Who might exorcize this demon? How about a young, Japanese-born physicist, ski bum and computer-security expert, revealed in photos as an elfin young man with long black hair -- in short, a wizard like Tsutomu Shimomura? When Mitnick apparently broke into Shimomura's computer system on Christmas Day, 1994, he threw down a challenge that would lead to his capture two months later. If Mitnick was "the dark-side hacker" (as he's called in "Cyberpunk," until recently his only in-depth portrait), then his nemesis, Shimomura, stepped right out of central casting into the role of a Jedi knight. The story of the Mitnick manhunt, recounted by veteran computer reporter and "Cyberpunk" co-author John Markoff, broke in the New York Times on February 16, 1995 -- setting off a different kind of chase, one involving agents and deals and contracts. This month, the stores will be crowded with the fruits of that second hunt -- a complementary trio of books, each, "Rashomon"-like, providing a different angle of vision on the Mitnick saga. Individually, these volumes are dissatisfyingly incomplete. Put them together, though, and they debunk the very media-legend stereotypes that sold each of the authors' contracts. Mitnick is no demon; Shimomura is no wizard. Crime and punishment online is a lot harder to score than a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style duel.