The Satori Effect

The novelty of electronic books can wear out quickly -- now that the potential for distributing books as bits is obvious to everyone right up to famous writers and their publishers, it's not enough that a book be electronic. There has to be a good story. Reader 11131719 contributed this review of what sounds like a killer book that satisfies on both counts, and perhaps one well suited to spark some genuine e-book action.

The Satori Effect author David Pesci pages 615 publisher David Pesci www.thesatorieffect.com rating 8.5 reviewer 11131719 ISBN n/a summary Kick-ass Internet murder mystery with a techie hero and one killer app.

One Killer App What the hell is the author of Amistad doing writing a contemporary mystery about hacking, viruses, a computer forensics specialist and the FBI? That was my first thought as I started reading The Satori Effect, the new novel by best-selling author David Pesci. By the time I hit page 20, I could see exactly what he was doing: kicking ass.

Pesci, best known for his novel Amistad (inspiration for the Steven Spielberg movie), steps out of history with The Satori Effect and lands firmly in a future that might be just a few months away. The story, a mystery wrapped around the world of hacking, e-mail viruses and apps, opens with a suicide and quickly moves to a possible homicide: the victim is decapitated when his computer monitor explodes. This turns out to be the second such incident in less than a month. The FBI suspects a Unabomber type, dubbed "The CyberBomber" by the media. A computer forensics tech named Flint, who works in a top-secret government facility, is charged with going through the overwrites on the victims' hard drives in search of clues.

What Flint finds is not the traces of a bomber but pieces of code, one that he comes to believe are part of an app designed specifically to use the system's hardware to kill the user. It's a wild premise, and not even Flint's co-workers believe such an app could be written. But as Flint and his partner (the very hot, seen-it, done-it Special Agent Buhner) begin to investigate, the clues start mounting up. So do the bodies, and it becomes a race to find out who has the app and catch him (or them) before the code is given a replication subroutine and turn it into a full blown Internet virus.

All this is revealed in The Satori Effect's first 120 pages, which are posted online (PDF format) for free at www.thesatorieffect.com. There is also a rich cast of characters, including a dark-hat hacker with a serious information addiction, Flint's boss (who makes Machiavelli look like one of the Backstreet Boys), Flint's co-worker -- a know-it-all wise-ass lesbian tech named Berlow -- and an ever-deepening plot where almost nothing is as it seems on the surface. The writing is first-rate, the details accurate, the story flies and there are more than a few surprises.

My only real hit against The Satori Effect is that it's not available in book form yet. I found out about it after a friend sent me the URL for the book. According to the Matrix-flavored website built around the free pages, Pesci's publishers have hedged on putting this out because he is known as a history writer and they don't think his readers will follow him to technofiction. Pesci, who oozes attitude in the site's copy, has flipped them the bird by posting this online. If readers like the free 120 pages posted on his site for free, the rest is available in PDF format for $10 via PayPal. I quickly found that didn't like reading the book on screen, so I was printing out 100 pages at a time and carrying them around loose, which sucked. Still, I think Pesci's going to get the last laugh on his publishers. The Satori Effect rocks. Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.