Zero Days

 

By Ruth Ware

Gallery Books     2023

368 pages      Thriller 

What a page-turning, breathless, romp Zero Days is! Although I figured out fairly early who the villain was, I just kept reading and reading and reading until I could breathe again!

Jacintha, or Jack as she is known, certainly has the most unusual career I have ever read about. She is the partner, with her husband, Gabe, in a company that tests security systems. She does the dirty work in the middle of the night penetrating on site a company’s cybersecurity, while Gabe manages the computer work at his desk. After one very hazardous night where she is picked up by the police, she returns home to find Gabe dead with his throat slit.

Jack is absolutely grief stricken, but when she realizes that the police consider her the prime suspect, she uses her best skillset to escape from the police station. Injured and full of grief, with a phone that keeps alerting people to her whereabouts, Jack sets out to pursue her leads and to try to piece together her husband’s murder. The only person she trusts is her sister, Helena, but even Hel’s phone and house may be compromised by the police.

For eight days, Jack is on the run, and the reader is running right along with her. The Booklist reviewer calls her a “very original and very real protagonist.” I was fascinated by everything Jack knew how to do to get into and out of all the places she was exploring. She was seriously injured climbing out of one building, but she continues to persist. Using several burner phones and a variety of tools she continued to solve every problem that came her way. “Solve the next problem. And then the next one after that. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until you can’t walk any further.” And just when the reader thinks that she will finally be captured, she escapes yet again.

When I finally had some time to reflect on my feelings about the book, I had to be impressed in two ways. I loved the protagonist that Ware created. Although she is headstrong, she has an amazing will to succeed and persist. And frankly, she is incredibly smart. And so is the author Ruth Ware. I can only imagine how much research Ware had to put into the cyber-verse and cyber crime to be able to put this novel together.

Oh my gosh, I was looking up reviews of the book, and I discovered that Zero Days has a definition beyond the number of days Jack had to solve the crime that killed Gabe. According to the Kaspersky website, zero-day is a broad term that describes recently discovered security vulnerabilities that hackers can use to attack systems. The developer just has “zero days” to fix the system. Whoo! That gives the book’s title a much deeper meaning, and gives me even more to admire Ruth Ware for!   

Don’t get too worried about not understanding the terminology in the book. The plot moves so quickly and Jack is so amazing, the reader is able to navigate the cyber terminology and run right along with Jack.

Loved this book!