The Expert

This exciting story is filled with spies, high-tech computers, suspense, revenge, courtroom drama, and psychological musings. Rebecca Verona persuades Rado Terescu to be an expert witness in the trial of James Perrein, a man both despise. Barrett Whitener is especially adept at reading the technical passages. He also keeps each character's voice consistent throughout. His clipped style might have been alternated with a smoother one to give this long recording more variety, and he occasionally mispronounces a word, but overall, this is a satisfying performance. S.S.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

March 30, 1998
There's a jungle of technical information awaiting the reader of this wonderfully complex courtroom thriller--facts and theories about computer technology, chip manufacturing and cryptography techniques--and all of it centers around James Perrein, head of Tera-Tech Integrated. When the government retrieves a Tera-Tech chip from China, Perrein is accused of selling advanced technology to the Chinese, but his claim of innocence is bolstered by computer expert Rado Terescu, who maintains that the chip, as described, is beyond the technology of anyone in the world. Perrein's lawyer, hard-edged Rebecca Verona, is confident that Terescu's testimony will exonerate her client--until Terescu finally takes the stand, and her carefully presented defense blows up in her face. Gruenfeld (The Halls of Justice) has written a comic opera of a novel with four main characters who pretend to be objective about each other when, in fact, they are linked by old grudges and attractions. By using Rebecca's point of view to tell the story, Gruenfeld guides the reader through a maze of facts and motives with skill and daring. The excellent courtroom scenes keep the data clear and understandable, while Gruenfeld builds tension about the motives of Terescu and the guilt (if any) of Perrein. Considering the daunting challenges he meets, readers might be excused for thinking that the title of this novel refers to Gruenfeld himself.