Reviewed by Harold Bernard
When her new husband dies on their honeymoon, Dr. Jess Gordon inherits his cryptocurrency exchange, Vaultange. Plunged into a high-stakes world of digital finance and surrounded by suspicious characters, Jess must navigate a treacherous maze of secrets to uncover the truth behind her husband's death and the missing millions.As Vaultange's clients demand answers and the police close in, Jess turns to her few remaining allies. But whom can she trust when everyone seems to be hiding something? Her quest for the truth puts a target on her back as powerful figures emerge from the shadows, willing to do anything to keep their secrets buried.
This book is a gripping read, the plot twists and story bends were sufficient to capture me, making it hard to put down.
Jess is a New Zealand doctor working in Auckland Hospital and just finishing her specialist qualification, when she marries her crypto-currency expert fiancé, Andrew, and goes on honeymoon with him to one of the world’s most exclusive resorts in the Yasawa group of Fiji. Andrew is taken ill while there and after some quite graphic illness scenes, he dies, is cremated and Jess brings the ashes back to New Zealand. She learns that Andrew has left his company, Vaultange to her, cutting out his partner and closest friend, Henry.
Jess attempts to open Andrew’s laptop, but succeeds only to introduce malware onto the computer, rendering it useless. This is the real thrust of the story, as the password required to unlock the Vaultange cold wallet is now useless. Vaultange is not a storage for currency, but an exchange so that people wanting to buy or sell Bitcoin or other currency, can do so for a small commission. There is no check on who the users are, no banks or police are involved and the transactions are heavily encrypted.
Inevitably, criminal elements become involved, as well as the public who know that they have bitcoin held in the transactions stored on Vaultange and now want to access their funds. After complaints, the police are involved, and everyone suspects that Jess knows the key, but is planning to keep it all for herself. So now she has police, criminals, and users pressuring her to unlock the Cold Wallet.
There are revelations about Jess’s past, and her relationship with the hospital where she works. The book shows how these issues are resolved, but there are many sub plots and unexpected turns to the story, that you will need to read for yourself. Just read carefully as clues are there cleverly planted by the author.
This book is a sophisticated and engaging story, that I can recommend fully. The book is set in Auckland, but could be any modern city. The final chapters move very fast and have an unexpected ending. There are some issues I had with the book. Jess has a hangover and grabs several aspirin tablets for her headache. I find it difficult that a New Zealand trained doctor would ever take aspirin in such circumstances, all would take paracetamol.
Another issue is that the story is told from multiple characters’ points of view, and often it was not obvious who was speaking, so I had to go back to try to find clues to the narrator’s identity. This could easily be overcome by simply starting a section with the name of the narrator.
Overall a really good read.
This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.
No comments:
Post a Comment