Bad Memory

by Duane Franklet

When a major computer corporation receives a demand for one million dollars to prevent the destruction of its entire network, troubleshooter Barry Shepard is forced to counter additional threats against his own family.

Genres: Fiction

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was one that definitely would not be of wide appeal, but was pretty good for those that were drawn to the initial premise. The story line covered about a week in the life of a major technology company undergoing a "hacker for profit" nightmare scenario, and borrowed a bit from both the technology and business suspense areas, somewhat akin to Michael Crichton's "Disclosure". As I was pretty familiar with both the technical and business underlying plot lines, I found it pretty enjoyable and surprisingly well written. What was the most shocking thing is that it was written a decade ago and the method of hacking the large corporation was through a dial-up modem...kinda made me laugh, until I remembered I was still dialing into a past companies network for remote working till about 4 years ago.

It did suffer from the "sh*t, deadline's next week!!?!" problem you see in movies and books all the time where a complicated story with numerous open threads all of a sudden screeches to a conclusion in the last 10 pages/15 minutes, leaving questions unanswered all over the place. With movies, I always figure they ran out of money. With books, I wonder if it's a writers block thing, which would not be fun..."I have 200 great pages...but now can't finish it - screw it, 10 more pages and calling it quits". This one had that feeling.

[Mark- · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably an important book. It was the first book to point out that computer software ransom is a possibility. It points out some hazards of large computer networks.
The book is well written and suspenseful.