The Woman Who Stopped Traffic by Daniel Pembrey
Published May 20, 2015

Book info
- Title
- Author Daniel Pembrey
- Year
- Genres
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: Unrated