Cutting Edge
by Jeffrey S. Savage
 |
Covenant Communications (American Fork, Utah): 2001. Trade paperback: 241 pages. ISBN-10: 1-57734-844-3 Suggested retail price: $14.95 (US) Tags: computers; Internet; Mormons; programming; Religious; Silicon Valley; Thriller Tactical strength: [5/10] |
Compare prices on Cutting Edge by Jeffrey S. Savage at Book Cost
Twenty-something Travis Edwards lives in a dot com paradise. He and his pregnant wife, Lisa, move from Utah to Silicon Valley. Lisa didn't want to move at first, but after she and Travis pray, they both feel comfortable with the move. Travis has accepted a new programming job with Open Door, an Internet company that offers high pay, gives numerous stock options, and has an upcoming IPO. Travis's paradise quickly turns sour when he discovers someone inside his new company stealing files from his workstation. Travis tells his boss, Rob, about the files, and Rob suspiciously resigns the next day. Travis decides to present his evidence to the president, but the president fires Travis for corporate espionage and threatens to take legal action. Travis starts to suspect almost everyone he knows, including his home teacher, of participating in the conspiracy to discredit him. Travis wants to prove his innocence and starts to gather more evidence, but he may not have enough time before he disappears too.
Jeffrey Savage has a clean and easily readable style. He gets a little too florid on occasion and usually over describes his scenes. I frequently found myself saying, "Ok, I got the point. Get on with the story already." Covenant could have easily cut ten to twenty percent of the book without sacrificing any of the story. For example, the prologue sets up a suspicious tone about the conditions under which Open Door hires Travis, but Savage develops this suspicion adequately in the regular development of the plot, making the prologue unnecessary.
Savage starts chapter one with Travis running up Provo canyon. In a series of extended flashbacks, Travis remembers among other things, losing both his parents, meeting Lisa, hiking in the Provo canyon, converting to the LDS Church, and proposing to Lisa. Although the flashbacks do explain a lot of the backstory, this information has little direct bearing on subsequent events. In a suspense novel, I expect that any point so carefully explained as Travis's conversion will have an effect on the outcome. Instead, the conclusion relies only on Travis turning to prayer. Travis could have had the same experience as a born-in-the-covenant returned-missionary Mormon, an evangelical Christian, or a Muslim.
Cutting Edge reads like an extended tale and not a complex corporate espionage novel. Savage does create some good tension and anticipation by keeping you and Travis in the dark about the corporate espionage kingpins' identities, but Savage gives us one, and only one, storyline to follow to an inevitable conclusion. I would have liked to see Savage heap even more tension upon Travis through any number of possible subplots that use the material he introduced in the flashbacks. Perhaps Travis could get too wrapped up in increasing his wealth -- contrary to his mother-in-law's advice. Perhaps Travis has a serious problem with his new ward and goes somewhat inactive. (In fact, for a recent convert, Travis has an uncanny understanding of Mormon culture and tradition.) Perhaps Lisa faces a serious risk of dying, threatening Travis with the prospect of losing yet another loved one. Savage has the material in place to create a multifaceted suspense novel, but in spite of setting up a lot of background material, Cutting Edge only dips its toe in the font of plot possibilities.
Although Savage cannot control Covenant's production process, the poor copyediting and typesetting in Cutting Edge kept pushing me out of the story. Covenant has set the justification parameters in their desktop publishing software so liberally that almost every page has at least one paragraph with positive letterspace and another with negative letterspace. Compound that with errors like the numerous "Travis'ss" and the letters on the page create a negative reading experience that colors the author's story.
I think Savage had high aspirations for his first novel, but through inexperience missed some of the opportunities that would have made Cutting Edge a sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat page turner. I look forward to Savage's next novel and think we may yet have an Elmore Leonard or Nelson DeMille among us.
