When customer complaints on Christmas Eve about tenfold inflated bank balances herald not early gifts, nor a botched system upgrade, but the most sophisticated cyber attack in history, National Bank Chief Operating Officer Rob Tanner finds himself in the eye of a ‘Black Swan’ storm no one predicted, but anyone could have anticipated
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23 December 2024… Rob Tanner should have been enjoying a rare day off from his life-consuming work as Chief Operating Officer at one of the country’s largest banks. But a panicked phone call from a senior colleague forces him to put his Christmas plans on ice: more than a thousand of the bank’s accounts have seen their balances increased by a factor of ten. Exactly ten.
Tanner enlists the help of brilliant American cyber security expert Ashley Markham, but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation’s banks. The only clues to the hacker’s intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the seven deadly sins—and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references—taunting Tanner and the newly incumbent Prime Minister, James Allen.
With financial markets—and the very world as he knows it—on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss “The Toad” is seeking revenge... and answers of his own.
This enthralling, multi-layered debut follows the story of a disillusioned banker facing unthinkable financial Armageddon, where money has no value, stock and bond prices are meaningless, and the economy is destroyed. Can Tanner unravel the mystery of the hacker’s obsession with Bosch, sin and retribution before modern society returns to the dark ages?
I loved this book! I couldn't put it down! It literally had me gripped from the start, and I just needed to know who was behind it all, what they wanted, and how it was going to end. I was not expecting what we got!
I really liked our main character, Rob Tanner. You knew that he was a good guy who was just trying to put out the fires that his boss created and had been doing so for years. As the storyline developed, you knew that something had happened with him and his family, but had to wait a little while for what exactly it was to be revealed. He seemed to have really great relationships with the team members at the bank, some more than others, whom he would trust with his life!
The relationship between him and his boss, whom everyone calls the Toad, however, was volatile, to say the least - especially with the pressures of the cyber attack on the bank. Kellett (the Toad) was an unlikeable character, and the more you found out about him, the more you disliked him! Talk about ego!! He was definitely a character, though. I'll give him that much!
I loved how the book was separated into different days so that we were experiencing what was happening in real time. I thought it was so interesting (and also a little scary) how the accounts were being manipulated. I thought it just went to show how much Rob cared by getting the private detective to look for the person that he thought might be able to help - little did he know!
I think it was inevitable that Rob and Ashley were going to be attracted to each other and form a relationship that wasn't strictly business. She, too, seemed like she was hiding some hurt, but it wasn't clear at first what hers was. I loved the Christmas Day scenes between the two of them.
I loved the relationship between Rob and Tommy, and the bond and loyalty between them both were really apparent. Rob really trusted Tommy when it mattered, and some of their scenes in the car literally had me on the edge of my seat.
I honestly loved this and couldn't put it down. It was pacy and had twists and turns that I didn't see coming. The characters were well-written and well-thought-out, and I thought the storyline was very unique. I'd love to see it play out in a film.
You can grab a copy here #Aff (If you buy a copy through this link I get a teeny commission of the sale from Amazon)
Huge Thanks to Love Books Tours, Simon Hayes and Rubriqs for my place on the Readalong.
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