I was a little cynical about this being a suspense thriller when it started to talk about the “sexy case manager” and love triangles in the description.

I was right.

However that wasn’t the problem and I hit a larger stumbling block. The writing is basic, and there are typos and grammar errors throughout. Expect some very odd phrasing, though the intended meaning is usually clear. e.g. “They didn’t know how serious[sic] she took her job.” Serious, not seriously. “Once his sister was more independent in the ways of America…”

Referring to events in a previous book is fine, but please either use a footnote e.g *see Title or state something like “last year’s kidnapping”. Having (Book I) literally written in the text took me straight out of the story.

I knew I was getting nitpicky when the author says that higher than average IQ enhances non-verbal communication a.k.a. social awareness. IT departments and research science teams also all have above average IQ, and are well-known for being incredibly socially aware. Oh, wait… I will try tone this down and focus on the book.

I put the book down at loc 90, when the book failed to distinguish between an aircraft and an airline, making a certain paragraph make little sense. Then he hacked Boeing to get design docs that are publicly available information and every Boeing pilot and airline will have… From that point on I was just paging through, because I was completely out of the story. There were a few other bits that stood out: on loc 103 the hacker didn’t know that if you reveal the vulnerability, you are already showing how to hack it. On loc 117 the formatting goes to pot. For the next few pages, there are two paragraphs a page stuck in the middle of the page.

I finished it, but the other reason I am not fond of this book is because it touches on too many real life tragedies. The disappearance of M370 is in here, and the Anonymous logo is used at the end of the book. Making any real-world organisation a bad guy is something that should be avoided, if only because too many people take what they read at face value.

It’s a two at best, and I can’t really recommend it to thriller readers. People familiar with the genre, espionage, or IT will be hitting the roof, or playing drinking games about errors.