Investigating a series of cab hold-ups that are depleting the G&W Cab company of drivers, part-time cabbie and Boston private eye Carlotta Carlyle applies her new computer skills to the case and discovers a troubling secret about her lover, Sam. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour. The name of Barnes's heroine, private investigator Carlotta Carlyle, is spoken in the same critical breath as Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski. Here, in her sixth adventure, Carlotta buys a personal computer and a new gun, both of which come in handy in her latest case. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot red-haired ex-cop turned part-time Boston cabbie and private eye, wants a computer. The mean streets and the information superhighway intersect occasionally, and she needs access. For expertise, she turns to her sometime lover and owner of the Green and White Cab Company where Carlotta works. Sam Gianelli is a connected guy: his family is Mob, but he's straight. That doesn't mean he can't get a good deal on a used PC. The seller, Frank, is very nervous and obsessed with making sure Carlotta will provide a good home for the PC. Then he burgles Carlotta's apartment to make sure the machine is all right. Soon a bomb goes off in the Green and White's building. Sam is severely injured, and another man dies. Somehow Frank is involved, but how? Carlotta's investigation extends back 25 years to Vietnam and the missing son of another Boston crime family. The sixth Carlotta case takes a while to unfold, but the humor and the self-reliance of the heroine make the wait worthwhile. Good plotting and an exciting, unsentimental finish. Wes Lukowsky In her sixth spellbinding adventure, Carlotta Carlyle, the 6'1" redheaded P.I. from Boston, takes on a case that draws her into the mysterious shadovaand of computer technology, where information is cheap, and privacy may be a thing of the past. Part-time cabbie Carlotta is entering the modern age of investigation. With the help of her sometime lover, mafioso, and computer-hobbyist Sam Gianelli, she invests in her first "hardware," a cheap personal computer. And at the urgingof her ex-boss, Boston Police Lt. Mooney, who decries the stopping power of her .38 S&W, she decides to upgrade her arsenal. Both types of hardware come in handy when Carlotta is hired by Gloria, owner of G&W Cab, to investigate the brutal robberies that are causing her cabbies to quit in record numbers, and the violence and unanswered questions escalate. An explosion rocks G&W, killing Gloria's brother and seriously wounding co-owner Sam Gianelli. Is someone out to bankrupt G&W to acquire its invaluable cab medallions? Is the company a pawn in a Mafia vendetta, with Sam, the underboss's son, the target? And who put that tiny microphone near G&W's bathroom? Aided by a mysterious databank expert, Carlotta learns far more than she thought possible about "private" transactions. And she finds herself digging into Sam's past, exposing secrets he's kept hidden for years--secrets that begin to pull them further apart. As the investigation reaches its climax, Carlotta realizes, almost too late, that the mob may be just a fall guy in a very intimate crime. "Like the best of the new detectives, V.I. and Kinsey, she is a woman of wit and gravity, compassion and toughness, a heroine worth spending time with."-- The New York Time s Book Review