Reviews - The Broken Window, Volume 8

106 reviews for:

The Broken Window, Volume 8

Jeffery Deaver

3.93 AVERAGE

puddinghead's review against another edition

4.75

mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

paulanew's review against another edition

5.0

Excellent story line, very well written!! Makes one really think....

evielee's review against another edition

3.25

mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

stelaw's review against another edition

4.0

Perhaps lacking the gasps of the twists and turns in previous stories, this was nonetheless intriguing and enlightening as to who knows what about whom.

dmsmith115's review against another edition

4.0

I enjoyed this plot line, although it was a bit scary when thinking about real life.

ladydewinter's review against another edition

3.0

A great read for a day off. It is, of course, somewhat ironic to write about this book here, where everything I write could theoretically be used to commit the kind of crime described in this novel, but to be honest, at this point it's too late for me and it could happen to me anyway. In any case, a well-written and suspenseful thriller about a killer who uses the data available to the industry and government thanks to our online and offline activities to blame innocent people for the murders and rapes he commits. Creepy!

maimvn's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This book was incredible and equally scary. The criminal hacks into all different kinds of computer systems framing innocent people for his crimes through data profiling, stealing identities, creating false data such as late payments causing cars to be repossessed and electricity to be shut off. While acts like this require a high level of skill and criminals like the one in the book are rare, it highlights the dangers and vulnerability of data immortality and how blindly society trusts computers.

Data mining could “save[ing] us from diabetes, help[ing] us afford Christmas presents and houses and solving cases for the police”
“All of it’s true. But tell me if those benefits are worth somebody knowing every detail about your life. Maybe you don’t care, provided you save a few bucks. But do you really want Consumer-Choice lasers scanning your eyes in a movie theater and recording your reactions to those commercials they run before the movie? Do you want the RFID tag is your car key to be available to the police to know that you hit a hundred miles an hour last week, when your route only took you along roads that were posted fifty? Do you want strangers knowing what kind of underwear your daughter wears? Or exactly when you’re having sex?”
“[Data] knows you bought condoms and KY this afternoon and your husband was on the six-fifteen E train home. It knows you’ve got the evening free because your son’s at the Mets game and your daughter’s buying clothes at The Gap in the Village. It knows you put on cable-TV porn at seven-eighteen. And you order some nice tasty postcoital takeout Chinese at quarter to ten. That information is all there.” (pg. 274)

“Metadata is data about data. Every document that’s created by or stored on a computer - letters, files, reports, legal briefs, spreadsheets, Web sites, e-mails, grocery lists - is loaded with hidden data. Who created it, where it’s been sent, all the changes that have been made to it and who made them and when - all recorded there, second by second. You write a memo to your boss and for a joke you start out with ‘Dear Stupid Prick’, then delete it write it correctly. Well, the ‘stupid prick’ part is still there.” (pg. 275)

“We can cheat in the simplest ways. RFIDs, for instance. Slip a smart pass transponder into someone’s suitcase and it will show your car’s been in a dozen places over the weekend, while in fact it’s actually been sitting in your garage the whole time. Or think about how easy it is to put your employee ID into an envelope and have it delivered to the office, where it sits for four hours until you ask somebody to collect the package and bring it to you in a restaurant downtown. Sorry, forgot to pick it up. Thanks. Lunch is on me… And what do the data show? Why, that you were slaving away at work, while in reality you were wiping your razor clean as you stood over someone’s cooling body during those hours in question. That nobody actually saw you at your desk is irrelevant. Here are by time sheets, Officer… We trust data, we don’t trust the human eye. There are a dozen more tricks I’ve perfected.” (pg. 343)

“But it took me only a few seconds to open up the coding of those documents and examine the metadata. Everything about the phony prof had been written and uploaded yesterday.” (pg. 423)

“When a computer in authority gives instruction, you do as you’re told.” (pg. 570)

“People hassle you in all sorts of different ways. Don’t assume they’re right and you’re wrong just because they know something you don’t. The question is: Do you need to know it to do a better job? Then learn it. If not, it’s a distraction and to hell with it.” (pg. 335)

“That’s what happens in love. In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals - moods, loves. fears. angers - can’t be hidden. That’s the contract.” (pg. 397)