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A review by kynan
Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan
3.0
I found this to be quite the page turner, causing me a couple of late nights 'cause I REALLY wanted to know what happened next. It's a relatively, well, OK, somewhat plausible crime thriller set nowish (early 2000s) in Silicon Valley.
Technology plays a major role in the assorted escapades but the details of the hacking, both physical and logical, are mostly glossed over. This means that there aren't any technical hurdles to trip on and it didn't head down the crazy leet-speak path like [b:Zero Day|9763010|Zero Day|Mark Russinovich|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312002496s/9763010.jpg|14652376].
Apparently based on the authors life (according to the appendix in the version I read, startlingly so) it follows the rather bizarre fate of artist/computer game-designer Paul Reynolds after he falls afoul of office politics and is rescued from his scheduled ejection by a rather eclectic crew of modernistic con-artists. For some values of "rescued".
This wasn't "best book ever" territory, but I did enjoy reading it and I'll likely check out the subsequent stories.
A wee warning: I read the PM Press (pmpress.org) electronic version available from Amazon and ran across what I thought was a pretty substantial errata collection (11 issues that I actually wrote down, I know I missed noting a few more) that I submitted to the publisher. For the most part it's not too bad but it threw me a couple of times.
Technology plays a major role in the assorted escapades but the details of the hacking, both physical and logical, are mostly glossed over. This means that there aren't any technical hurdles to trip on and it didn't head down the crazy leet-speak path like [b:Zero Day|9763010|Zero Day|Mark Russinovich|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312002496s/9763010.jpg|14652376].
Apparently based on the authors life (according to the appendix in the version I read, startlingly so) it follows the rather bizarre fate of artist/computer game-designer Paul Reynolds after he falls afoul of office politics and is rescued from his scheduled ejection by a rather eclectic crew of modernistic con-artists. For some values of "rescued".
This wasn't "best book ever" territory, but I did enjoy reading it and I'll likely check out the subsequent stories.
A wee warning: I read the PM Press (pmpress.org) electronic version available from Amazon and ran across what I thought was a pretty substantial errata collection (11 issues that I actually wrote down, I know I missed noting a few more) that I submitted to the publisher. For the most part it's not too bad but it threw me a couple of times.