Book info

• Title The Woman Who Stopped Traffic
• Author Daniel Pembrey
• Year 2013
• Genre Mystery

Be careful who your friends are. It's the dawn of social media; Facebook is unknown and World of Warcraft is the world's biggest online game. An unhinged Internet magnate is trying to take over it all, using Clamor.us, a social network primed to have its stock market debut. But nefarious adult content is invading the Clamor.us site, pointing to sex trafficking. Enter Natalie Chevalier, glamorous ex-Head of Security at a large Seattle software company ... with a father she barely knew, a disastrous track record with men and a scandal that forced her from her old job. Part digital thriller, part dark fairy tale, The Woman Who Stopped Traffic will keep you on the edge of your seat - while revealing deeper truths of our times.

Thoughts

This is the story of a former technology security officer who is called back from a yoga retreat in the Bahamas to investigate the potential undoing of a young startup company about to undergo its IPO. There are a lot of technical parts to this story that make it quite unwieldy and difficult to follow in places. There’s also a bit of a mismatch between which parts are explained and which aren’t.

Delving into topics like online roleplaying games, hacking, the murky world of technology companies and how they make their money, initial public offerings and everything that comes with trying to get rich quick. There was too much going on to really understand it all, and there were a couple of additional elements that didn’t quite fit for me. Would the FBI really just hand out spare guns like that? Hmm.

I liked that as a story, it didn’t really need a romantic subplot to get from beginning to end, although there were some moments where I thought it would go down that path. Our main character was flawed but strong, a little too headstrong in places, and she made some bizarre decisions along the way. Also, some parts were incredibly detailed - what our protagonist was wearing and where she’d bought it from - whilst other bits, the IPO in particular, were baffling.

A good effort, with plenty of potential, but not quite there for me.

Rating: 2 / 5