A tense, high-powered techno-thriller.
A debut novel explores the possibilities that technology offers to terrorists.
Levin plumbs his career in high-tech and his degree in philosophy to ask important “what if” questions. Primary among these is whether people could live forever through computers. This idea leads the protagonist, Sam Sunborn, down a slippery slope. “Can you imagine a world where we can live on beyond our physical lives in a digital world?” Sam asks. “Where we could still interact with our loved ones, read and enjoy all the ‘pleasures of the mind’ just like when we were alive?” Unfortunately, Sam’s research draws the attention of the Barinian terrorist The Leopard, who sends gunmen after Sam’s team, resulting in the physical death and virtual rebirth of his mentor, Frank Einstein (no relation to Albert). The Leopard, a master strategist, is seeking vengeance for his family, killed by U.S. drones: “These were the so-called virtuous Americans, killing indiscriminately based on shaky intelligence.” Sam figures that the best defense is a good offense. So he gathers a band to inhibit The Leopard’s plans, including his own employees, some young hackers from the U.S. Cyber Command, police detective Al Favor, and Rich Little from Homeland Security. They largely block The Leopard’s scheme to take over America’s air-control system. But then the group must devise a way to stop his master stroke: sabotaging nuclear plants across the nation. Levin’s biggest accomplishment is to make readers ponder which scenarios terrorists could actually accomplish. While people may not yet be able to live on digitally, otherwise, as Levin explains in his Author’s Notes, “all the science and technology in this book is currently available and being deployed.” He also provides links for those whose curiosity has been piqued by his novel. Levin’s pacing is admirable. His story never drags, despite some very technical passages, and leads up to a satisfying twist ending. He’s developed highly believable characters, including the terrorists, who many times end up being one-dimensional in this genre’s tales. Best of all, many of them survive so that future series installments are possible. But the author has set the bar high with this promising, well-crafted debut.
A tense, high-powered techno-thriller.Pub Date: July 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-91416-8
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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