A solid business thriller offering an insider’s glimpse into Silicon Valley culture.
In this debut novel, Zack Penny invokes the wrath of CEO Allen Henley after leaving Display Technik to start his own tech company.
Zack has finally acted on his dream to leave Display Technik, a Silicon Valley technology company that’s extremely successful but also extremely stressful given the iron rule of Allen Henley, its war-obsessed CEO. Zack has convinced several engineering colleagues to join him in launching Imagination, which aims to be a more democratic place to work while revolutionizing TV watching. Paul Ryerson, Zack’s business partner, has secured millions in startup financing, but the bubble soon bursts. Ever-watchful Henley had persuades daughter Mary Anne, who has been dating Zack, to sneak into Zack’s home and take photos of his startup plans. Just as Zach and his team are setting up their offices, Zack is served with a temporary restraining order, and a judge in Henley’s pocket forces Imagination to turn over its technical research and halt operations pending further review. Gleefully unleashing Sandy Fong, his dirty tricks goon, Henley ups the ante to further discredit Zack and turn the Imagination team against each other. Meanwhile, Henley’s wife, Charlotte, rises from her defeated alcoholic stupor to warn Mary Anne about Henley’s plans and seek out Dean McSorley, Henley’s legal counsel. A final showdown at the Henley mansion brings violence and a “reset” for Display Technik as well as for Zack and Mary Anne’s romance. Ogura, a graduate of electrical engineering and an executive for a laser micromachining company, competently crafts a novel reminiscent of John Grisham’s The Firm (1991). At times, however, Ogura gets bogged down with technical details, and his characters could use a bit more delineation. Henley is largely a cardboard villain, and Zack’s relationships with him and his daughter Mary Anne remain rather sketchy. Similarly, Zack’s startup colleagues also get either scant or heavy-handed attention. Still, the entertaining novel is generally an easy read, serving up dirty details of Silicon Valley arrogance and hardnosed capitalism.
A solid business thriller offering an insider’s glimpse into Silicon Valley culture.Pub Date: May 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475988567
Page Count: 486
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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