grep Chelo

On to today’s book: Paranoia, by Joseph Finder.

The espionage-thriller theme is being pretty common nowadays, so it’s hard to choose a book from that huge pool of sneaky stories about sneaky people sneaking into each others’s business. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a good espionage story in a book I thought would be a psychological thriller (so sue me for not reading the reviews, the cover was pretty).

This is the story of a young under-achieving project manager, Adam Cassidy, at a high-tech company where he spends most of his time slacking off and working as little as possible. His life takes an interesting turn when he sees himself turned into a corporate spy, and a star on a meteoric rise to stardom — courtesy of his previous employer. Adam must now make use of his good-enough looks and his amazing ability to think fast and learn even faster, or he will face the wrath of corporate America (and possibly the FBI and other entities interested in this sort of thing).

What made this book so fun was that the company he was infiltrating was incredibly similar to my workplace. I’m a software engineer for National Instruments, where we create awesome hardware and software to enable scientists and engineers to do all their freaky work; while Adam worked for Trion, a company that created hardware and software to enable common individual to do all their freaky work. Their CEO was called simply “Jock” by everyone, we call ours “Dr. T”. Managers on both companies have the book First Break all the Rules in the offices. So I felt immediately drawn to the main character and the story, and the fast-paced action-filled way to tell it was a sure plus.

I wouldn’t dare say this is the best book in the genre, but it being so close to my home-field gave me a cozy feeling every time I knew what all those technical terms meant, or when one of the characters resembled one of my coworkers. It also has a big emphasis on father-son relationships, and how those affect our judgment and actions.

Cons

• The father-son theme is sometimes stretched a little too much.
• Some characters could have used some more “screen time” to make them more interesting.

Pros

• Action packed. No dull moments here.
• Great read for anyone working in the tech industry just because it’ll make you smile.
• Easier to read than many other espionage books that spend a little too much time on technical descriptions. This book keeps them short and interesting.