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13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy

by L. A. Starks

L. A. Starks has presented us with the first book of what is to become a series, centered around the oil industry. Ms. Starks, herself an oil corporation executive, obviously knows almost everything there is to know about the refining of crude oil into the products of fuel, diesel, heating, jet, and (most importantly) gasoline. In 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy, she tells of a plot to disable major United States refineries and open the way to use of lower performance crude.

13 Days has an excellent plot, and the oil refining business is explained in detail. Perhaps too much detail. Technicians and engineers will most likely gobble this book up, but to read through to the last part of this mystery, most of us will have to struggle with unfamiliar terms, going back and forth to the explanations in the front of the book. While those explanations are very helpful, I feel that 13 Days could have been written with much less technical information. As it stands, it's less of a page turner than it might be - maybe one of the errors of a first-time novelist! However, kudos go to L. A. Starks for her writing, her plot, and her story's location – a place the majority of us had little interest in until now.

Lynn Dayton is an executive vice president for Tri-Coast Energy, overseeing their multiple US oil refining companies. She's now acting as head of the Centennial oil refinery, a plant recently bought and merged with Tri-Coast at her own suggestion. Lynn had promised her boss to turn this company – on the edge of bankruptcy - around in a certain amount of time. But now there are only four weeks left, and a diminished flare outside the window means still another setback. The normal size of the flares (fifteen feet above a 250 foot stack) indicates when there is trouble in a particular line.

Lynn is fighting not only the fact that Tri-Coast has taken over when the company's executives wanted to buy it for themselves (they couldn't come up with the financing), but also the fact that she is a woman Everyone in that position formerly had always been a male. This new setback quickly elevates into four dead employees, and Lynn's job is once again on the line.

The plot develops to include Robert Guillard, a Frenchman living in Paris, Lynn's sister Ceil, a man known only as Rabbit (who is known by Robert and who works inside the Centennial refinery), Cy Derett, Lynn's boyfriend and his two children, Lynn's emphysemic father, Alex Stinson of the Houston police, Xin Yu, a Sansei liaison (an Aisian company interested in supplying the Centennial plant with crude oil) and various members of the Centennial Board.

After several other 'accidents' and murders, the real cause of the delays and setbacks is revealed, and the individuals responsible are all brought to justice as well. With the single exception of that wealth of unnecessary detail, L. A. Stark has contributed a fine murder mystery to the genre.

Alan Paul Curtis

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