Trade Secrets — Maynard F. Thomson

Most of the lawyers Nason Nichols, P.I., dealt with sported pinstripes in polyester, so he quickly recalculated his daily rate for Holtree, the blue chip counsel to Zoltec Industries. Zoltec, the world's leading producer of high-powered microprocessor computer chips, had been pilfered of vital technological secrets by a former employee, and they now looked to Nichols for the necessary ingenuity and discretion to retrieve the data ... or render it useless.

Aided by Zoltec's alluring top scientist, Dr. Rachel Ornstein, Nichols traverses the New England countryside in search of the thief and the secrets, but stumbles upon a murder instead. Suddenly a suspect, Nichols regrets that he ever plugged into the corporate espionage circuit, and he's in need of answers-fast. Bucky Hanrahan, his Vietnam buddy and a high-tech stock expert, offers his angles on illicit financial schemes, while Nichols begins to suspect that many of the intense working relationships at Zoltec extend well beyond its gated headquarters. As TRADE SECRETS barrels towards its surprising conclusion, the beleaguered but wry Nichols must play by a whole different set of rules-and free himself from a tangle of deception, misguided passions, and lethal corporate greed.