Synopsis
A computer genius pulls off her greatest hack yet -- and her skill might just get her killed.
Angela Hoot's government career begins with an ending. Her unorthodox programming skills get her kicked out of MIT's graduate school and into the Bureau's cyber-forensics unit.
A messaging app with sophisticated tracking capabilities surfaces. Its beta users, all young women, are only identified as they turn up dead in their bedrooms. As Angela races to crack the killer's digital code, their technical rivalry escalates. She must deny the killer access to her personal life, or risk losing her life to the underbelly of the Internet.
Angela is an interesting character. But, she is reckless – to a fault. I wouldn’t mind seeing her story made into a series. If she stays in her current career path, she sure could go through some interesting experiences.
What kept my interest is that she deals with the virtual world which, as we knows, is always changing. While the app in this book would have sounded impossible in the not-so-distant past, it’s a horrifying possibility these days – maybe not in the exact way that it played out, but similar.
I’m not sure that she would have gone without punishment had all of this actually happened. She made a lot of choices that could have severely messed up the investigation. But, I guess it’s fine if it works out in the end.
The flirtation and attraction between Angela and Keats was a bit ridiculous right off the bat. But, just like the book I read previous to this, it’s just something you get used to when reading books with a female protagonist.
I’m going to make a comparison - partly because these two are linked often, and partly because I’ve read a lot from both of them this year. James Patterson books and Dean Koontz books that have a female protagonist always have a male love interest. And there is often a “damsel in distress” moment which typically involves something along the lines of “thank god he got here when he did.” Oy. You get used to it, I guess. But, it does get old.
That said, where they differ is what most of the descriptions are about. I’ve found in Dean Koontz’s books, most of the descriptions are about how beautiful the woman is. Especially in the case of the Jane Hawk series. It’s basically beat into the reader’s brain that Jane is ridiculously beautiful. It gets old.
In Patterson’s books, I find that you see more of the admiration of the male love interest from the woman’s point of view.
Not that it matters all that much, it’s just something that I found interesting.
Overall, I enjoyed the ride. The story was interesting, and I liked the new angle of seeing cases from the tech side.
5/5 Stars
