Lisbeth Salander’s Real Life Counterparts

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander is a talented (and heavily tattooed) computer hacker who uses her skills to investigate crimes.

In real life, there are hackers (with or without tattoos) who work to track down international high-tech criminals. The stories of two of these investigators are told a new book, Fatal Error, by the Financial Times‘ cyber-security reporter Joseph Menn. In an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend, he said hopes his book will wake up Americans to the dangers of cybercrime.

Stieg Larsson fan Vicky Raab writes on the New Yorker‘s “Book Bench” blog that Fatal Error corroborates much of what Larsson wrote about in his books; “how inept and/or corrupt law-enforcement, corporations, news agencies, and governments can be, and what the skinny really is on cybercrime.” As she points out, that should come as no surprise, since Larsson was a journalist himself. Further, she says the book kept her “riveted to the couch all weekend.”

The book, which was also featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here) was embargoed until yesterday, so it was not reviewed prepub. It is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, and is now at #62.

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet
Joseph Menn
Retail Price: $25.95
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs – (2010-01-26)
ISBN / EAN: 1586487485 / 9781586487485

eBook downloadable from OverDrive.

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