It’s my great pleasure to have as a guest blogger (who’s doing a book giveaway) an author I was fortunate enough to meet way back when I was new to the whole publishing thing! His name is Reece Hirsch and he’s yet another lawyer I’m featuring as a guest on the Crime Cafe. A totally awesome thing! Always good to see another attorney turn to crime — fiction, that is! 🙂
In any case, Reece is giving away a load of copies of his book Surveillance — the book with the awesome cover there to the left! Please read the post for the details on how to enter the giveaway, since I don’t feel like repeating them.
On a personal note, I remember reading Reece’s first novel, The Insider, and being singularly impressed. In fact, I wrote a review of it on a now-dead blog. However, if you look on GoodReads, you’ll find part of it there.
And then I read The Adversary and gave that one five stars!
The subject is frighteningly relevant. Computer hacking and the utter chaos that bad hackers can cause.
I highly recommend his books!
As I said … I was fortunate to meet Reece.
So, with that said, here’s Reece Hirsch himself!
***
The Long Hello
By Reece Hirsch
Thanks to the awesome Debbi Mack for inviting me for an interview at the Crime Cafe. I met Debbi in the conference hotel bar at my first Bouchercon in Indianapolis in 2009. I believe we talked about our background as lawyers, what we were writing, and probably how cool it was to be able to attend the cocktail party for attendees hosted by Lee Child. Back then I was anxiously awaiting the 2010 publication of my first novel, The Insider. It seems like a very long time ago now. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was in for, but I was confident that being published was going to change my life. And it did, but not exactly in the ways I had imagined.
It amazes me how many of the people I met at that first Bouchercon are still friends. I remember staying up late and closing down the bar because it was the first time I’d had the opportunity to talk shop with so many people who loved the same things that I loved, and had been through the same experiences that I had been through in the six years that I had spent crafting my first novel.
Since then, I’ve had four thrillers published, and I’m working on my fifth. Over the past seven years, there have been some high points (seeing my book on the tower rack in Barnes & Noble, being nominated for a Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and (most of all) connecting with readers who’ve enjoyed my books) and low points (not having my contract picked up by my publisher after my first book, bookstore events where nobody showed). Looking back, though, I can see that one of the best things about being published was the opportunity to hang with the amazing community of mystery and thriller writers, and Debbi Mack was one of the people who welcomed me to that club at my first Bouchercon.
But I should say something about the books, right? When I’m not writing thrillers, I’m a partner in the San Francisco office of an international law firm and co-head of its privacy and cybersecurity practice. So, naturally, I write privacy and cybersecurity-themed thrillers featuring a lawyer, former Department of Justice cybercrimes prosecutor Chris Bruen. If my Bruen books have a theme, it’s the statement that’s printed on rear view mirrors – “Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear.”
Technology has made our world smaller, and that means that we can reach out and touch people and things around the world. But the problem is that those people and things can also reach out and touch us with unnerving ease – and their intentions are not always good.
By that, I mean that my books tend to deal with a particularly modern sort of dread – the fear of living in a hyper-connected world. Sure, connectedness has its advantages. I love my smart phone. Thanks to the Map app, I get lost a lot less than I used to. But there’s also a downside to all that connectedness – the Map app stores my geolocation data and makes it available to advertisers – and maybe even the NSA.
Technology has made our world smaller, and that means that we can reach out and touch people and things around the world. But the problem is that those people and things can also reach out and touch us with unnerving ease – and their intentions are not always good. For example, the first Bruen book, The Adversary, deals with the sophisticated new generation of computer viruses, exemplified by the Stuxnet virus that was used to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges. That sort of targeted “smart bomb” virus would allow an individual or group of hackers to do the sort of damage to national infrastructure that was previously possible only for nations with armies. The second Bruen book, Intrusion, deals with, among other things, Chinese state-sponsored hackers. Surveillance, the third in the Bruen series, is my post-Snowden NSA spying book.
I’m really looking forward to this week’s interview with Debbi, and catching up seven long and wild years after that first meeting at Bouchercon Indianapolis.
I’m also giving away five copies of my latest book Surveillance. To enter, just email me by November 6 at reece[at]reecehirsch[dot]com and mention the Crime Cafe giveaway. Winners will be selected on November 7.
*******
Reece Hirsch is the author of four thrillers that draw upon his background as a privacy attorney. His first book, The Insider, was a finalist for the 2011 International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel. His next three books, The Adversary, Intrusion, and Surveillance, all feature former Department of Justice cybercrimes prosecutor Chris Bruen. Hirsch is a partner in the San Francisco office of an international law firm and cochair of its privacy and cybersecurity practice. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation (www.VADFoundation.org). He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and a small, unruly dog. His website is www.reecehirsch.com.
