Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly is a novel that deals with the basics of humanity. It encompasses our greatest potentials to succeed and better ourselves as a species, and deals with the greed and temptation that we all face at one time or another. It touches on our frailties and shows us our weaknesses while allowing us to observe our ability to overcome evil and achieve greatness. This is a novel that begins with a man who wants to make the world a better place. Henry Pierce is a chemist who seeks to understand what makes us work on the smallest of levels. On the way to his dream, he is almost derailed by his best friend Cody Zeller in an act of greed and self interest when Cody sets an elaborate trap to lure Henry into taking the fall for the death of a young woman who sold herself via an online site.

Cody bills himself as a white hat hacker or a man who hacks into secure sites so that another company can sell security to them, paying Cody a handsome percentage for each successful invasion. Cody sets up the security for Amedeo Technologies which is the company his friend Henry established as a nod to Amedeo Avogadro - the first man to recognize the difference between molecules and atoms. Henry is big on symbolism. His favorite movie and his favorite book serve as guides as he labors to create the vehicle that will drive science and medicine into the future. Henry loves the book "Horton Hears A Who" because it tells a story of a character who believed in the existence of a world smaller than all those around them could imagine, for which he was ridiculed and isolated from the rest at first. It all changes for Horton when the truth is revealed and he is vindicated. Henry is that Horton. He has created a formula he calls Proteus after the movie Fantastic Voyage aired in 1966. The formula is a "power supply system that would one day patrol the bloodstream of human beings and destroy pathogens threatening their hosts." Before he can file patents for his formula, Cody makes a deal with big pharmaceuticals who don't want Proteus to see the light of day. Then he sets out to use his best friend's weakness against him. Cody arranges for Henry's new phone number to be posted on the site of a prostitute who worked through a site called LA Darlings, which is a site Cody set up. The telephone number is given to a girl he murdered named Lilly, and her disappearance hits a chord with Henry that he can't ignore. It reminds him too much of his sister Isabella who died living on the streets at the hands of the man dubbed the 'Dollmaker' years earlier. Cody knew this was a weakness in his friend, and sets out to exploit it, even arranging for the dead girls' body to be placed in a freezer in a U Store It locker under Henry's name.

Henry is under investigation, and the threat of arrest is enough to derail his attempts to secure financial partnerships for Amedeo, but he doesn't panic. Instead he asks himself who stands to gain, and who knows enough to set him up to this degree? The answers and his solutions are surprising and ingenious as Henry saves himself and redeems his name in a fast-paced mysterious thriller.