Book details of 'For the Sake of Elena'

Title	For the Sake of Elena
Author(s)	Elizabeth George
ISBN	0553561278
Language	English
Publisher	Bantam Books

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'For the Sake of Elena':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Elizabeth George writes very good mystery novels. I hesitate to use the phrase, "in the great British mystery tradition," since she has extended the genre by a population of very real characters and studies, in depth, of human motivations. So where is the technology and/or science fiction? The plot in this particular book partly hangs on a call made via "Ceephone". This is the British version of the American TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf). Part of the story looks at whether the call was made at all, part hangs on whether such a call could be spoofed. In North America, local calls, unless made through a PBX (Private Branch eXchange, a privately operated telephone switch) or recorded on Automatic Number Identification (ANI, also known as "Caller-ID") would not be recorded. England, however, has local measured service. I would therefore have thought that identifying whether a call was made would be a simple task. It is possible, though, that the only record is that you made a call for a certain time within a certain zone. A Ceephone is basically a terminal/modem combination. The American TDD, I believe, uses a standard 300 bps B.11 103 modem. 300 bps is ample speed because a TDD is essentially a "talk" or "CHAT" function: what I type appears on your screen, and what you type appears on mine. At first glance, therefore, the uninitiated would say that such a system is easy to spoof. There is no voice to recognize, so it would be easy to fool someone. This, however, is an overly simplistic view. As anyone who uses talk, CHAT or PHONE knows, everyone is an individual. How do they start the conversation? Do they use capital letters or not? Do they use abbreviations? What type? And, speaking of typing, how fast can they? How well can they? How many mistakes do they make? How far back are they willing to erase to correct a mistake? For anyone who has used such a system for any time, it is almost impossible to change between two people even if the party on the remote terminal doesn't know them. Faking someone else is pretty much out of the question. Not even people can pass the Turing test. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994
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Book description:

Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge--where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College--her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve--until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death.Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.For both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and on those people who appeared to know her best--from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union.What's more, Elena's father, a Cambridge professor under consideration for a prestigious post, is a man with his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal.