The Director

By: David Ignatius

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's Summary

In David Ignatius' gripping new novel, spies don' t bother to steal information...they change it, permanently and invisibly. Graham Weber has been director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents' names to prove it. This is the moment a CIA director most dreads. Weber isn' t sure where to turn until he meets a charismatic (and unstable) young man named James Morris who runs the Internet Operations Center. He' s the CIA' s in-house geek. Weber launches Morris on a mole hunt unlike anything in spy fiction - one that takes the listener into the hacker underground of Europe and America and ends up in a landscape of paranoia and betrayal. Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it' s drawn, The Director is a maze of deception and double-dealing - about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones and nothing can be trusted.

©2014 David Ignatius (P)2014 Recorded Books

Just Flat Out Scary!

I stumbled into this book because of the narrator and stayed because of the tale the author wove. A tale of those who have no true believe system other than the code they can write or the thrill of the 'hack'. The young people who were given The Lie and believed it. All the hacking done by Morris is plausible. That he is a Goverment employee is also believable. And there is where this tale causes that shiver down your spine. But that is only one of the strands in this web of lies, deceipt Mr Ignatius has so tighty woven. Add Geo. Guidall, a true master, and I could not turn it off. This is one of those I wanted to listen to straight through.

18 of 19 people found this review helpful

Didn't ever take off

I had high hopes for a spy novel that would use as it's background the leaks of classified information from cyber - world. The story here never jelled -- there was very little complexity to the plot. There was a good bit of window dressing -- different cities, different characters -- but the fundamental story was simple and lacked surprises.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Almost...

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I did recommend it, before finishing the story, now not so much. Love the details offered up about cyber criminals going after corrupt officials but then the end came and the story just went 'poof' into the ether.

Which character – as performed by George Guidall – was your favorite?

George Guidall is always brilliant...any character he does comes to life.

Do you think The Director needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No. It needs a rewrite.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

New fan of writer- David Ignatius - THE DIRECTOR

What made the experience of listening to The Director the most enjoyable?

The Director is brilliant writing. I could physically imagine each character, the scenes, and locations.

What did you like best about this story?

Attention to detail. Ignatius knowledge of the intelligence industry and US foreign policy.
He really gets it right!

What about George Guidall’s performance did you like?

His vocal inflections were very good! Timing, spacing, the entire delivery, great!

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I did not have an extreme reaction, only intense fascination!

Any additional comments?

I'm a fan!!!

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Average-even George Guidall didn't rescue this.

Meh...

I love Guidalls narrations...lately I've been listening by narrator rather than author..if you can't stand a narrator, why bother with the listen,right?

However, even George Guidall wasn't able to turn this average spy story into a page turner.

Don't waste your money on this.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Conspiracy theories are a jaded genre of fiction. The Director is marginally interesting because of Assange’s WikeLeaks, and Snowden’s NSA’ fiasco.

The Director fails as a conspiracy theory thriller but succeeds in scaring anyone that believes in freedom (which does not infringe on others), and the right to privacy. If 50% of what Ignatius suggests cyber criminals are capable of is true, no economy; no government agency; no private individual is safe.

Ignatius writes a story that suggests no security system exists that is not crack-able by a good hacker that understands computer coding and the gullibility of human beings. Ignatius infers–a good hacker with social engineering skill can crack any security system that is dependent on 1s and 0s. As a conspiracy theory story, The Director is boring and predictable but, as an exposé of cyber-crime, it is frightening.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Post-Wiki-leaks spy story

Although I wouldn't say this is exactly 5 star writing in the way that every sentence is interesting, it's so close to 5 stars otherwise, I decided to go for it anyway. I read many spy books from earlier eras, which I will continue to enjoy, but a very good exploration about how and why espionage might happen in today's world, I had yet to read. And for me, this book is it. In some ways, it's the best book I've read for awhile for that reason. There may be a tiny difference in how this author sees the world and how I do (and how it IS, in my opinion), as the forces opposed to a transparent world in the novel weren't as compelling as they could be. That difference was tolerable to me, but might hold me back from reading his other books. George Guidall is outstanding, of course.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

Good Underplot; terrible main story

This book is not for most people. The plot is not terribly good and the storyline goes far afield. The underplot however is all about contemporary hackers and what they can do and how they break into secure data. The best I can compare it to is some of the very different kind of people I worked with 30+ years ago who, even then, marched to their own drummer. Every computer organization had one or two of these very bright "go-to" guys; even IBM which demanded white shirts of its public people but their back-office genius folks could do as they wanted. I am certain that remains true to this day.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

soporific

all the excitement of an introductory accounting textbook. whenever something seems on the verge of happening, the author reverts to bland historical backfill.

This book belies the long-held belief that Goodell could read the phone book and make it interesting: even he can't breathe life into this one.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Best Narration Ever?

The Director is only remarkable to me in that I've never experienced Mr. Ignatius' skill with the words and lingo of cyber hacking technology. The plot is ordinary in today's world of thriller novels otherwise. George Guidall however was spectacular. Male, female voices, foreign accents, no matter, he nailed it. He was Weber and everyone else for that matter. Listen to this novel if only for the great voice show!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

good warning about the nature of our cyber securit

a good warning about the nature of our cyber security, how necessary proper oversight is on the process and the dangers of trusting individuals to do the right thing