Book Review: The Blue Nowhere by Jefferey Deaver
The techno-thriller, “ ”, by Jeffery Deaver, was written some time ago but in this day of social networking, the threat of social engineering is becoming a very real phenomenon which is where this book holds particularly stark warnings for its reader. Look at your friends and colleagues – do you really know them? What about their friends and relatives? What do they really know about you? Could someone you have never met socially engineer you?
I originally bought “The Blue Nowhere” in abridged audio, on cassette, and couldn’t really get to grips with it but having recently bought the printed version I found it much more accessible. After getting through the book I might be tempted to give the audio version another go.
The story gets going quickly and is a keen page turner starting with a killer who uses social engineering techniques and extreme hacking (cracking) skills to lure their victims. The resulting cat and mouse chase investigation is headed up by an old school cop Frank Bishop, and the California State Police Criminal Crimes Division, consisting of a rag tag bunch of people including a young wannabe street cop, a hard nosed cop, a consultant, and a previously locked up hacker specifically bought in to help catch “Phate” – the serial killer hacker. A number of twists and turns ensue, as the team desperately try and locate the killer before another victim is found. The team also need to figure out who Shawn is and what their motives are whilst battling their own internal bureaucracy.
A lot of the story balances on the expectations and performance of the supposed friendly hacker, Wyatt Gillette, who seems, to me at least, to continually prevent the team from successfully apprehending Phate at almost every turn as Gillette often misses something blindingly obvious – maybe he is just a little too analytical – it probably explains how he got locked up in the first place. Or is there more going on than there appears to be?
About two thirds of the way through the story I couldn’t help but be constantly surprised by the apparent ineptitude of the investigating team. For example, if you are on the trail of a hacker killer and the hacker knows you are on to them, and subsequently knows all about you, and they are well versed in social engineering then wouldn’t you find it at least curious why your wife gets called mysteriously back to hospital for a surprising turn around of diagnosis. Then, when you turn up at the hospital and a guard who matches the description of the perpetrator is sitting with your wife wouldn’t you at least double check their credentials (or perhaps their calloused fingers!)?
Many of the technical aspects of the story simply do not gel for me and I found myself expressing disbelief out loud as the story progressed – however this may be due to the age of the story – technology has moved on quite a bit over the last eight years.
Technology aside, the story works reasonably well and the cat and mouse story is interesting to follow. Hacking (Cracking!) is often glossed over in novels as being straightforward, and this story is no different. But, for even the best hackers the real work has to start after you gain access to a system doesn’t it? Once inside you need to figure out what format the data is in, where the data is, which bits of data are up to date, and so on. You would need to have a pretty good technical understanding of how the victim network is configured both physically and logically in order to make any real sense of the data. For example, you might get hold of a data file and you look at the contents – you need to know the file format otherwise you don’t know if the encoded characters indicate a national insurance number, a bank account reference, a date field, a checksum or whatever.
For me, a story needs to be conceivable (not necessarily believable), and I am happy to suspend my disbelief when reading, but at times the ridiculousness, sheer convenience, or down right ineptitude of some of the characters pulled me out of the story. I find it particularly disturbing that law enforcement officers seemingly base their decisions, even ones using deadly force, on unverified and unacknowledged information. This echoes the stark warnings and shows just how we may be coming to rely too heavily on information presented to us without challenging it.
All said and done, “” is a good read and could make a good movie (as long as you let a lot of the technicalities go). Update – according to the authors website the story of “The Blue Nowhere” has been optioned by Warner Brothers. Buy .
The Official Website of Jeffery Deaver: The Blue Nowhere (2001)
- £5.91
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