Going Zero by Anthony McCarten - you have two hours to get off the grid!

Title: Going Zero
Author: Anthony McCarten
Narrator: Marin Ireland
Publication: Harper Audio, 2023
Genre: Suspense
Setting: United States

Description: Ten Americans – five skilled, five amateurs – have been chosen to test a new surveillance software in a partnership between the CIA and a no-holds-barred company called WorldShare, run by brilliant Cy Baxter and his girlfriend/co-founder Erika Coogan. Any contestant who can go off the grid and avoid being caught by Cy’s Fusion spyware and brilliant analysts for an entire month will win $3 million tax free. Our protagonist is Kaitlyn Day, an unassuming librarian from Boston who is determined to win (yes, of course, I was rooting for her!). The contestants get a two-hour head start before the computer get turned on but staying invisible is virtually impossible when there are cameras everywhere, plus electronic eyes on every email, transaction, coworker – Kaitlyn planned carefully and tries to stay a step ahead but how can she outwit the most powerful minds in the country?

My Impression: The New York Times recommended Going Zero as a summer thriller so I put the audio book on hold and I was enthralled from the beginning. With a modest Boston apartment full of books, Kaitlyn is an easy character to identify with – she is smart and resourceful, and it becomes clear that while she is not a professional, she has planned carefully how to avoid surveillance, changing the way she walks and avoiding places with lots of cameras. She has a personal reason for wanting to win and it involves more than the $3 million prize.

In contrast to Kaitlyn, who is quiet but determined, Cy Baxter soon reveals himself as a blustering villain. At first, he is mildly pleased that untrained Kaitlyn manages to elude his keen staffers but as she manages to stay out of reach, she threatens the success of the Fusion test. This is more than just a test to Baxter as he wants to convince the CIA that his software is essential, although it violates ordinary citizens’ expectations of privacy. Erika Coogan, his long-time romantic and business partner, is used to apologizing for Baxter’s crossing the line of what is legal vs. illegal surveillance but she and Baxter have found that most people and organizations are willing to sacrifice privacy for the illusion of security or power, respectively.

This was the kind of book you can’t stop thinking about while you are reading or listening. I kept providing various coworkers a synopsis (captive audience; we were in my car on the way to a function) and asking if they knew where they would go if they had to go off the grid but couldn’t hide or get help from someone easily connected to them. No family, no one you have emailed or texted, can’t use your car, or an ATM or your Passport. One character was found because of his weakness for Oreos so I know that I would get caught if I ran out of books and sneaked into a bookstore or library – that is definitely where the government would be looking for me! Clearly, I would have to stock my hiding place in advance with hundreds of books and enough pasta to last a month.

Source: Library. This is my eleventh book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge. McCarten is a New Zealand-born author and a screenwriter gifted enough to write a story that would make a good movie.