Read this recommended and fascinating thriller!
When a review copy of this book landed on my desk at JAQUO HQ, I admit that I didn’t start reading it right away. You see, thrillers aren’t really my favourite genre. But what a great book this is. And extremely timely. It’s the sort of story that would have sounded far fetched only a few years ago. Today, it is totally believable.
Barry Eisler
And I must say that Barry Eisler now has (yet another) fan for life — I have his other books prominently placed on my wishlist. Whenever I read a review that reads ‘I was hooked from page one’ I admit that my default thought is something along the lines of ‘yeah, right’. I’ve known this with so few of the many hundreds of books I have read over the years and yet here’s another to join that select list.
The author has taken what would seem like an unlikely scenario and ensured that it is totally feasible — quite scarily so. The unusual characters that come together in this novel are believable and you’ll empathise with them (well, most of them!)
The plot
Very few areas of our lives are private these days, whether we know it or not. There are closed-circuit TV cameras almost everywhere we go in our day-to-day lives. Every day you’ll see evidence on your computer or iPad that shows only too well what sites you’ve been browsing — and serves you with their tailored-for-you ads.
Keystrokes from your work computer might be monitored by your employers, usually for nothing more offensive that to see if you have been posting on Facebook and for many years, you haven’t been able to get away with looking at internet porn on your work computer unless you delete your history. Cookies track us wherever we go online.
We carry a geo-location device with us everywhere we go, every day. We can be traced and tracked via the technology that we all have in our phones. We no longer need to use PINs to get into our phones; our thumbprint does the job — and when we enter the country we are recognised by a device that scans our eyeballs.
This may or may not bother you. Especially if you are an innocent, law-abiding citizen with a regular life. But it would be overly naive to believe that government agencies aren’t using much more sophisticated methods to track people. Wouldn’t it?
And what would happen if the person who was responsible for certain powerful and secret monitoring systems was to get ideas that made them abuse their power? What is the fine line between monitoring and interference? And where exactly is that line to be drawn when it comes to international affairs, terrorism and espionage? What happens when a worthy system to engender national safety is taken several steps further?
God’s Eye View
Evie works for the National Security Agency as a computer analyst; her job is to monitor various activities that are being tracked throughout the world. It’s a good job financially, and one she needs as the divorced mother of a hearing-impaired son. It allows her to provide her boy with the special education he requires.
Evie is smart and she begins to have serious doubts about the seemingly unrelated deaths of investigation journalists and whistle-blowing agents. She realises that they are beyond coincidence. When she meets, and is attracted to, a strange but compelling man who is also deaf like her son she hopes that the relationship will blossom.
But this is no casual meeting. She and her son are suddenly in danger. Is this new man in her life really what he first seems? It appears not. But can she trust him? She embarks upon a terrifying series of events.
Recommended
The plot of this novels twists and turns as we follow the situation that Evie finds herself in. And remember – her adversary is one of the most powerful men in America who has the advantage of a God’s eye view…….
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
February 5, 2016
Sounds very good! Onto the wish list with it. Definitely one of my favorite genres. Thanks for the recommendation.
February 5, 2016
I think you’ll really enjoy it, Merry!