Bad Memory - Softcover

Franklet, Duane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671000667 ISBN 13: 9780671000660

Publisher: Pocket, 1998

Synopsis

Top troubleshooter Barry Shepard heads a courageous counter-assault that may spell difficult personal consequences when the world's largest computer company comes under assault by a demanding and brilliant criminal hacker. Reprint.

About this title

Review

In the first few pages of this compelling and shapely first thriller by computer consultant Duane Franklet, several degrees of urban stress explode into murder and suicide on a freeway in Oklahoma City. It's only later that we realize why: a Houston-based computer manufacturer named Simtec, with a reputation for total reliability, has suddenly started shipping bad equipment, screwing up the work and lives of an increasing number of people and threatening the company's future. At the heart of the chaos is a scheme by vengeful, frightened, and greedy computer experts, and it falls largely on Simtec's Barry Shepherd to find out who and why. Anyone who uses a computer at work will find something here to be frightened about.

From the Publisher

It begins with computers misconfigured, shipments misdirected, a trickle of angry calls to the sales division. Bit within days the trickle turns into a flood, and the minor glitch into a major crisis.

He calls himself "Hektor," his operation "Trojan Horse." With his carefully assembled underground team of "consultants," he has breached the walls of the Houston-based Simtec Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers. Bypassing the best security money can buy -- codes, gates, and guards -- he has come through the back door, and is attacking Simtec's computer network. The company is under siege.

Barry Shepard, respected troubleshooter and number-three man at Simtec, has received a ransom note promising that a onetime one-million-dollar payoff will protect the company and its reputation from further damage. To Simtec, a million bucks is pocket change. It's also extortion -- the dirtiest word in the corporate dictionary -- and the company leaders vow to fight. But they're about to discover just how resourceful, how relentless, how absolutely ruthless the enemy is.

Caught in an escalating spiral of demands and destruction, Simtec's every defense and counterattack is met with an even more damaging offensive. Hektor exploits the company's vulnerabilities with devastating psychological and technological assaults.

Diane Hughes, the newly named CEO, faces a forbidding test of her leadership: She alone must make the choices that determine whether the company stands or falls. But Barry Shepard could pay the highest price of all. Hektor has made one final threat. If he carries it out, Simtec's crash will be heard all the way to Wall Street -- and the aftershocks will be felt throughout corporate America. And for Barry, his wife, and his daughter, the results could be terminal.

From its suspenseful opening to its shocking climax, this is a novel about a technological nightmare written exactly as it could happen -- by someone who's been there. A time bomb is ticking down America's spine and loaded onto its hard drive. It's called Bad Memory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671000667
• ISBN 13: 9780671000660
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 416