Reviewed by Curled Up with a Good Book (www.curledup.com), Oct. 2003

"Even though I would describe myself as somewhat of a computer novice, Barry Silverstein's novel The Doomsday Virus captured my attention, thrilled and chilled me, and made me a whole lot smarter about the potentially devastating problem of computer viruses that could literally wipe out our computer-dependent financial, communications and intelligence infrastructures.

The author, a nonfiction writer with over two decades of experience in the information technology field, takes us on a wild ride through the world of two software entrepreneurs competing to launch a new operating system, only to find that they share a common enemy in an underground hacker who hates corporate profiteering and will stop at nothing to commit his cyber-terrorism on an unsuspecting world.

Marty Gladstone and TJ Gatwick are the powerful entrepreneurs, each with his own dedicated and unique style of doing business. Erin Keliher is a highly influential Silicon Valley journalist who can make or break either or both men. Doomsday is the man who comes between them all, a brilliant but crazed hacker with the uncanny ability to create computer viruses that cannot be stopped despite every best effort of the software mega-giants and their equally brilliant programmers. Meanwhile, Gladstone and Gatwick become arch enemies as they jockey to get their product out first, resorting to underhanded and unethical business practices to do so.

When Erin and Marty become romantically involved and find evidence of Gatwick's participation in some dirty dealings, including possible kidnapping and murder, the story heats up, becoming a race to find out who is behind the mysterious sabotage attempts against Gladstone's company and to locate the evil Doomsday, who unleashes one debilitating computer virus after the other.

The clock is ticking as the FBI gets involved, utilizing Erin's reporter status as a connection with the underground Doomsday even if it puts her own life in danger. She becomes the only personal conduit to Doomsday, and offers a glimpse inside his dark and dangerous mind. As the FBI gets closer to identifying Doomsday, Gatwick and Gladstone are backed into a corner and forced to make some jaw-dropping decisions to curb the potential havoc that Doomsday is planning for Y2K.

This is one solid thriller, a real page-turner that had me up until the wee hours waiting to see what happened next. I loved the technology stuff, even being the simple layperson I am, and really became emotionally invested in the battle between the two software giants and their race to create the perfect virus protection software. But what really grabbed me was Silverstein's clever use of framing his story against true historical events, including many infamous computer viruses of the past ten years such as Melissa, Pandora, and Code Red.

This book has it all; tension, technology, romance, thrills, rivalry, a great ending that leaves everything wide open for a sequel, and characters you can get behind and either love or hate. The Doomsday Virus may be fiction, but it is about a clear and present danger we all face every single time we turn on our computer. That's what chilled me to the bone most of all."

Reviewed by Bookviews.com, July 2003

This breathtaking novel, set against the backdrop of the software world and the Internet, takes you on a thrill ride from Massachusetts to California. Marty Gladstone and TJ Gatwick are two powerful software entrepreneurs in a race to be first to market with a new operating system. The influential Silicon Valley journalist, Erin Keliher, can make or break either product. But her loyalty shifts as she gets involved with one of the two men.

Then everything goes haywire: Erin becomes the reluctant conduit for a brilliant yet warped computer hacker named Doomsday who has created a virus that is virtually unstoppable. The FBI tries to track Doomsday down to no avail. Finally, the Feds urgently appeal to Marty and TJ to put aside their differences and work together to thwart the efforts of this notorious cyber-terrorist… before the Doomsday Virus takes down the country's entire financial infrastructure.

While The Doomsday Virus is a work of fiction, it is based on virus attacks that have occurred and continue to occur with increasing frequency. There is a real National Infrastructure Protection Center (www.nipc.gov), and all of the NIPC alerts used in this book are real. Doomsday is a fictional character, but he is based on hackers whose activities are known to the FBI. Some of these hackers have been captured, while many others are still at large. As of this writing, there is no known software product that can do what the "deflector" described in this book could do, but anti-virus software becomes more sophisticated every day.

Is the threat of a virus attack of the magnitude described in this book real? In a landmark article in Scientific American¹, four IBM researchers found that, even by 1997, more than 10,000 viruses had already appeared, and hackers were developing viruses at a rate of six a day. The article indicated that macro viruses are a major threat today because they can spread very rapidly through the increasing usage of electronic mail, file transfer and document exchange over the Internet.

The NIPC, in a report² on extremist groups, stated that "increasing technical competency in these groups is resulting in an emerging capability for network-based attacks, including those targeting our nation's infrastructures. Extremist groups have proven themselves capable of carrying out acts of violence, and the leaderless resistance strategy makes it even more difficult for authorities to foresee actions by such groups."