Updegrove, The Alexandria Project

If you want a really cheap page-turning break from stress, drudgery, you name it, look no farther than Andrew Updegrove’s The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology. Reading it is also, as I quickly discovered, a great way to procrastinate. I should confess that I knew Andy when he was a Yale undergraduate, so my opinion may be a tad biased.

Andy is by profession a lawyer, not a novelist, and, no, The Alexandria Project would not win a National Book Award. But it’s a fast-paced cyber-security thriller with an overlay of biting satire, directed especially cleverly against venture capitalists who, in the words of the protagonist, “were like French farmers—force-feeding the goose until its liver turns to pure fat, then selling off the bird before it dies of the farmer’s own absurd excess.”

I read the book in one sitting, unable to put it down until I reached the final plot twist. Time well spent!