what we, as a culture, thought about privacy even five years ago is different thanks to ever-smarter, more watchful computers, cameras, bar codes and microchips.” And microchips are only the beginning of the battle for Calabretta, an ex-hacker and CEO of a company that specializes in privacy protection. When she becomes the number one suspect in her lover’s murder–one she believed was completely off the record–she must fight her own demons about privacy and race the clock to find the real killer.
Thu., March 2, 6 p.m.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2006.