PULL

Finch offers a tech thriller featuring corporate espionage, psychic intrigue, and brutal betrayal.

Brothers Drew and Alex Hemsley are CEO and CTO, respectively, of a New York City–based tech-security startup called Sentry Data Security. Alex is a “puller”—a psychic who can experience the entirety of people’s memories at once, just by touching them. He used his gift to help a small-town police department pursue a case involving kidnapped children, which resulted in him reading the mind of a murderer. The trauma of “pulling” from such a monster was too much for Alex (“It surrounded me, swallowed me, threatened to drag me to hell”), and the memories still haunt him years later; he swore off using his powers and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Drew eventually coaxed him back to the outside world with the CTO position. When Sentry becomes the latest victim of a series of data leaks at cybersecurity companies across New York, Alex must find the source; to do so, he teams up with an industry rival, fellow CTO Jessie Pexler of Pexler Technologies. Alex and Jessie develop an exciting romantic chemistry, which is complicated when Alex receives an anonymous flash drive containing leaked files from Pexler Technologies. A kidnapping and murder tear the pair apart, and soon, both Drew and Pexler Technologies CEO Gideon Pexler receive ransom demands. The situation forces Alex to use his powers once again to get to the bottom of the mysterious leaks and heinous crimes. Finch delivers an incredibly entertaining read that refreshingly avoids frequent pitfalls of the SF-thriller genre. Specifically, the author develops a straightforward SF premise over the course of the novel, which she never complicates more than she needs to. This is one of the narrative’s greatest strengths, as this simplicity allows her to focus on developing rich, engaging characters and a thrilling plot that’s easy to follow, even as the narrative maintains a brisk pace.

A fast-paced and tightly executed tale of a superpowered corporate spy.