An Army of Dagnys

So my wife is in the middle of reading a 2012 detective novel titled The Bubble Gum Thief, written by an author called Jeff Miller, built around a quirky distaff anorexic FBI agent named Dagny Gray.

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A few minutes ago, she ran into the den with her Kindle said, “You’ve got to see this passage,” about three quarters of the way through the novel:

“Yesterday, we found a safe house in Chula Vista, and Draker’s prints are all over it. Right now we have cops visiting places in Bethel and Salt Lake City. It could be something; it could be nothing. We’ll know within the hour.”

“Does Fabee know about this?” “We had to tell him about Chula Vista, of course, and we’ll tell him about the others if they check out, too. But he doesn’t know how I’m tracking it down. He thinks I did all the work. Probably driving him crazy, since he’s got a huge team of his own sifting through much of the same data. They’ve probably gotten an earful about how one guy found the Chula Vista house by himself. When in fact, it’s not one guy, but an army of Davids.”

“An army of what?” Dagny asked. “This law professor, Glenn Reynolds, wrote a book called An Army of Davids,” Victor explained. “It’s about how technology and the Internet let individuals work collaboratively to compete with big media or big government. Like the way bloggers got Dan Rather fired over the phony memos, or how they dug up stuff on Trent Lott.

Reynolds says that Goliath is no match for an ‘army of Davids,’ at least not in the Internet age.”

“And Draker is Goliath?”

“Actually, I think Fabee would be Goliath, in this particular metaphor,” Victor said. An army of Davids. Maybe it would change law enforcement, just as bloggers had changed the media. It was pretty darn smart— even smarter than her use of chain e-mails, which turned up the third crime.

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Heh, indeed.™

For what it’s worth, my wife is enjoying the book, and it’s gotten very good reviews at Goodreads and Amazon. And it’s got an Army of Davids reference. What’s not to like?

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