Rogue Code

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was made better by the discussions and invaluable feedback I received from readers of early drafts. I’d like to thank John Walton, David Cross, Chris Jackson, John Lambert, Scott Field, and Matt Thomlinson, colleagues of mine at Microsoft, who shared their real-world experience fighting cybercrime and improving cybersecurity in their detailed and thoughtful reviews and discussions. Thanks also to Jeff Prosise and Ron Watkins, friends of mine outside of Microsoft, who gave me their perspectives as fans of the techno-thriller genre.

Haim Bodek deserves a special thanks for the information he shared with me, initially and unknowingly via his Web site, book, and participation in documentaries on HFT that I researched, and then later after I contacted him, in our long conversations over Skype and in the comments he gave me on book drafts. I’m grateful for his foreword, which sets the tone perfectly for the book. His position as an industry insider and pioneer of market microstructures makes his warning that HFT poses risks to our economy when looked at as not just low-latency algorithmic trading that can spiral out of control in algo-vs-algo trading, but as including the secretive-order types that give insiders unfair advantages, something that we should all heed.

I also want to thank my agent, David Fugate of Launch Books, for his staunch support of the Jeff Aiken books series, and also for helping me secure the sale of its movie option. Peter Joseph, my editor at St. Martin’s Press, did a fantastic job of guiding the book through to publication, even somehow compressing rigid publishing schedules to hit target dates when my day job got in the way and slowed my delivery. Thanks to Melanie Fried and to the editorial production staff at St. Martin’s Press for their painstaking passes over multiple drafts of the manuscript, somehow finding typos and grammar mistakes in passages that I read dozens of times.

Finally, I want to again thank the real-life Daryl, my wife, for indulging me in my many hobbies, of which novelist is just one. Her patience and support for my crazy schedule and her smiling face, which greets me when I get home from work or finish a multi-hour writing session, provides the emotional foundation for my creative endeavors.