Zero Days

Williams’s excellent sequel to 2017’s Beijing Smog finds computer hacker Chuck Drayton guilt-ridden over his failure to protect patients in an incident in which 14 people were killed by malfunctioning hospital devices infected with a computer virus. Drayton works with Interpol’s multinational Berlin Group to track down and neutralize hackers responsible for “zero days”—times when ransomware cripples worldwide computer systems. As intelligence agencies compete to buy zero days in a new international arms race, Drayton travels to Burma, Berlin, and Ukraine in pursuit of ever-shifting techno-villains. Williams creates vivid action scenes full of local color, and convincingly draws even minor characters in this tale of a privacy-destroying big tech spying empire, where “connected” household devices can become savage weapons. Echoes of the Stasi, the dreaded East German secret police who considered their entire population the enemy, also reverberate through this exposé of the dangerous promise of technology to give people what they want even before they know it themselves. Readily accessible to those with a minimal tech background, this scary cyberthriller deserves a wide readership. (May)