Lee Martin: Hacker (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
OVERKILL
Hovering perilously near burnout with the demands of police duty and family life -- specifically toddler, husband, teenager and a friend comatose from a hit-and-run -- Fort Worth detective Deb Ralston now adds a grisly ax murder to her twenty-five-hour days.

A man and his computer are hacked to pieces. Eric Huffman had no enemies, no reason to be so violently murdered. Neither did restaurant owner Helen Thorne, but a day later both she and her computer are victims of the same horrible crime. The evidence is thin, but disturbing... since the pattern seems poised to repeat itself in Deb's own household...

"Deb Ralston remains a credible, entertaining heroine" -- Publishers Weekly

Lee Martin: Hacker. A Deb Ralston Mystery. Worldwide Library, ISBN: 0373261357 (January, 1994), 250 p., $3.99.

Lee Martin: Hacker (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
Booklist calls Fort Worth policewoman Deb Ralston a "spirited, often put-upon detective... a revelation in the genre." A revelation is exactly what overworked and underappreciated Deb needs when a grisly ax murder leaves a man dead and his computer demolished. Yet another ax attack on a woman and her computer reveals a strange link: a mysterious electronic virus that appears to have plagued the computer systems of both victims. Could a software virus -- or perhaps its solution -- really be cause for murder?

Even more worrisome is the presence of Shane, an apparently homeless teenager who follows Deb home like a puppy. Deb, always a sucker for strays, takes him in, but when Shane is linked to both murder scenes, she begins to wonder if she isn't harboring the enemy. With dry humor intact, Deb sets about juggling transients, murder investigations, children, and dogs in her typical down-to-earth and capable fashion.

The added pressure of a crisis that involves her son Hal pushes Deb to the point where she's just about to ask to sit the rest of this one out. But suddenly, a baffling computer virus appears in the circuits of her husband's computer....

Lee Martin: Hacker. A Deb Ralston Mystery. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312069901 (April, 1992), 166 p., $16.95.