Judy Copek - Novelist * Blogger * Poet * Geek * Traveller * Cook * Gardener

Reviews of The Shadow Warriors

This is an excellent fast-paced cyber thriller, full of deceptions and high-tech intrigue. The story begins in Boston, where Emma Davis, a self-described "cybersleuth", sits in the Logan airport lounge watching the world's information infrastructure topple piece by piece. Emma is a great character, a 21st century female who manages to be technologically brilliant while still being at a loss when it comes to her personal relationships. (If you saw Sandra Bullock in The Net, this is the book the movie should have been based on.) "Shadow warriors" is a computer security term coined by Paul Strassman and applies to terrorists who attack a country's national information infrastructure. It is startling to realize this book was written before 9/11; it gives quite an accurate description of the Pandora's Box of technological nightmares which could be potentially unleashed by cyber terrorists. Indeed, the opening scene of the book, which takes place in Boston's Logan Airport, bears a disturbing resemblance to what Logan Airport was actually like on 9/11 of last year. Click to continue

Exciting, fast-paced and thrilling, it should be a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the absolute interconnectedness of our Information Technology. Katherine Schlem, No Boundaries


This is a fast-paced book that grabs you up and takes you by the hand to keep up with the rapidly developing plot and the dizzying perceptions of the characters. You sift through the clues with Emma, trying to make things fall into patterns, but until the very end, it's hard to be sure. It's a long book, but you can't put it down and go to bed. Its very urgency keeps you reading.
Martha von Redlich SIMEGEN

"The Shadow Warriors" is as polished a page-turner as you'll find in a bookstore and bears at least some comparison to Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon," another recent novel in which network security, cryptography, and international intrigue contribute to plot making. . . Ostensibly, the novel is about "Infowar" and computer terrorism, but I was drawn into it because I could believe in each of the characters and their interrelationships and also because Copek's Raymond Chandlerish repartee is witty without being wearing.
Lowell Thing, Editor, WhatIs