Ian Sutherland (1)Rezensionen

A great short story outlining a white hackers trail as he gathers evidence to highlight animal cruelty in a pharmaceutical company. An enjoyable read

If you are from the era before social media and the WWW you may become a little less trusting and a little more paranoid after reading this novella.

Brody Taylor plays on people’s willingness to help and their belief that most people are honest and sincere to get the information he needs to infiltrate a company. It’s a sad and dangerous world we now inhabit.

Cleverly plotted and all very plausible, Brody Taylor is a white hat hacker and goes through step by step how he hacked into a company’s computer system.

Social Engineer is number one in the Brody Taylor series and as a novella is a tantalising taste of what to expect in the rest of the series.

And it’s not all geeky IT talk; with a touch of romance added it’s perfect for the novice technology user.

Wow again! Sutherland delivers an exciting and engaging thriller that is current with technology and the events of the day. I have read his other two books and I was glad to see all of the characters brought forward into this new mystery. Additionally, the premise of the terrorist attack is plausible and realistic with an attack vector that I hope does not exist in the real world. I continue to be impressed with how Sutherland weaves technical concepts into the novel and then explains them for the less technical crowd.
Taking up Serpents is a great read that I struggled to put down. Highly recommended!

Invasion Of Privacy is snappily written by someone who certainly sounds as if he knows his cyber stuff but has a sharp enough turn of phrase to deliver the technobabble in entertaining and enlightening byte-size chunks. The heroine defies genre stereotyping. She’s a female detective who is smart, competent and charismatic – and doesn’t have to spend nine-tenths of her time fighting institutional bigotry (although she’s inevitably more capable than her inexperienced ranking officer).

Her hacker counterpart, whose challenge to take down a voyeur web unexpectedly entangles him in a homicide investigation, is also likable and credible guy. And they all share great taste in coffee, and reference exactly the right cultural icons. Far from giving up by chapter three, as is so often the case with cyber-crime novels, I found my reading pace picking up as the plot grew more tangled and as the serial killer came closer to choosing his next victim…
(There's more thoughts on the plot and characters over at
http://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/invasion-of-privacy-the-dark... )

The author keeps the pace trotting along which is an admirable accomplishment given that he’s also explaining some fairly sophisticated web security systems and the concept of ‘human hacking’. So even if you personally know nothing about tech stuff and web bots then that shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment, or your understanding of the plot and the growing danger which surrounds the investigators. There’s also a convincingly chilling villain, and a bunch of other bad guys who bring a real sense of menace to proceedings.

An accomplished thriller; one which leaves an obvious opening for a sequel and I’d be delighted to read that too. Sutherland has a talent for exploring the underbelly of the internet, and I look forward to exploring the dark web through his next story.
8/10

I approached this book with a little trepidation. I did read Social Engineer and was impressed with Sutherland's concept but I wasn't sure if he could translate the story into a longer form fictional work. Boy am I pleased. Sutherland writes an excellent mystery with multiple layers of intrigue. His characters are easy to empathize with and I found myself rooting for the protaganist while wondering how Sutherland would pull off the mystery while "Humanizing" Brody. Not only did Sutherland do this well, he set the roots for, what could be, a long standing series of Brody Taylor thrillers.
Being in technology, I tried to think ahead of where the plot was going from the technical aspects but found Sutherland displays his tech chops by keeping me guessing. Even so, he explains the technology in terms that readers not familiar with pentests, social engineering or IP addressing can still follow along.
I thoroughly enjoyed this work and look forward to more books in Brody Taylor series.

Brody Taylor is the “Social Engineer.” Though to be honest, I had never heard that term before, it fits the situation nicely. He can be described as most the characters from the TV show Leverage rolled into one very clever person (without the thieving bonus for the most part) His job is to penetrate high security systems any way he can. Though an excellent computer hacker, he finds most often people are easier to hack to find a back way in. In this particular story he finds himself running a penetration test at pharmaceutical company, besieged by animal rights protesters, and under a warning that its secrets are in danger of being stolen by Chinese computer hackers. His job is find the holes in the system before sensitive information falls into the wrong hands,

I thoroughly enjoyed the reveal as he gives the results of his work to company executives. Most of this story was just plain fun. However, the cover of this book asks the question, “Would you trust a computer hacker?” Unfortunately my answer to that question highlights my biggest issue with this superbly written short story. The catalyst for this adventure leaves me flat. I would have to agree with Mel that Brody went about it all wrong, because yes, yes I would. In an increasingly digital world where hackers in the shadows are spilling information about everything from Hollywood sexting and ingredients of fast food items to eyes only government information, there has to be a first line of defense and it stands to reason that those people are going to be hackers at heart.

I was glad to see that this is not a single story, as with most excellent short stories, for me it just wasn’t enough. I hope in subsequent novels Brody doesn’t feel he needs to engineer his reality quite so much. I am looking forward to reading more about him.

My original Invasion of Privacy audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Brody Taylor is a security consultant and expert hacker who becomes involved in "researching" a webcam based "service" that seems to broadcast live feeds from people's homes and businesses without their knowledge. When Brody realizes that this Internet site may be connected to a girl's death, he inserts himself in the investigation and teams up with Detective Jenny Price who is hunting a serial killer who is raping and murdering young females.

It took me a little bit to get into this story due to the different perspectives at the beginning, but when the action took off, the plot became really engrossing and I was truly captivated. It was a very clever mix of techno-thriller and crime procedural full of mystery and suspense. The author did a great job explaining all the computer hacking related stuff, and while I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on how accurate any of it was, it all made sense to me, so I could follow the plot without any issues, and it provided quite a unique, fascinating story line.

Written from multiple perspectives, including the killer's, this was a thrilling, fast-paced cyber-crime mystery with characters you wanted to get to know more about. Brody especially was great with his unorthodox methods in order to achieve legitimate outcomes. I would certainly like to see him and Detective Price in a sequel.

Matthew Lloyd Davies with his very smooth sounding voice provided an excellent, very natural narration with enough distinction between the characters that you always knew who was speaking. Great accents that were just right for the characters portrayed. I could quite happily listen to him narrate a much longer audiobook. There were no issues with the production.

Audiobook provided for review by the author.½

3.5*

Brody Taylor puts his elite white hat status on the line by accepting a pentest challenge posted on an anonymous, deep-web hacker board. When he finds a link between the site he’s trying to hack and a series of brutal rapes and murders, he teams with PI Jenny Price to stop a sociopath. But Brody must protect his real-life identity or risk dire consequences.

Sutherland’s talent at weaving secondary plots into the main story produces an appealing read, and his deftly rendered protagonist prompts an emotional connection with the reader. However, some of the supporting cast come across as caricatures. McCarthy’s sexism is over the top, Jenny’s rapid disclosure of investigation details to a civilian is tough to swallow and the backstory on minor characters, such as Cortez, stalls the action.

The novel’s structure and balance is sound, but a few unbelievable scenarios, such as a beat-up car parked for a long period in a wealthy neighborhood, deflects from the plot. Sutherland is skilled on the subject matter, which creates an engaging story, but superfluous technical details delays the suspense and there are numerous typos.

An entertaining read with a protagonist worth following.