Through her attorney Quentin the Quintessential, she offers recompense for her misdeeds, then involves two young people who become close friends to accomplish her vague three-step redemption path: help herself, help a friend, and help someone not her friend. Sydney’s journey takes her through high-tech car thievery in Arizona, building a deep-search computer operation in London, befriending a bar bully in Galway, stolen jewels at Milan Fashion Week, high-stakes poker in Mississippi, a 17th century Old Masters art forgery in Rotterdam, and a widespread UK money laundering scheme. She executes and completes her plan with great drama, then vanishes, never to be heard from again. For those who enjoy strong female leads, who like fast-moving adventures in many locations, and who like stories with continuing surprises and unanticipated outcomes, The Unlikely Redemption of the Thief Sydney Bridgewater is a quick, satisfying read.

On an inconsequential day of an insignificant month in an unremarkable dead of night, Sydney Bridgewater initiated DefCon2 with three seconds of clicking on her keyboard.

There was no “Are you sure?”

At lightspeed, her command traveled to five computers in five different cities, and her long-secret program code vanished, never to be found, never to return.

As risky as it may turn out to be, she’d decided, it was time to move on.