A Scheherazade in making up stories gets to choose between twenty-plus years in prison for a goof up in his company and getting to play Spy – spy in a rival company. The unsatisfied, seemingly crazy, junior product-line manager at the hi-tech corporation of Wyatt Telecom and the son of an emphysematous father, Adams Cassidy makes his choice.
A thoroughly manipulated training session transforms him into a techie nerd who is keen on joining the Wyatt rival, Trion Systems, for greater opportunities. Detective Adams is gifted an assortment of things that help him spy around and send back critical information aka James Bond. Wyatt’s CEO, Nicholas Wyatt would not sit quietly till he found the details of most secret project of Trion, AURORA. Armed with high-profile recommendations, he easily clears a well-rehearsed interview, and starts off under “a ruthless, tyrannical” boss Nora Summers.
Each member in Trion is already familiar to him, thanks to the Wyatt guys. He goofs up the first meeting with Nora, and the trend continues in a number of such meets, where the stuff Adams had to say was lesser than his presentation gimmicks. But Lady Luck shines on him on many occasions to provide him with nifty ideas that gave him the required impetus to be able to reach the level of CEO’s assistant.
Constant intelligence from Wyatt helps Adams. His father’s health adds to his strain, but a nice and sudden friendship with Alana Jennings seemed a kind of relief. Imagining his cell for twenty-plus years is enough to make him move on. The trust and faith of Trion CEO, ‘Jock’ Goddard made him emotionally faithful and guilty at the same time.
What are Adams’ plans?
This is a book where every chapter increases your vocabulary in espionage. Finder’s intrigue is captivating. He keeps the protagonist on his toes, changing him from a confused friend to a caring son, to a high-dreamer, to a lover, to a conscientious man, to a determined stuntman who finally would solve everything his way. Finder ends it all with something really out of imagination.
Finder subtly presents a double confusion: failure means imprisonment, success means a defeat for Adam’s conscience. A wonderful balance exists in the gradual development of the plot, giving a wave of suspense and solution to the reader.
Finder gives the reader a peep into the level of technical complexity of the measures taken by companies in protecting their most secret projects. He demonstrates a good measure of his skill in giving a fast-paced, realistic narration of spy-craft. It makes you start thinking of the actual security measures taken in real world, and their loopholes.
A superb demonstration of technical competence of the author is visible as he describes fooling motion detectors, swapping identity information from electronic swipe cards, redirecting emails anonymously, and a host of other things throughout the story that leaves you wondering why something did not strike you in the first place.
Finder has a nice command of setting; you have a vivid picture in front of you of everything. You have a definite sense of being intelligent enough to guess the next event while a very different picture confronts you with gripping surprise. He does not allow things to slow down, his chatty style giving you a feel of solving a nice intellectual puzzle, where you yourself feel fixated. With his wonderful narration, well researched setting, Joseph Finder drenches the reader in suspense.
‘Paranoia’ maintains its surprise element till the last word.
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