Good techno-thrillers with realistic plots and technical details are hard to come by and it seems they are mainly coming from what I would call “alternative authors” these days. Case in point are Chronos by William Hern, The Martian by Andy Weir and books by Mark Russinovich like Rouge Code that I’ve reviewed and recommended in the past. Here’s another one “The One Billion Dollar Heist” by Ben Lovejoy!
Available at Amazon and other online and offline sellers, the book tells the story of gentleman gangsters thinking about robbing a billion dollars by stealing newly printed dollar bills more or less directly from under the printing press. The first third of the book got me totally convinced that it’s impossible to do. After the second third of the book the author got me convinced that it can be done after all. And during the final third it was almost impossible to put the book down as one twist in the story is followed by another.
The author has gone to great lengths to research all the technologies he describes in the book and the techniques used to exploit them and it shows in the book. I didn’t catch myself even once thinking “no, he got that wrong, it just doesn’t work that way”. Quite the contrary. A highly recommended read, two thumbs up!
Kudos to Christian for the tip!