By day, Angie, a twenty-year veteran of the tech industry, is a data analyst at Tomo, the world’s largest social networking company; by night, she exploits her database access to profile domestic abusers and kill the worst of them. She can’t change her own traumatic past, but she can save other women.
When Tomo introduces a deceptive new product that preys on users’ fears to drive up its own … up its own revenue, Angie sees Tomo for what it really is—another evil abuser. Using her coding and hacking expertise, she decides to destroy Tomo by building a new social network that is completely distributed, compartmentalized, and unstoppable. If she succeeds, it will be the end of all centralized power in the Internet.
But how can an anti-social, one-armed programmer with too many dark secrets succeed when the world’s largest tech company is out to crush her and a no-name government black ops agency sets a psychopath to look into her growing digital footprint?
“Awesome, thrilling, and creepy: a fast-paced portrayal of the startup world, and the perils of our personal data and technical infrastructure in the wrong hands.”
—Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group
“His most ambitious work yet. A murder thriller about high tech surveillance and espionage in the startup world. Like the best of Tom Clancy and Barry Eisner.”
—Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project.
“Explores the creation and effects of the templated self, the rise of structured identity and one-size-fits-all media culture, and feasible alternatives.”
—Amber Case, author of Calm Technology
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Enjoyed reading this book a lot. Learned some scary stuff about the internet.
It was a slow start with too much detail about the internet -having said that it was a good book
The first thing to know about this book is it is detail heavy with regard to hacking, coding, and internet technology. I don’t know how much of the tech in this book is real or embellished but it all looked and felt real to me, and I’m no stranger to some of the technology. However the detail is expressed in a simplified manner and if you can get past that, this book is a compelling read. In fact it’s almost three books in one, one part cyber-assassin, one part cat-and-mouse computer espionage thriller, and one part tech startup drama. All three are compelling on their own, and drawing the storylines together was I’m sure no easy feat. That being said, sometimes one storyline would carry on a little too long, getting a bit mired in details. That’s a minor criticism, and on the whole I enjoyed this book.
Angie works for Tomo a Social Networking Giant. By day she works for them but she spends her evening looking for profiles of women who are being abused. She does this because she was a victim of domestic violence. She saves the women….taking matters into her own hands illegally.
Sorry I found it disjointed and hard to grasp.
Unconventional, perfectly flawed central character. Loved the tech theme and the plot kept me reading to see what’s next
This was an impulse read for me and, I’ve got to say, I found it quite enjoyable. The author writes well and crafts an original story that features strong, believable characters that are easy to empathize with. At the same time, no punches are pulled in presenting the characters’ flaws and there is both tragedy and triumph to process in the narrative. Perhaps most impressive is the way the author writes a story about high-tech espionage and the ownership of data transferred over the internet without being overly technical or uninformed. Clearly, he knows his way around a circuit board and could likely fix a ‘Blue Screen of Death’ as easily as he crafts vivid descriptions of plot points and interactions between the different characters. In summary, the story was gripping, exciting, informative and will likely inspire readers to pick up the sequel as soon as they finish the book.
I stopped reading the book at 33% and removed it from my device. I’ve worked in IT but this book was way beyond me. In the first few chapters, she was judge, jury, and executioner. I don’t remember an explanation of why she was doing what she did. Then, she begins developing a new product. I didn’t know where the story was going, and after a while, I didn’t care.
Terrific, great plot. Vivid imagination
The growth of the storyline pulls you in, keeps you wondering what will happen next.
It’s a terrific mystery that crosses a great many barriers of the traditional genre, including making you feel empathetic for someone who kills others in sort of a Robin Hood violence kind of way.
Fortunately I am an IT professional, but if you don’t have some background in this area you will likely be lost with the proliferation of jargon and technologies.
Great story, but I thought parts of it just didn’t seem realistic. And sections just seemed detached from the overall story. But, definitely eye-opening on our technology today and how unsafe we really are when we open up our lives on line.
This is about a lady who works at a large social media company and also a hacker with a vengeance. She was abused by her husband and uses her hacker abilities to take down other known abusers she finds through social media. We go thru all the technicalities a hacker would do to accomplish her revenges. Then she decides to invent a new social media platform to take down the company she works for.
The overall plot ideas were good. But in my opinion, too much time was spent on the technical explanations of how she accomplished her hacks. It was interesting for a while and very scary to think all this manipulation of a person’s data could and probably does occur, but finally, I got tired of it. I skipped the last third of the book and read the ending. That said, I sort of liked the book but it could have been edited down.
I actually did not finish it. It was not to my liking. Too much computer jargon. Way too much. It seemed to overwhelm the whole story line. I just couldn’t continue reading it.
Loved this book despite all the techno speak. (And, I probably learned enough to be more cautious about social media usage.) The plot was fascinating although I fail to understand the reason behind the main character having only one arm. Not enough background explanation to tie it into the story line– it was just kind of a weird anomaly. I particularly enjoyed the beginning of the book when domestic abusers were being killed in creative ways. The roomba vacuum was an especially nice touch. I wish Angel of Mercy would continue on in future books as an avenging angel.
Original, scary and likely realistic!
I really enjoyed this book. The author did a good job with the story and character development. There were also some interesting twists in direction. I plan to read the next book.
Very technical
The protagonist is flawed, determined, moral, vulnerable, realistic. A great story. Women will especially like it for its contemporary theme. Best I’ve read in a long time.
Eye opener… whole new respect (& fear) of software engineers …