Book Review: The Alexandria Project

The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology by Andrew Updegrove is actually a tale of technology and treachery. The tale begins with Frank Adversego, an unlikely and underappreciated protagonist who discovers an unusually diabolical malware infection at the Library of Congress. The malware distributes its way into sensitive and military networks and disgruntled, security genius Frank somehow emerges as the prime suspect as the perpetrator of the attack. Frank pursues The Alexandria Project while he is himself is pursued by competing and bumbling Three Letter Agencies. Along the way, Frank is reunited with an online colleague and mentor, who becomes an unlikely but invaluable partner in his flight for survival as well as his pursuit of The Alexandria Project. With help from less bumbling members of the same TLAs chasing him, Frank races to avert a disaster of apocalyptic scale.

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Updegrove manages dialog, develops characters and their relationships pretty well in this first novel, which is good, because there are a lot of characters and multiple plot threads in motion. He incorporates both lampoonery and serious suspense in The Alexandria Project. I enjoyed the suspense part more because lampooning TLAs is so common in fiction, real life, and social networking (which is both fiction and real life).

I liked the story and would recommend it as light summer reading for anyone who would enjoy a conspiracy with Security Theater and a dose of Maxwell Smart style humor.