- well, i do have a daughter, and the main character lawyer's name is abe ringle--ringle is my mother'siden name--and abe is kind of a variation on my hebrew name, avraham--abraham--so the character is loosely based on me, and the character of emma is loosely based on my daughter ella, who is a little younger, not yet out of law school, but one always fantasizes about a feisty daughter who has her own mind, getting into all kinds of difficulties, and the fantasy is her father will help her. of course, that's not my daughter's fantasy. my daughter's fantasy is she'll help me. - yes, for now, but if she reads this, she can go one of two ways: she can decide that, indeed, she'll never want to get into harm's way; or, she can decide that, quite the opposite, she's got to get into harm's way. - well, she's read it, and clearly she's a kind of young woman who never misses an opportunity to be involved in interesting things. - and, as in all spy and political thrillers, there are many levels of deceit and deception here. that's kind of a given of the genre, but to be frank, i was surprised at