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January 09, 2003
No Outward Sign, Bill Neugent
I have just finished reading Bill's debut novel, and I am quite impressed with the quality of his writing. Bill is a very promising writer who has the rare ability to keep the reader engaged throughout the entire story.
"No Outward Sign" is a fictitious technical novel set in the modern-day timeframe. The location is in the Washington, D.C. area. Our protagonist, Brent Singleton, is a grayhat computer hacker. This first person narrative follows Brent Singleton as he unravels events that, if left unchecked, would lead to mass disruption of the United States computer infrastructure. Along the way, Brent also unmasks other sinister plots, which I will not detail here. Read the book. It will be well worth your time.
Bill is a vivid writer. He is adept at painting the imagery of each scene in the story. Because of this, the characters are very three-dimensional. Whenever I start reading a novel, I wonder to myself the following questions: "Is this book going to be a page turner? Is this book going to be memorable? Is this book going to inspire me to want to write a book of my own?" I'm happy to report that "No Outward Sign" has me answering "yes" to all of the questions above.
Good technical fiction challenges the reader to think about the events that occur in the story while maintaining plausibility of the events. "No Outward Sign" does feature some really elite hackers. However, the tactics written about here are quite possible. I think this is accomplished because Bill is an actual computer security engineer. This is what really makes "No Outward Sign" unique. Compared to works like Vernor Vinge's "True Names" and Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game", I was left wondering just how the attacks there could have been implemented. This is because Vinge and Card, while impressive writers, do not have the technical perspective Bill possesses.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a computer security professional, or is even mildly interested in computer security. For these people, this book will be a pleasurable read. I also recommend this book for people who are skeptics about the importance of security infrastructure implementation. For them, this book will serve as an eye opener.
Posted by Kathy at January 9, 2003 10:58 PM