Truth Like the Sun, by Jim Lynch

This book is set in both 1962 and 2001. Roger Morgan is an important promoter of the Seattle World's Fair, the expo of 1962, the "Century 21" extravaganza that left its footprint on Seattle, a mark that may still be seen in many places, but none so obvious as the Space Needle, which has come to be the icon of Seattle.

Washington Post Review

New York Times Review

This is also about a young PI reporter, Helen Gulanos, in 2001, who takes on the story of Morgan and the corrupt network of illegal gambling businesses, real-estate traders, and law enforcement with whom he seems to have been involved during his ruthless promotion of the Expo, as well as the subsequent boom in Seattle as the I5 freeway was completed, changing the layout of the city and value of properties.

Many colorful fictional characters are in this story in both eras. Exactly who they represent would be an interesting study, but I doubt that anyone has the desire to fight the lawsuits--not to mention other consequences--that would result from an attempt to publish such a study.

The reviews are lukewarm, but I found this book impossible to put down, and read it in about a day.

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon

Copyright 2013, by Thomas Pynchon.

It took me until about page 77 before I decided that I could read this book. I almost gave it up. It's a mess of hip conversations, and it's set in 2001. But once I began to recognize the character Maxine as someone that I could actually care about, I wanted to keep reading, and find out what's going on. So I almost feel as if I skipped the first 77 pages.

This is from page 140:

"Madoff Securities. Hmm, maybe some industry scuttlebutt. Bernie Madoff, a legend on the street. Said to do quite well, I recall."
"One to two percent a month."
"Nice average return, so what's the problem?"
"Not average. Same every month."
"Uh-oh." She flips pages, has a look at the graph. "What the fuck. It's a perfect straight line, slanting up forever?'
"Seem a little abnormal to you?"
"...it's got to be a Ponzi scheme..."

And this from 143:

"Future of film, if you want to know--someday, more bandwidth, more video files up on the Internet, everybody'll be shootin everything, way too much to look at, nothin will mean shit. Think of me as the prophet of that."

From page 432:

"Look at it, every day more lusers than users, keyboards and screens turning into nothin but portals to web sites for what the Management wants everybody addicted to, shopping, gaming, jerking off, streaming endless garbage -- ... [this ellipsis is mine, as is the next. The ones in the following passage are from the text]
"...hashslingrz and them are all screaming louder and louder about 'Internet freedom,' while they go on handing more of it over to the bad guys ... They get us, all right, we're all lonely, needy, disrespected, desperate to believe in any sorry imitation of belonging they want to sell us... We're being played, Maxi, and the game is fixed, and it won't end till the Internet--the real one, the dream, the promise--is destroyed."