Rating: 
Summary: To many improbablities
Review: This book started out well for me but the improbable story lines keep piling on. The villain, as described, is a supergenius in the cyber world who spends much of his waking time behind a computer screen creating mayhem. In the real world he is quite ordinary, not at all physically fit. Yet in the physical confrontations with pursuing police officers he continually comes out on top. This is just one of the elements that I found improbable.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific plot
Review: This is Jeffery Deaver's first venture into a cyberthriller and he does a pretty good job. The strength of the novel is its plot: a no-holds-barred contest between two hackers. Wyatt Gillette is doing time for a few minor computer crimes when he is offered a temporary reprieve if he helps the state police track down a murderous cracker called Phate. The plot takes one turn after another, building suspense as Phate searches for new victims and Gillette tries to stop him. Why is Phate committing these murders? Who is his partner? Who's the traitor within the police? Is Gillette really a good guy? Plenty of mystery and suspense to keep you turning the pages.Although the plot is terrific, the story has a couple of weak points. Deaver is not a computer pro and it shows. Although many of the inaccuracies are minor - only a technically sophisticated person would notice - some of them were really ridiculous (Gillette's fingertips are so strong from fingertip pushups that they crush keyboards during coding sessions). Another problem is that Phate turns out to be a stock character - I won't give away the details, but you could probably put together a description without reading the novel. It's too bad because he starts out as an interesting, mysterious adversary. Still, the Blue Nowhere is a good thriller, well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: A Thrilling Roller Coaster. Very Highly Recommended!
Review: Being heavily involved in Internet application development, I found this book to be extremely riveting. It was recommended by a friend of mine who is a regular user of the Internet. In other words, this book will appeal to anyone that enjoys edgy thrillers. The technical overtone is not at all overwhelming. On the contrary, it is informative and at times very stimulating. I have read two great thrillers this year. One of them was religious (The Da Vinci Code) and the other was technological (The Blue Nowhere.) It's the perfect novel for nerds, tech junkies, programmers and computer gurus. It will definitely delight and satisfy the vast majority of thriller/suspense lovers, though. I couldn't put it down until I was through it's that good. I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Antoher good one from the master of thrillers
Review: I knew Jeff Deaver from his Lincoln Rhyme series, and I enjoyed very much "The bone collector" and "The coffin dancer". Deaver seems to me an author that knows what he's talking about, creating good main characters and awesome plots. When I heard about "The blue nowhere", I had no trouble racing to the nearest bookstore to buy it. The explanation is simple. I think that, like me, Deaver is used to using the world wide web, but he knew nothing about hacking, cracking, internet, programming and such. Just to try and understand all this "technological esoteric" stuff is something to praise. It's not easy to understand this kind of things beginning from scratch, as I'm sure Deaver has done, and I respect him for that. "The blue nowhere" is a thriller with some uncommon elements. To begin with, there's an interaction between the physical and the virtual worlds, since the vilain, a cracker named Phate, is using his computer-programming abilities to get information about the people he wants to kill, in order to win a game called Access. To get to Access' expert level, Phate search people that are virtually inviolable, knows everything there is to know about them, and, using his skills as a "Social engineer", gets them to trust him and stabs them in the heart. The book's main character, however, is Wyatt Gillette, a hacker in the latus sensus of the word, but Gillette is doing time in prison because he supposedly hacked into the main program of the US Department of Defense. Gillette is controversialy summoned to help California's Computer Crime Unit, and then begins a cat-and-mouse race against time to prevent Phate to further killings. Like his previous books, the pace is very fast, and the near-madness plot prevents the reader of complaining against a dubious character-development - even if in this one there are more memorable characters than in the Rhyme series. Also, there are many plot-twists; some of them I could see coming, but some others got me completely unware. In fact, Deaver is very good at that, and that's why I will keep buying his books. There's a computer-glossary in "The blue nowhere" and that's what makes the difference between this book and some of the cyber-thrillers that abund in the books universe, where the author simply makes the assumption that the readers are acquainted with the unusual vocabulary. Grade 8.9/10
Rating:
Summary: Better Than Average Thriller
Review: This is the first Jeffery Deaver book that I have read. Having seen "The Bone Collector" movie I wasn't ready to be blown away. On the flip side it was better than I expected and it wasn't too geeky for casual technofiles or too gimcky like many thrillers. It is the usual "Silence of the Lambs" template at work, with a few twists so it isn't to blatant a homage/redux.
Rating: 
Summary: Phish with big teeth (or Jaws 27 )
Review: What Deaver does with computers and the internet in The Blue Nowhere is pretty much what Peter Benchley did with sharks and the ocean in Jaws. As a computer specialist I was amused--and sometimes appalled--with Deaver's depiction of the cyber-world. He did get a lot of the history right and for people who are computer novices this book could provide-vicariously--some learning moments. Trouble is-same as with Benchley and the sharks-there's going to be a lot of unwarranted paranoia and dis-information spread about as well.
But let's forget that and look at the story . . . Initially the plot line is amusing, a cyber-criminal is brought out of prison by the police to help catch a much more deadly cyber-criminal. Push your suspension-of-disbelief lever ALL the way up as this progresses. Also see if you can contain your irritation with Deaver's continual, narrative explanations of computer terminology. Next we have to endure a heavy dose of soap opera (sons dying, wives leaving, daughters in pregnancy-extremis, wives in medical dilemma) as the search for the Komputer-Killer goes on. The characters are a bit beyond two dimensional-but not much.
The worst thing, however, is what Deaver does in the last quarter of the book-and, sadly, what he's done in at least two other of his works (to my knowledge). I refer to The Bone Collector and The Coffin Dancer, the other two Deaver novels I've read. In both of those he tells a very good story, then in the last part twists the plot so severely that any serious reader will throw up their hands. A French braid should be so simple. It's "the-guy-you-thought-was-a-good-guy-now-looks-like-a-bad-guy and the-bad-guy-might-actually-be-a-good-guy but maybe the good/bad-guy-is really-a-bad/good-guy".
He did that in both The Bone Collector and The Coffin Dancer-Damn I wish he'd stop it!
Rating:
Summary: The Blue Nowhere
Review: Despite him being quite a well known author, had never really heard of Jeffery Deaver. At the local library I was scouring the shelves hastily when I stumbled across his book, The Blue Nowhere. I flipped the cover over to read the quick summary of the book to find that it indeed did seem interesting. I ended up voraciously devouring this novel in about 2 days. Deaver's writing is phenominal! He had me sitting on the edge of my seat for the whole read! The book is a mix of murder mystery - thriller - suspense. 100% recommended!
Rating:
Summary: WOW!!!
Review: This is the first Jeffrey Deaver book I've read. It was incredible. So much more fun than i expected it to be, you know, considering all the computer/internet stuff. I loved reading it, I loved every twist, the characters, and guess what, i definitely learned a lot about computers too!!
Rating:
Summary: FREAKY!
Review: This book was great! I am enthralled with mysteries and forensics and all related subjects, and this novel fit right in there. I strongly reccomend it to anyone who enjoys reading on the edge of their seat! I was constantly wondering who the killer is and what's going to happen next. I'm eager to read more of Deaver's novels!
Rating:
Summary: I've read it eight or nine times already
Review: The ONLY downside to this book is that the author (through no fault of his own, obviously) has to cater to computer-illiterate types - as such, you have to sit through explanations of things such as ICQ. The plot, the twists and the ending are top-notch. This book is worth every penny, even if you have to pay full price for the hardcover. Simply spectacular.
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