The Fox, by Frederick Forsyth

My father's library was never missing the latest news from John LeCarre or Frederick forsyth. It was the last years of the 80s, with the Berlin wall still standing and therefore with the literary imaginary about the cold war still in force.

A whopping 30 years have passed and both are still as intense as before. In the case of Forsyth, even convinced that the cold war has returned to our lives in cybernetic mode. And perhaps he is right, because this writer knows a while about latent conflicts.

So the appearance of this novel El Zorro, comes under that feeling of back to the dark days of political balance subjected to unfathomable interests even more capable of disturbing the balance of the world.

Because the interests of a boy known as Luke, able to move from the deepest internet to control so much network technology (even weapons technology) scares in that sense of the unpredictability of a kid playing a macabre war game never so close to the realism most sought after by the manufacturers of this type of game.

Except that the game of the boy capable of circumventing all kinds of encryption and maximum security access will also leave a trail that makes him a target of the surprised intelligence services of the NSA.

The credibility of this type of plot, centered on the capacity of a young man brought up in that virtual environment in which he is capable of making his habitat, resides in the author's effort to give each of his fascinating capacities verisimilitude. And in that, Forsyth has the virtuosity of the most exhaustive documentary maker. Although it is true that the resource of the child with Asperger's is at times hackneyed (The accountant or even Rainman), this idea of ​​the capacity of a brain governed by unknown impulses for the average of mortals is still suggestive.

So the theme of the human brain, AI, technological connections and integration in our lives from home automation to the control of nuclear weapons is transformed in this novel into an approach to the world that can await us if all those connections end up being Hacked for the worst of interests or the most unpredictable mind.

You can now buy the novel El Zorro, the new book by Frederick Forsyth, here: