A fast-paced and intelligently conceived techno-thriller.
An ambitious computer programmer is unknowingly drawn into a dangerous game of espionage.
Lenny Driver’s dream is to work for Blahst, a global social media company that’s the creative gold standard for computer programmers. At the interview, he’s asked to write a program and produces one that would allow for the speedy personalization of posts on the website, but he shows off his arrogance as much as his talent, and the job goes to Mari Velasquez, a classmate from college. Despondent, Lenny takes a lesser job working for professor Ramsey, an academic who is an expert on the mechanisms that make ideas go viral. Lenny writes a new algorithm that essentially encodes those ideas and is able to channel new fundraising dollars to Ramsey’s company, which is devoted to preventing AIDS in the developing world. Later, Lenny returns to Blahst as a guest of Mari, and he inadvertently learns that his interviewer, and Mari’s supervisor, Clayton Malloy, stole his algorithm and took credit for it. Incensed, Lenny discovers another purpose for the program he wrote for professor Ramsey: He can use it to anonymously disseminate targeted rumors about Blahst. The algorithm is even more successful than he anticipates, however. Not only does it prove embarrassing to Blahst, it also torpedoes its stock prices, and Blahst devotes a team of their own to tracking down the source of the rumors. Further, Lenny also unwittingly disrupted a secret government mission to claim mining rights in Africa, and as a result, a shadowy agent doggedly pursues him as well. Debut author Knight is a technology consultant, a professional perch that allows her to paint a realistic (and technologically inventive) picture of the social media cosmos. Also, her story is fascinatingly topical and examines the messy matrix between youthful talent, big business, and government interest that makes up the social media industry. Knight’s writing is crisply lucid if less than literary, though it does sometimes devolve into unconvincing clichés. For example, when trying to ascertain Lenny’s truthfulness, Mari draws his lips into hers, and then declares: “A kiss never lies.”
A fast-paced and intelligently conceived techno-thriller.Pub Date: March 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9987759-0-6
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Carbon Life Press
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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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