Spyder Web

Nolan Kilkenny, Book 1

By: Tom Grace

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 11 hrs

Publisher's summary

Nolan Kilkenny is a former Navy SEAL who is now pursuing his doctorate in advanced computer technology. While investigating a seemingly harmless technical problem in a complex, highly secured computer network, he becomes involved in the CIA and FBI's fierce hunt for three computer-age information pirates. The ruthless, brilliant thieves have stolen SPYDER - the CIA's ultra-secret electronic intelligence gathering project that can pry open the most heavily-guarded computer networks in existence - and United States government will do anything to get it back.

Suddenly, Kilkenny is leading the search for SPYDER...and is in sharp focus in the crosshairs of those who will stop at nothing to possess the ultimate spy weapon.

©1998 The Kilkenny Group, LLC. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Regnery Publishing.

A very Nice series.

I like this series. I think it’s written well. Tom Grace has good characters with vivid details and interesting subject lines I like the Action packed story and a hero you have to love. You can relate to the loving family and friend relationships. I’ve read all 4 books, start with n

Fogboundfarm

I liked the book. However, I feel as though I’ve listened to this book before. I am not a computer person and I remembered the name of the program. And the bad guy (the Chinese guy), I know I’ve heard of him and the bad things he does. I listen to a lot of Navy Seal plots so I thought I might have mix that up but no I heard the whole story before. Don’t understand 🤔.

Excellent and Outstanding

This is an excellent book and going to be a must read series! Narrator was superior!
Great plot and sub plots! Great and very interesting characters!
Action and mystery from start to finish!
Must read book and series! You will not be disappointed!

First published January 1, 1998.... dial-up modems

I am so annoyed by Audible's inability to show the original published date, only showing the date the latest audio book was released. I was excited to read a thriller about relatively recent computer tech. There is a MASSIVE difference between 1998 and 2017, light years. We have gigabit to the home and laptops with 64Gigs of ram and a dozen 2Ghz+ cores, plus blazing fast cellular 5G (sorta) to mobile phones that are faster than the super computers in the book.

It's not just the outdated tech, which was fine when it was published, but the story is written at an 8th grade level, and riddled with racism toward people of Asian decent, sexism that might get a pass in 1970, the typical stereotypes of men should like and should be. Listening to this book as if it were written in in the mid 2010s magnified those issues even more. At first I thought the early chapters were part of a backstory. Then it was clear that it was an old book dreamed up when we still received AOL discs in the mail.

My review is partially due to frustration over the confusing published date and Audible terrible return policy. If today was 1998 and I just picked up this book, I would give it 3 stars overall. The performance is still pedestrian, and the story is bland.