A story and protagonist shrouded in mystery run through with suspense and espionage.
In Adams’ debut techno-thriller, a cunning mathematical genius in Baltimore has to prove he’s not a mole working for North Korea by exposing the real one.
When the North Koreans take out a CIA safe house based on information they intercepted from the Presidential Secure Cell Phone, the National Security Agency immediately suspects that its employee John Nichols is somehow responsible for the breach. Nichols is the creator of the METAPHOR algorithm, a reputedly unhackable encryption designed to protect the PRESCEPH program. Actually, Nichols is a mole for the Russians, who now believe he’s passing secrets to North Korea; the Russians give him two weeks to track down the one who’s truly behind it. Nichols starts his search at Fourier, the San Diego company that developed the hardware chip for the PRESCEPH. There, he reconnects (in more ways than one) with former NSA co-worker Erica May. As a new hire, he covertly investigates Fourier and can only hope that the mole hunt doesn’t lead him to Erica. The author knows how to heighten anticipation: After Nichols’ Russian handler gives him his ultimatum, the novel skips ahead past the two-week deadline, where readers learn that Nichols has been detained and his daughter, Laura, was abducted. The plot then alternates between Nichols telling his story to Travis Jackson of the U.S. Justice Department and the days leading up to his arrest. The protagonist is delectably perplexing because it’s initially unclear (even to readers, who know more than Jackson) that Nichols genuinely isn’t under North Korea’s thumb. At the same time, Nichols is humanized by the adoration he has for Laura and flashbacks to a young Ilia (soon to be John) in Russia unwittingly enlisted by government agents. Adams enriches the story with numerous characters, including FBI agent Joe Connor, who’s monitoring Jackson’s interrogation, and the enigmatic Hank, who shadows Nichols for an unknown party and occasionally threatens the man he’s watching. There are also a few dead bodies before it’s all over as well as apt displays of Nichols’ hand-to-hand skills. Despite the technology-laden plot, Adams keeps the story relatively simple, never unnecessarily explaining how the METAPHOR algorithm operates or spending too much time establishing Nichols’ exceptional intelligence.
A story and protagonist shrouded in mystery run through with suspense and espionage.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502754592
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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