A thrilling crime drama that paints a shrewd portrait of Silicon Valley.
In this novel, a Silicon Valley programmer searches for his missing best friend and stumbles on the possibility that the startup his pal works for is engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
Ted Hara is surprised when Sumire Yamashita suddenly shows up at his home in Japantown in San Jose—she’s the sister of his childhood friend Ryu as well as an old flame. But she’s not there to rekindle their relationship—she’s convinced Ryu has vanished and wants Ted to help track him down. At first, Ted assumes there’s an innocuous reason for Ryu’s disappearance, but then he discovers some alarming evidence to the contrary. Ryu works for well-funded but oddly secretive startup SüprDüpr and was told to keep his employment there private. These are peculiar facts given the ostentatiously boastful world of Silicon Valley firms, a strange cosmos memorably portrayed by Palter. In addition, Ted hacks into Ryu’s phone and realizes that his account has been deleted—not only has he vanished, but he has done so without even an electronic trace. Moreover, SüprDüpr is nearly inscrutable—despite its low profile, it has amassed hundreds of millions in financing and is quietly buying property in San Jose. Even less comprehensible is the company’s commitment to spend $100 million to build a new shelter for the homeless. In order to investigate further, Ted secures a job as a mathematician at SüprDüpr and discovers that it is building groundbreaking teleportation technology. Ryu’s disappearance may have something to do with his insistence that the tech was plagued by potentially dangerous problems. Even darker, Ted begins to suspect that SüprDüpr’s interest in the homeless population—which is inexplicably decreasing—is more sinister than philanthropic.
Palter artfully juxtaposes two different interpretations of Silicon Valley culture. On the one hand, it is a satirical self-parody of visionary creation, a world in which all of the denizens believe they are on the cusp of transforming the world. As Ted sardonically puts it, “It’s Unicorn Valley. We’re building the future. Reinventing the world. At least that’s what everyone in this town says.” On the other hand, there is a dark underbelly to that desire for breakneck disruption, one that can be nihilistically dismissive of human life, a bleakness Ted confronts. At the heart of the author’s deftly discomfiting tale is the engrossingly complex depiction of Ted—saddened by the death of his parents, he grapples with his loneliness in the same way his father did, through the stupefaction of alcohol. He’s Japanese but also impatiently dismissive of the culture he inherited—he can’t bear to sit thorough the traditional tea ceremony his mother held so dear. In addition, Palter unflinchingly anatomizes the problem of the homeless in Silicon Valley, one that may be intractable precisely because of the contempt so many have for this group. This outburst from Jesus, the chief of police in San Jose, seems aimed at the quiet disdain of many residents: “You think decent people want to live in the middle of their shit? In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a crisis on our hands.” This is an uncommonly captivating novel, one both dramatically gripping and politically uncompromising.
A thrilling crime drama that paints a shrewd portrait of Silicon Valley.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781950627615
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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