I got this hardcover at a local Savers thrift shop; the cover caught my eye, and the plot summary, about a very hard-to-isolate computer bug with far-reaching effects, appealed to my software-development background. The main characters are a software tester who first encounters the bug and a programmer who may have created it - but it's proving impossible to reproduce consistently, and that's a near-requirement for finding and fixing a problem.

I was intrigued to find that much of the book is VERY computer-tech-intensive, with actual segments of code here and there, and with the characters highly focused on things that only other software-development folk will probably appreciate. (Though perhaps this book could serve as a good way to show non-software-folk how the process works. Or, in some cases, fails to work!)

I found the technical side of things more interesting than the personal, though I was amused at how familiar some of the less-than-social behaviors of the main characters were. There's a tragic aspect to the story too, though in the end a solution to the big question does turn up; whether one finds it as satisfying a discovery as I (and the character who found it) does may vary. For me, the emotional glee at finally solving a very tricky problem was the high point of my working years in development, and I was elated at that scene in the book!

I left this book in the Little Free Library near the lovely Nubble Lighthouse; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in Maine here.]