The Gomorrah Gambit
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
With dark technology hollowing out global privacy, an elite hacker enters the belly of the beast in this "gripping, intelligent, and stylist" international conspiracy thriller (Sophie Hannah, author of Closed Casket).
Azi Bello is an amiable outsider with a genius for hacking. Having spent the better part of his life holed up in a shed in his backyard, Azi has become increasingly enmeshed in the dark side of the internet. With the divide between online and offline worlds vanishing, so too is the line between those transforming civilization through technology and those trying to bring it to its knees. Dark networks rule. Someone with the right connections can access to anything imaginable, and power is theirs for the taking-although even they can't know what kind of bargain they've struck.
Tipped off by a secretive young woman named Munira, Azi sets out to unravel the mysterious online marketplace known as Gomorrah, sacrificing his carefully constructed privacy in the process. Munira's life is spiraling out of control: her cousins recruited to work for a terrorist state that's hunting them both, her destiny in Azi's hands. Her desperation drags Azi into the field where, working together, the two uncover an unimaginable conspiracy.
As pressure mounts, Azi has no choice but to take on the ultimate infiltration. In an age when identities can be switched at will and nobody is who they seem, how far will he go to end the nightmare?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British technology philosopher Chatfield (Netymology) makes his fiction debut with an accomplished and chilling high-tech thriller. In the ominous opening chapter, a disillusioned publicist for the jihadist cause, who's caught in a battle in Syria in 2014, takes a photo of his cousin's corpse and thinks: "Every life, every death, is now a message. Just add social media and wait for the shares to begin." Later that year in London, hacker and social misfit Azi Bello gets an urgent message from Sigma, an online friend who sends him documents that suggest 50 Islamic martyrs are actually alive and preparing for a massive terrorist attack called Gomorrah. Within minutes of the communication with Sigma, Azi a self-taught expert on the dark web gets a visit from Anna, a member of an unnamed intelligence service who knows every detail of his life and uses Azi to ensnare Sigma. Once Azi meets Sigma, the complex game is afoot, moving to Berlin and Greece and ultimately to California's Silicon Valley and a superwealthy think tank, the Existential Institute. Chatfield writes with real skill, intelligence, and, despite the grim story, humor. Readers will look forward to his next foray into fiction.
