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highly recommended |
A corporate caper with plenty of twists and turns 
Fatal Encryption is a corporate caper with plenty of twists and turns, and an assortment of appealing characters that will keep you guessing.
Debra Purdy-Kong's newest novel offers a well-plotted modern day mystery that is reminiscent of the classic whodunnits, and her amateur sleuth Alex Bellamy makes for an interesting, yet flawed, hero.
A great beach read!"
--Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
bestselling author of Divine Intervention
"An Alex Bellamy mystery"...
Reviewed By Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com
Debra Purdy Kong reprises her lead character, Alex Bellamy, in her book Fatal Encryption. This book begins with a murder and Alex in a frog costume. Alex takes a job at McKinleys' Department Stores as a system analyst. Someone is threatening to encrypt their system permanently. Alex delights in a challenge, but is he up to this one?
Debra Purdy Kong writes with a flair for technology. Fatal Encryption has a timely plot. The thought of Alex in a frog costume brings humor and depth to his character. This is an entertaining read. Mystery readers will love it.
Fatal Encryption 
Alex Bellamy, 28-year-old Chartered Accountant and computer geek who had been working as a temp, decides against his better judgment to accept a job as systems analyst for the family-owned McKinleys' Department Stores. Three successive men had left the position or been fired, and the stores' computers have been the target of pranks. Alex decides that virtual vandalism is a worthy objective for his talents and in fact, since normally he merely sets up systems and gets rid of viruses for his clients, thinks it might be an `intriguing challenge.' Little does he know.
No sooner does he accept the job than the family receives threats which escalate from huge ransom demands to promises of retaliation ranging from a fatal encryption of the entire computer system used by all stores in the chain [the main store plus 21 satellite stores], to the burning down of the main store. The stakes are raised when the brother of a man who had been fired from the store is murdered. Could the killer and the hacker be one and the same? The suspects are, among others, "a disgruntled systems analyst, an employer close to bankruptcy, and a controller who couldn't keep his mouth shut."
The book is all about family dysfunction, from the McKinleys themselves to Alex [who had always been made to feel like the family failure when he rejected joining the Bellamy family's successful hotel empire] and various others around whom the plot revolves. Some of the writing felt somewhat stilted, e.g., "Just as I feared. Either the culprit, or his accomplice, works among us." The plot points first to one suspect as the most likely, then to another, then to another, and so on. After a while this began to feel repetitious, and the book might have benefited from some judicious editing. But the suspense builds to an exciting conclusion.
Among other unknown-to-me facts I picked up from the novel were the distinction between a "hack" and a "cracker," the former being someone who just wants to learn, the latter someone who wants to harm, and the definition of `encryption," i.e., converting data into code which makes it inaccessible.
reviews: 1, 2, page 3
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