Zero Day: Finally, a Great Novel for Geeks

I've been a fan of Mark Russinovich for years.  Not because he was a novelist, but because he knew more about Windows than Microsoft.  I relied on his site sysinternals.com to research my toughest Win32 problems when I was an IT manager.  He was (is) so knowledgable in fact, Microsoft hired him and bought out his site.

I'm not in the habit of reviewing books.  At least not novels.  In fact, the last novel I got really caught up in was The DaVinci Code.  By caught up I mean I couldn't put it down.  I burned through 200 pages per day, stayed up late and got up early to finish it.  I've read several books since, including a couple of really good novels, but haven't been caught up until I started reading Zero Day.

I've read a couple of novels where tech and/or hacking was a central theme but I either never found them believable or the tech stuff was so over the top it ruined the story.  Not so with Zero Day.  It turns out Mr. Russinovich is as excellent at writing novels as he is at writing code. Zero Day has everything a good novel needs; rich characters, an excellent plot, intrigue and just enough sex.  From a geek angle, Mr. Russinovich nails it. After the first couple of chapters I had no doubt he has walked a mile in our shoes.  I burned through all 320 pages in two days.  Couldn't put it down.  Amazon has the book in two forms, hardcover ($16.49) and a Kindle version ($11.99), of course.  If you enjoy MacTexan.com then I have no doubt you'll love Zero Day. In fact, this book is so well done non-geeks will love it too.