Interviewing Daniel Scanlan
Helloooo!
A few weeks ago I was very impressed by the debut thriller The Hacker by Daniel Scanlan a tense, fast-paced yet unnerving trip into the world of cybercrime with a fantastic cat and mouse dynamic between the two key characters. Daniel also has a legal background within cybercrime and several related areas which definitely gives the story a realistic feel. I was very pleased to get the chance to ask Daniel some questions about the book.
How do you like to tempt people to read The Hacker?
By pointing out that while it’s a work of fiction, the world it is set in is real, and that many of the types of events depicted occur every day. All I did was postulate a highly-intelligent, supremely skilled psychopath, place him in that realm and invite him to do his worst.
How did you find making cybercrime and its detection understandable? Is there a learning curve you have to create for the reader?
It was a balance I struggled with right until it went to print. Too much technical detail and the story bogs down, too little and it becomes the more “Hollywood” variety where the bad guy types for a few seconds, presses enter, and the world blows up. I decided to concentrate on what the technology does, rather than detail how it does it, using analogies where possible and trying to integrate the explanations into the flow of the narrative.
How did our main two characters Ericka and Dantalion evolve as your characters playing cat and mouse with each other?
They are both compositions, starting out with certain personalities and characteristics and then building them based on how I think the events depicted would shape them.
Dantalion is a sadist and a narcissist, but like the real-life Unabomber (IQ 167) he is capable of evading police detection for years. Unlike most skilled hackers who are motivated by money, stealing information, or just for the thrills, he takes the tools available from hacker and dark web technology and uses them to feed his psychopathy.
Ericka is supremely skilled, obsessively type A, and driven by her past. She is fully aware of the damage her work does to her, triggering past traumas, haunted by ghosts from cases she couldn’t solve. She forges on with endless grit, fired by sheer will to succeed, trying to salve the past by fixing the present, her successes like bandages on the wounds while taking a dreadful toll on her. Much of Ericka is built from the strength I’ve seen in real policewomen I’ve worked with.
How far in a thriller did you push what a skilled criminal could accomplish? Should we be more worried?
In the sense of a single criminal doing all these things in the timeframes depicted, I took license trying to keep the narrative compelling. While Dantalion has followers and helpers, these kinds of crimes are often the results of teams or people working in concert. His background and genius level intelligence account for his accomplishments.
Other than that, much of what is depicted happens on a daily basis. Top-level hackers get into secure environments and cover their tracks. They use dark web technology to conceal their locations. As part of what is often called “social engineering” people are tricked, paid, and extorted into opening the doors for hackers, and there is almost no defence against the “inside” asset. Human trafficking and sexually exploitive crimes are horribly common. Hackers taking control of web-enabled physical objects are the stuff of daily news.
I gave Dantalion the next generation of virtual reality technology, because after all, he’s Dantalion and would have it.
Regarding the final events of The Hacker (trying to avoid spoilers here) I believe they are plausible if very difficult. My basis for this is that the industry depicted has convened conferences and thinktanks to try and stop people doing what Dantalion does. They treat this as a very real threat. What I did is try and find a way around the safeguards the industry has in place. Hopefully I’m wrong.
What can we look forward to in your next book…in three words!
He is back!
Where can we find out more from you?
I’m happy to hear from readers on Goodreads or Twitter.
If there was one book, not your own, that you wish everyone could read what would it be and why?
That’s so hard. I think perhaps Carl Sagan’s CONTACT, because of the seamless blend of hypothetical alien technology, various human philosophies and religions, the resulting social upheaval and in the end, how the main character, Ellie, pulls them all together.
