A convincing, complex cyberthriller.
A computer programmer becomes the target of international criminals in Diamond’s (Warren Lane, 2015) thriller.
Russ Eugene “Genie” Fitzpatrick, now approaching 30, works as an app developer in Richmond, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Russ used to be a programmer with fellow code-nerd Charles Allen “Hatter” Taylor in San Francisco, but the two haven’t seen each other in four years. Hacker Charlie got into deep trouble in the underground “dark web,” and while he had the FBI on his tail, he also had multiple women on the string, including his latest muse, Cali. “You’re just as devious as I am,” he once told Russ. “Only I embrace my inner deviant….And you run from yours.” But Russ stops running from aberrance after Charlie’s car goes off a cliff and his body is found, charred, with a bullet hole in the skull. Soon Russ gets heavily involved in a world of code cracking and head cracking, linked to an online market for illegal and/or stolen items called the Twilight Bazaar, known as “the ATM of the dark web” for global criminal organizations. After its servers suddenly go down, international thugs think Charlie may have given Russ an encryption key to the site—and its millions of dollars. Russ, however, is less concerned with money than he is with Cali; his heart goes vroom when he first sees a photo of her in front of a cherry-red Impala. Along the way, she tells him, “You dwell on the details….Most people let the little things slide.” The same could be said of author Diamond himself, who gets all the little things right, as well as the big ones, in this riveting novel. Details, such as the sound of silver bracelets jangling at a key moment, the thirst for a Mountain Dew after a rough night, and the moldy smell of a cheap motel blanket, complement the main action. The dialogue, too, is right on the bitcoin when the characters are sober—and also believably unfocused when they are drunk or high, which is fairly often.
A convincing, complex cyberthriller.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9963507-3-0
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Stolen Time Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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