Author: S. Hussain Zaidi
Publisher: HarperCollins India
What if all the traffic signals across the city stop working?
Zero Day by S. Hussain
Zaidi starts on a day when Mumbai is in a state of chaos and all traffic
signals across the entire city have stopped working. Shahwaz Ali Mirza, head of
the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, receives an anonymous email claiming it
to be a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. He quickly puts together a
crack team that includes his protege, IG Cybercrime Vikrant Singh, and gets to
work trawling the dark web for more information on this mystery attack.
However, a move to bring forward the hacker backfires, leading to a second,
deadlier attack on Mumbai's lifeline, the railway system. It is their first
brush with cyberterrorism: a zero-day vulnerability in the Indian government's
system that could bring the country to its knees. Racing against time and
investigating a case unlike any other, in Zero Day, Mirza and Vikrant face the
most dangerous mission of their lives.
The book is an interesting read because the book explores an idea that is
quite new and a crime that is a bit different from the usual ones we come
across in books and stories. The plot starts off on a good note and it kicks
off in the highest gear. The storytelling is imaginative, and Zaidi uses the
idea of DDoS and plugs in age-old border disputes to up the ante. Another interesting
thing about the book is that the technical details are just enough to set up
the plot, but not enough to bore the reader. The idea of a cyber attack in the
maximum city is a true nightmare, and Zaidi just brings it too alive with the
concepts of botnets and darkweb. There are sub plots which are in play, and I
liked how they keep the story alive. The things that didn’t work for me was
that the second half of the book seems too simple and moved quite faster as
compared to the first half. I would have loved a bit more build up before the reveal.
The climax is well planned and closes the story beautifully.
The characters that form a part of the story are quite interesting as
well and I liked how each of them have been given specific roles in the story.
Another interesting aspect of the character development is that the detailing
is something that Zaidi has focused upon and there are minute details that make
an impact later in the story.
Overall, Zero Day is a book that I would recommend to anyone who loves a
technology-driven crime story. The book scores a 4.69/5 for me.
This review is powered by the Blogchatter Review Program, and I was
provided a media copy in exchange of an honest review.
Get a copy of the book on Amazon or your nearest bookstore today!
I see this often among Blogchatter community. Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you on the 2nd part :)
ReplyDelete