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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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