The Masakado Lesson

by William P. Kennedy

A motley group of greedy Americans plays an intricate global game of triple cross involving sex, poker, bank defrauding, and the cracking of the most sophisticated codes ever invented, with the winner taking control of the world

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Kennedy is a New York Times best-selling author of nine novels in his own name and seven under the pseudonym, Diana Diamond. His novel, Toy Soldiers, was made into a major motion picture.

Kennedy began writing in High School for the Xavier Magazine, and then studied history and economics at Holy Cross College. After military service as a Naval Officer, he earned advanced degrees from New York University and became a business journalist, covering the computer, telecommunications, and electric power industries. This led to his founding TCI,an advertising agency for high-technology markets. He and his wife, Dorothy McNally, have five adult children and 14 grandchildren. They live on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Reviews

[Joe White · Rating 4 out of 5]

review notes: 05/16/14 The Masakado Lesson 1987/1986 William P. Kennedy

Central plotline: Steal enough of the OS source code from a developmental "supercomputer" being developed in Japan, in order to keep the US from falling too far behind in the development of "supercomputer" resources.


Main characters: A rogue NSA operative who developed and directed a scheme to steal the OS code. The entire operation was "off book" but well funded and later denied as existing.

A "hacker" with limited OS and programming skills, but with a superb social engineering skillset, with which he was able to "regularly" penetrate banks and other small networks of computers in order to manipulate balances and other historical information. It sounded as if this character might have been modeled on Kevin Mitnick, although this book preceded that action by at least five years.

These two men were further portrayed as having the playing card - card counting skills of the "MIT" teams created for blackjack card counting in Vegas. However, I also thought that this book preceded that activity by several years.

Another main character consisted of a Japanese man who was leading the team creating a supercomputer. The particular individual seemed to have a concentrated skillset based in software development oriented to the OS infrastructure, but also having the ability to code at user lever interface design capability. This individual was highly driven with capabilities of intense concentration, with a fixation on "winning" the supercomputing "war". He had strong alliterations historical Japan, particularly to the Akagi carrier attack on Pearl harbor, and its historical significance.

The fourth main character was a female software developer who was portrayed as constantly hitting the glass ceiling in corporate and software team development.

All the main characters exhibited traits found in James Bond, such as multi-skills for social engineering, card playing, strategizing, risk taking, and the physical capabilities for rugged pursuit and evasion.

For nostalgia buffs this portrays a time prior to the internet when "dial up" really consisted of dialing direct to physical numbers and directly connecting to remote systems. The term "microcomputer" was used as the time frame here apparently was the late 70's with the Apple 2, but before the Mac, before the PC, and before the widespread use of GUI interfaces. The term "supercomputer" was apparently about equal to an early Cray.

The plot and tension centered on a minimum time frame left in the development of the OS being developed by the Japanese team, and the mental gymnastics and software and physical intrusion exercises plotted to steal the source or disable it.

The book was exciting without being riddled with dead bodies, car chases, shootouts, and military weapons. It had a reference to the Secretary of State and the President, but this was largely a byline, and the main focus avoided Washington or official Japanese politics.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting novel about a confidence game that happens to be set in the world of computers. However, the novel was written in the late 1980's and the Information Age of that era now seems altogether quaint, so the setting of the book is more than a little dated. Also, the author plays to America's fear and apprehension over Japan's ability to achieve global economic dominance. Back in the eighties, this view had a certain degree of traction, but these days those same feelings have been transferred to the Chinese. Although, if you can overlook those two shortfalls, you'll find THE MASAKADO LESSON is a well-written tale of competing grifters who become so entangled by their own games that they can't sort out who is playing who. Even though the novel was written and set nearly a quarter century ago, the story would have worked equally well if the characters were conspiring to steal the design of the first printing press, or the quickest trade route to the Orient rather than the race to see who could develop the world's first supercomputer.

[Vitor Rodrigues]

Aqui no Brasil, o título foi traduzido como A Vingança do Samurai.
O primeiro thriller da Era da Supercomputação.

O Japão está na eminência de possuir um supercomputador revolucionário, e assim tornar-se a primeira potência tecnológica do planeta, deixando os Estados Unidos para trás.
Um agente da CIA, uma bela mulher, um gênio em eletrônica e um brilhante vigarista são convocados pelo governo americano para uma missão ultra-secreta, a qual objetiva desvendar os segredos da fantástica máquina.